My Closet Passion(s)...

Cooking. Baking. Eating. (I am sure the last is no surprise to many of you!)

I have always loved it. Please don't tie me down to a recipe though. Unless it is baking, which I realize is best mostly following a recipe. Though my favorite cookie is a morphed recipe.

I enjoy seeing other peoples creations, and bookmark them to one day try myself. Some times I am blown away by the thought... "Why didn't I think of THAT before??" Like making home made chicken nuggets. How many thousands of dollars could I have saved? I am sure my children's college funds would be fully funded exist had I known about these money savers!

Also, check this out Cupcake Pops!! Are these not adorable??

My (birthday) is coming up soon, I think I may have to try these! :)

In the spirit of loving all things foodish, I have been known to come up with a few goodies of my own. One most recent was a new twist on french toast after a long car trip.

When we began deputation, we figured we would save money by bringing all the "travel food" we would need with us. All that really meant was the bananas would get smashed, as well as the bread and apples. The lunch meat would be tossed out after the melted ice would have water logged it beyond consumption, and we would end up stopping for food anyhow. Not great savings... actually paying more.

However, we got home after one trip in particular with a nicely smashed loaf of bread... but still quite fresh. We had been away for 5 weeks, and as you can imagine had less than anything in the house to eat. We did have eggs, syrup and smashed bread. (light bulb moment... French Toast!)
I crumbled the bread and mixed it with eggs, vanilla, a little half and half (no milk...) and a small amount of flour. Voila! French Pancakes! I put them onto the griddle, and they needed to be flattened a little. They almost looked like little muffins at first.

I cooked them on our griddle, and due to the denseness of them, I opted to cook them on lower heat, and created a bit of an "oven" effect with a jelly roll pan.

I thought that was a bit of genius after having been on the road for the entire previous day. It worked great too.

Here they are flipped and finishing up. They were golden, fluffy, and oh so lovely to smell! The vanilla and the egg and the butter...! YUM!

Here is Savannah making hers the "house favorite" way... Butter, syrup and powdered sugar sprinkled on it. High energy breakfast to be sure!

They tasted AmAzInG! I have been known to destroy a perfectly good loaf of bread to repeat the breakfast. ALSO, I might add, it is much neater than individually dipping the bread and dripping it over to the griddle!

I am sure you have heard the adage "necessity is the mother of invention", and this certainly was the cause of several meals having been created in my kitchen. I have an older sister who has 7 children, and she is The Queen Supreme Improvisor when it comes to cooking and baking. She is single handedly responsible for most if not all of my kitchen tutoring. I dont want to limit the list to only cooking. It surely stretches to every aspect of my life. The list would include but not be limited to sewing, child rearing, laundry tips, craft projects, altering anything to fit anyone, clothes rotation in a large family, the best movies and tv shows to both watch and not, "how to" and "how not to do" nearly everything!

That being said, I have often thought of doing a few posts named "5 under $5"= Making a meal for five for under $5.00. In truth, the meals feed more like 7 or eight. We always have left overs, and have 7 in my family. Though Savannah eats like a bird, so maybe 6 1/2. It is more than possible though, and I have been doing it for years. I have about 7 staple El Cheapo meals that get rotated in. These meals are like a triple bonus. They are not only cheap, but they usually take about 20 minutes to prepare, and many are one pot meals. Factor in that they taste DeLiCiOuS... and you have more than enough incentive to try them!