Breakfast Pizza

One more really good recipe I've tried recently was Cooking Light's Breakfast Pizza. I didn't think to take any pictures of it, but it was really good and easy to make. It uses canned crescent rolls as the crust. I cheated and used regular sausage instead of turkey sausage, but I think it would have been just as good. I highly recommend it.

Steak, Spinich Mashed Potatoes, and Stuffed Tomatoes

Some good friends of ours came to visit the weekend after Christmas. I decided to try something new while they were here. I keep trying Rachel Ray recipes but haven't had a lot of success. They tend not to have much flavor. But I thought I'd try another one.

My friend Natalie was my assistant...which meant she did all the hard work and I figured out what we had to do next. Natalie was also nice enough to take pictures of the meal. I never think of taking pictures until after the meal is half gone and it doesn't look good anymore.

The first recipe we tried was Bacon, Spinach, and Cream Potatoes. The recipe was pretty easy. We pealed the potatoes and started them boiling, then sauteed the onion and bacon. Once the potatoes were done cooking Natalie mashed the potatoes with the onions, bacon, spinach, cream salt and pepper. Then we tried them. There was no flavor at all. Nat and I decided it needed cheese. So we shredded some sharp white cheddar and mixed it in. That helped a lot.

The final consensus on this dish was that the proportion of spinach to potatoes was a little too high, but 3 out of 4 of us liked it anyway. My dear hubby said you really couldn't call it mashed potatoes. There are a couple of things I'd do differently in the future. I'd use a little less spinach, and we all thought it would be good if the potatoes were scooped into a casserole dish and baked with a little more cheese on top (of course it would take more than 30 minutes then).

While the men-folk were out grilling the steaks we made Broiled Tomatoes with Cheese and Herbs adapted from another Rachel Ray recipe.

I threw bread, parsley, basil and Romano cheese in the food processor and chopped them up. I added a little olive oil and pulsed it a little more. I then stuffed the mixture into tomatoes that I cleaned out. I then broiled the tomatoes for a few minutes. I left out the olives because my husband is not always an olive fan. They are growing on him though.

I liked the tomatoes. I think I'd add a little more cheese and hopefully find flat leaf parsley instead of curly parsley. I'd also add about twice as much basil. The olives would have helped a lot also. Overall the final presentation of the tomatoes with the steaks looked nice.

The meal did take more than 30 minutes, however that worked out to be good because the grill took forever to heat up.

Tuesday with Moron

My friend is part of the Tuesdays with Dorrie blog. Every week she bakes a recipe from a cookbook. Someone in the group picks the recipe for the week and on Tuesday she discusses her results. I'm not that good a baker so welcome to the first edition of Tuesday with Moron.

Hello, my name is Karen, and I will be your moron today.

We have a pot luck tomorrow at work and I decided to make dinner rolls and cranberry sauce. I left work late, had a really long day and still had to go to the store to pick up stuff. By the time I got home I was already completely brain fried. While I was at it I decided to make some cranberry pistachio scones also....cause I really needed more stuff to do tonight.

I started the rolls first since they would take the longest. I started following the recipe and realized that it was only going to make a dozen rolls and I need more like 30 roles. So while the first batch was rising I started another double batch. I let both batches rise for an hour, punched it down and then started looking for my muffin tin. No muffin tin here. No problem, I'll just bake them on baking sheets and hopefully I can make a nice round ball. Easier said than done when the dough is pretty sticky. I finally got 3 sheets of rolls done and let them rise. Once I started putting them in the oven with the egg wash they were browning unevenly and looked really white and pasty in a lot of places. I tried one and it had no flavor. So I basted them in melted butter and popped them back in the oven for a few minutes to get a little more even browning. They taste better and look a little better. So much for cooking light. The inside of the rolls aren't at all light and fluffy they are a little grainy and heavy. I can not get yeast rolls or breads to come out light and fluffy ever.

While the rolls were rising I started the cranberry sauce. This went well except that I let it boil over. I know better than to walk away from the stove while bringing something to a boil but I do it every time. Burnt sugary syrup all over the burner. This is going to be a joy to clean.

Now to start the scones ... (this is where it gets good)
First I forgot buttermilk so I had to make it... 1 tbsp vinegar and fill up to a cup with milk and let sit 5 minutes. Easy enough...I have a cup of buttermilk.

While the milk was curdling I cut butter into the flour. So far so good. Then I added the rest of the wet ingredients to the buttermilk and added all the wet ingredients, dried cranberries, and pistachios to the flour. I looked at the dough and it was really runny like cake batter. I looked back at the recipe and I needed 1/3 of a cup of buttermilk... I used the whole cup...Did I mention I was brain fried?

I hate the thought of throwing this all away so I decided to try to salvage it...I have enough butttermilk in there for a triple batch so I mixed enough butter and flour for a double batch in yet another bowl. Looking back I now realize I forgot to add the extra baking powder and salt too.

I mixed the flour/butter into the existing dough and realized I only had enough sugar and honey in there for 1 batch. What the heck I'll mix it in now...it can't get any worse.

The recipe says to pat the dough out into a disk and to then cut it into wedges and bake it..how do you cut cake batter into wedges? So I made one big disky kind of thing and tried baking it and then cut it after it started baking and being a kind of solid thing. I also made what look like drop biscuits with the rest of the stuff. The cranberry pistachio drop biscuits taste ok...they look ugly but I have breakfast for awhile.

This has been Tuesdays with Moron.