Quinoa Eggs

This is one of those super easy breakfasts that I can’t believe I haven’t thought of before now. If you’re a fan of quinoa like I am, you will love this. You just can’t beat this for a high protein breakfast, with a healthy amount of fiber, all in one dish. Check out this Blueberry Quinoa Breakfast Cereal to get the scoop on the health benefits of quinoa.

Ingredients
For each serving:
1 egg cooked to your liking (I like fried, over easy)
1/2 C. cooked quinoa
2 T. low-fat cheese (I used shredded Mexican Blend)

1. Place the cooked quinoa in a small bowl.
2. Meanwhile, cook your egg. Just before the egg is finished cooking, reheat the quinoa in a microwave.
3. Sprinkle the warmed quinoa with 1 T. of the cheese.
4. Place the cooked egg on top of the quinoa and cheese and top with the additional tablespoon of cheese. Enjoy!!

Blueberry Quinoa Breakfast Cereal

I have always enjoyed oatmeal for breakfast so when I saw a recipe for breakfast cereal made with quinoa, I thought I’d give it a try. It was fantastic!! Quinoa is a whole grain that cooks quickly and has several advantages over oatmeal. It contains over double the amount of a higher quality of protein than oatmeal and 50% more fiber. It also contains more calcium. Did I mention it is gluten-free as well? Since this cereal reheats well in a microwave, I make up a batch of this and eat it all week for breakfast. Enjoy!

Ingredients

1 C. uncooked quinoa
cooking spray
1 T. butter
2 C. blueberries
2 C. cold water
1/2 t. ground cinnamon
3 T. packed brown sugar
1/4 C. fat-free milk

1. Soak the quinoa in a bowl of water for 5 minutes. This is important to remove a natural bitter taste found in quinoa.
2. Rinse and drain the quinoa.
3. Spray a medium sauce pan with cooking spray. Add the quinoa and water to the pan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat and boil for 1 minute. Reduce heat to low, cover pan and simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and if there is excess water carefully drain it off.
4. Add the butter, cinnamon, brown sugar, and milk; stir to combine and fold in the blueberries.
Makes 6 – 2/3 C. servings. Weight Watchers 5 PointsPlus

Lemony Blueberry Rice Pudding Almost Gone!

Rice pudding is such a versatile recipe because, in my humble opinion, it works for both breakfast and dessert. This recipe was a total experiment on my part and one of those that turned out fabulous the first try. I really the like combination of blueberries with lemon and simply had a hunch that they would be great instead of raisins in rice pudding. My hunch paid off! I took this to church for our pre-Sunday school breakfast and it was a HUGE hit! Especially among those who don’t like rice pudding because of the raisins. I made a double batch of this, blueberry breakfast cake, and banana bread. This recipe is a good use for leftover steamed rice, as well.

Ingredients
3/4 C. uncooked white rice
2 C. whole milk, divided
1/2 C. brown sugar
1/4 t. salt
1 egg, beaten
1 C. blueberries
1 T. butter
1/2 t.vanilla
zest of 1/2 a lemon

1. Place the rice and 1 1/2 C. of water in a medium saucepan, stir. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer on low for 15 minutes without removing the lid.
2. Add 1 1/2 C. milk, brown sugar, lemon zest and salt to the cooked rice. Stir to break up the rice. Cook over medium heat, stirring continuously until thick and creamy, 15 – 20 minutes.
3. Combine the remaining 1/2 C. milk, beaten egg, and vanilla. Stir into the rice mixture and cook 2 minutes more, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stir in melted butter and blueberries. Pour into a casserole dish. Serve warm.

Serves 6-8

Lemony Blueberry Rice Pudding Cooling

Apple Cheddar Sausage Balls

These sausage balls are an excellent addition to your holiday buffets! They are a wonderful combination of sweet and savory and with the addition of the grated apple are very tender and moist. I’ve made these for an appetizer as well as for brunch buffets and they are always a hit. If you’ve been making sausage balls with bisquick, those can’t even be compared with these. I’ve found the bisquick variety to be rather dry and without much flavor. After trying these, I guarantee you’ll never make those again!

Ingredients

16 oz. pkg. Bulk Breakfast Pork Sausage
1 egg — lightly beaten
1/2 cup fine bread crumbs
1/2 cup coarsely grated peeled tart baking apple
4 oz. grated sharp Cheddar cheese — (1 cup)
1/4 cup Dijon style mustard
1/4 cup tomato juice or tomato sauce
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1. Combine sausage, egg, bread crumbs, apple and cheese in large mixing bowl; stir well.
2. Shape into 4 dozen 1-inch balls.

Ready to brown

3. In a large skillet over medium heat, cook in batches of 12 or 24, turning frequently until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Drain if desired, then return to skillet.

Browning

4. In a small bowl, combine mustard, tomato juice, maple syrup and vinegar. Pour over sausage balls. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

Dijon-Balsamic Sauce

5. Transfer to a chafing dish or slow cooker; serve hot with toothpicks.

Note: sausage balls may be prepared ahead and frozen uncooked; thaw in refrigerator before cooking as directed above.

Makes 4 dozen

Sausage Enchilada Breakfast Casserole

Have you ever wanted to break out of a food rut and try something new? Well, that’s how I’ve been feeling about my old standby breakfast casserole! It’s a good recipe and my whole family likes it but I simply wanted to try some new ones so I gave this one a whirl and loved it.

I made this to take to a brunch get-together with friends and it was a huge hit. It takes a little time to prepare but is definitely worth it since you can make it up the night before and just take it out of the refrigerator and bake in the morning. I’ll be making this for my family for our next holiday get-together. We’ll see if they like it as much as Ken and I and our friends did.

Ingredients
1 1/2 lbs. of bulk breakfast sausage
1 onion, finely chopped
10 – 8 inch flour tortillas
2 3/4 C. grated cheddar cheese, divided
6 large eggs
1 T. flour
1 C. whole milk
1 C. light sour cream
1 can Rotel tomatoes, drained
1 can diced green chiles
1/2 t. seasoning salt
1 t. fresh ground black pepper
sour cream & salsa for garnish

1. Grease a 13 X 9 inch baking dish.
2. Brown the sausage and onions over medium-high heat crumbling the meat while its cooking. Drain and add the drained Rotel tomatoes and green chiles and cool completely.

Sausage & Rotel Tomato Mixture

3. Place about 1/3 C. of the cooked sausage mixture down the center of each tortilla.
4. Sprinkle about 2 tablespoons of shredded cheese on top of sausage mixture.
5. Roll up each tortilla and place seam-side down in the casserole dish.

Filling the Flour Tortillas

6. Sprinkle any leftover sausage mixture over the top of the tortillas.
7. In a bowl, whisk together the flour with the eggs, milk, sour cream, seasoning salt, and black pepper until well combined.
8. Pour over the top of the filled tortillas.

Casserole with Egg Mixture

9. Sprinkle 1 1/2 C. grated cheddar cheese over the top and cover casserole with plastic wrap. Refrigerate at least an hour or up to over night.
10. Remove from refrigerator 45 minutes before baking.
11. When ready to bake preheat oven to 350 degrees. Remove plastic wrap and cover with foil. Bake for 35 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 10 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Serves 8-10

Ready To Go In The Oven

Cherry Cream Cheese Danish Coffeecake

This is a festive looking coffeecake that is perfect for Christmas morning! The base of this coffeecake is a white cake mix so it is quick and easy to make with that classic combination of almond flavored cream cheese combined with cherry pie filling. The sliced almonds add just the right amount of crunch. I took this to our Christmas potluck breakfast at church the Sunday before Christmas and there was none leftover to take home, unfortunately!

Ingredients
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup water
3 eggs
1 package (18.25 size) white cake mix
1 can (21 oz. size) cherry pie filling
8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
1/3 C. sugar
1 t. almond extract
1/2 cup sliced almonds
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk
3 drops vegetable oil

1. Preheat oven to 350. Generously grease and flour 15-1/2 X 10-1/2 jelly-roll pan.
2. Mix sour cream, water and eggs. Stir in cake mix until moistened. The batter will be lumpy. Spread into pan.
3. Mix the cream cheese, almond extract and sugar until well blended and creamy. Place a tablespoon size dollop evenly spaced three across and five the length of the pan so that you have fifteen dollops.

Batter with cream cheese mounds

4. Place tablespoon size dollops of pie filling over the top of the cream cheese. Sprinkle with the almonds.
5. Bake for 25 minutes or until cake tests done. Drizzle with glaze while still warm.

To make glaze: Mix powdered sugar, milk and vegetable oil. Stir in a few extra drops of milk if necessary. Stir until mixture is smooth and of a desired consistency. Place in a ziploc bag and cut a small hole in one corner in order to drizzle over the still warm cake.
Serves 15

Ziploc bag of icing

Fire Pot Fall Tablescape

I thought it’d be fun to do a bit of a recipe roundup for Thanksgiving and I wanted to share my fall tablescape as well! It is one of those ceramic firepots that burns a gel-type clean fuel so it can be burned indoors or out. I loved the colors of this one and just placed some greenery and fruit around the base for a simple but nice tablescape.

Many certainly have their Thanksgiving traditions . . . my family sure does. We always begin our day with poppyseed coffeecake that has now been made for several generations. In fact, this is the tradition for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter! It takes a little work but it sure is delicious!!

Poppyseed Coffeecakes

We also have to have our breakfast casserole. For years my family insisted on the same casserole, but last year I took a risk and tried a new one, Green Chile-Sausage Casserole. Surprisingly, it became the new breakfast casserole of choice. It just goes to show that some traditions can change!!

Green Chile Sausage Breakfast Casserole

Now, even though we eat twice as much breakfast as we normally do, we still have to have some snack food for munching while watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. In all fairness to the family, we don’t really have lunch and then have our big dinner at about 5:30. A must-have snack is the Zesty Ranch Pretzels. Even and the two and three year-olds love’em! They’re so easy and cheap to make, as well.

Zesty Ranch Pretzels

I have to confess that I do nothing fancy with the turkey. I stuff it with a few stalks of celery and an onion that have been cut into chunks, season it with Lawry’s Seasoning Salt & fresh ground pepper, throw it in one of those Reynolds cooking bags and follow the directions that come with the bags and that’s it! The turkey turns out golden brown, moist, and all the lovely juices remain from which to make a bunch of gravy. My family can never have too much gravy!

As far as side dishes go, we have the usual mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, etc. My son-in-law makes a great corn casserole that we always have, as well as, the standard green bean casserole. Depending on how many people we’re having, I also add another vegetable casserole or two. One of my favorites is the Cheesy Vegetable Bake.

Cheesy Vegetable Bake

Another favorite side dish is Sweet N’ Spicy Sweet Potato Casserole! It has just a touch of cayenne for a hint of spicy along with orange juice and other spices that are a great combination with the sweet potatoes and the crunch of pecans on top!

Sweet N' Spicy Sweet Potato Casserole

Last of all, is dessert! We have the standard assortment of pies with whipped cream and vanilla ice cream. This year my niece is bringing a berry pie and I just may make a pan of Pumpkin Bread Pudding along with Caramel Rum Sauce for drizzling!

Pumpkin Bread Pudding w/Caramel Rum Sauce

I hope that all of you have a Thanksgiving filled with family, fun, and friends! Blessings to all of you!!

Apple Streusel Bundt Cake

I still had some apples I needed to use up from our apple picking adventure with our three grandsons, so I volunteered to bring an apple dessert to our monthly Dining for Women meeting. I couldn’t find a recipe that I liked online. My biggest problem with most of them was the amount of oil, butter, or shortening used in the batter. Many of them had up to a cup and a half of fat in them which is totally unnecessary since apples provide so much moisture anyway. At any rate, this is what I came up with and it only has 1/2 cup of shortening in it! If you’re wanting an apple cake that isn’t a bundt cake, take a look at this Roman Apple Cake recipe.

Ingredients
1 1/2 C. sugar
1 C. whole wheat flour
2 C. white flour
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. baking powder
2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. ground cloves
1 1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 C. shortening
3 eggs
1 C. milk
2 t. vanilla
3 C. peeled, cored, and chopped apples (about 3-4 medium)

1. Beat together the shortening, sugar, and eggs until creamy. Add the milk and vanilla.
2. In another bowl mix together the flours, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. Add in two or three batches to the egg mixture and mix until well blended.
3. Fold in the chopped apples.
4. Meanwhile, grease and flour a bundt pan and preheat oven to 350 degrees and make the streusel topping.

Topping
Crumble together:
1 1/2 T. melted butter
1 1/2 t. cinnamon
1/2 C. brown sugar
1 T. flour
3/4 C. chopped pecans
1/3 C. instant oatmeal or rolled oats

5. Spoon half the batter into the bundt cake pan.
6. Sprinkle half the topping on the batter.

Middle Layer of Streusel

7. Spoon the rest of the batter over the streusel layer and sprinkle the rest of the topping over the top of the batter.
8. Bake for 1 hour or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
9. Let cool for 15 minutes then remove from pan and finish cooling on a wire rack.
Serves 12-16

Peanut Butter Apple Crisp

We had the pleasure of going apple picking with our three grandsons on a perfect fall day! What fun!!! We got to ride on a hay wagon pulled by a John Deere, which all three of my them just loved. We picked golden delicious and Rome apples using those interesting apple pickers on a long pole. While walking from tree to tree I came upon a stand of milkweed that we had to stop and examine.

Carter, Tristan, and Tyler checking out the milkweed

After picking all those apples I just had to make some apple crisp. I adapted a recipe from The More-With-Less Cookbook and just love the addition of peanut butter. It really adds a richness to the crisp topping. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Ingredients
6 C. peeled and sliced apples (5-6 medium apples)
2 T. flour
1/2 C. sugar
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. salt
2 T. water
3/4 C. rolled oats
1/4 t. salt
3 T. butter
3 T. peanut butter
1/3 C. + 3 T. packed brown sugar

1. Grease a large casserole dish and preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Combine the apples, flour, sugar, cinnamon, 1/4 t. salt, and water in a large bowl. Place in the greased casserole dish.
3. Cut together with a pastry blender (or your fingers) the rolled oats, 1/4 t. salt, butter, peanut butter, and brown sugar until crumbly. Sprinkle over the top of the apple mixture.
4. Bake for 45-50 minutes until the crisp is simmering around the edges and the apples are tender when pierced with a fork.
Serves 10-12

Pumpkin Bread Pudding w/Caramel Rum Sauce

Now that the weather has become cooler and the trees are changing color, I’ve been craving anything pumpkin! I’ve made pumpkin dip, savory toasted pepitas, and now this pumpkin bread pudding. I had a bunch of people over to my house recently and we had a pumpkin fest with all these dishes served plus pumpkin bread. I eat bread pudding for breakfast as well as for dessert so try it for breakfast. It’s great with a cup of coffee and the addition of pumpkin adds fiber and vitamins so how can you go wrong?

Ingredients
4 C. milk
1 – 15 oz. can pumpkin
1/2 C. sugar
1/2 C. packed brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 t. ground cinnamon
1/2 t. ground cloves
1/4 t. ground ginger
1 1/2 t. vanilla
8 C. white bread, cubed
1/2 C. craisins or raisins

Caramel Rum Sauce Ingredients
1/2 C. packed brown sugar
1/4 C. butter
1/4 C. whipping cream
1 – 2 T. rum (depending how rummy you like your sauce)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Place the cubed bread in a greased 9X13 inch pan. Sprinkle with craisins or raisins.

Cubed Bread w/Craisins

3. Whisk the milk, pumpkin, eggs, brown sugar, white sugar, eggs, spices, and vanilla in a medium bowl to blend.

Mixing Pumpkin & Eggs

4. Pour the pumpkin-egg mixture over the bread cubes. Press the bread cubes into the pumpkin mixture so the bread absorbs it. Let stand for 15 minutes (or overnight).
5. Bake until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 40-50 minutes.
6. Remove from oven and cool.
7. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

While the bread pudding is baking make the caramel sauce.
8. Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Whisk in the brown sugar until dissolved.
9. Whisk in the whipping cream and bring to a boil. Simmer for 2 minutes and remove from heat.
10. Whisk in the rum sauce and cool.

To serve, cut the bread pudding into squares and place on dessert plate. Drizzle with the caramel rum sauce.

Serves 10-12