At Home My Way

Good Monday morning! I decided to go ahead and start the week off on the right foot with a menu plan.  This week, I am trying to plan meals using what I have on hand, and to try NOT to waste food by eating and re-serving leftovers.  I have a pretty well stocked pantry and freezer though, so I should be good to go for most of these meals. Here's my meal plan for December 10, 2012 through December 16, 2012. Meal Plan (12/10/12 through 12/16/12) Breakfasts : Banana Bread Baked Oatmeal using overripe bananas, sliced, and stashed in my freezer.  (I baked these this morning in a super sized muffin tin, no papers - just sprayed the tin with cooking spray.  This way I can freeze leftovers if I get tired of having this, for eating another day.) Chocolate Granola - I am trying a recipe this week from one of my favorite blogs - Lynn's Kitchen Adventures .  ( I'm thinking this may remind me a little of chocolate krispie cereal, so I plan on eating it...

I shared yesterday that in the last couple of weeks I've been in a cooking funk.  Well... really I guess it was a non-cooking funk ha.. since I haven't been doing much cooking. My pantry was slim pickings last week and yet I was in the mood to cook something.  I also needed something for my breakfasts and remembered this recipe for Cinnamon Sugar Quick Bread. This is a frugal, pantry cooking recipe.  It uses ingredients I normally keep in my pantry.  It does call for buttermilk which I almost NEVER buy unless I'm making ranch dressing.  But, that's no problem.  Just measure the milk and add a spoonful of lemon juice or vinegar.  Let it sit a few minutes and it works fine in this recipe.  I don't actually measure the lemon juice.   My husband also loves this recipe.  He's not much of a sweet eater but if we have a loaf of Cinnamon Sugar Quick Bread on the counter, then he will be slicing into it.  It reminds me of zucchini ...

Sorry I haven't posted in so LONG... I've been in a cooking funk lately and nothing new or wonderful has been coming out of my kitchen.  Just a little of the same old - same old.  Even frozen pizza - eeeek!!!!   This evening I had the oven on while I was baking oven fries and I decided to stick something yummy and ooey gooey in the oven while I had it all heated up.  I'm not exactly sure why I decided to heat up my oven on one of the only December evenings that I ever remember in Missouri with the temperature outside at over 75 degrees, but I did.  It was SO worth it! I made a favorite brownie recipe.  I love really good, chewy and dense brownies.  Yes the Black Bean Brownie was an option, but I wanted to make a more traditional brownie.   Several months ago I tried a recipe I found for brownies that taste just like the box kind.  You know... with the little shiny, paper thin top that almost lifts off the brownie.  Yep!  ...

  Pumpkin-Praline Baked Oatmeal       This morning was SO cool and crisp and the sun was shining brightly!  It was so hard to dig myself out of my comfy covers, that's for sure.      The cool morning sparked a craving for anything pumpkin, so I mixed this up before getting in the shower.  It was ready to come out of the oven after I was freshly showered, hair straightened and dressed for work.  How perfect was that!   I cannot convey to you how wonderful this smelled!    I love anything pumpkin! I decided to put a praline topping on my pumpkin baked oatmeal, similar to the praline topping you sometimes put on sweet potato casserole and it was scrumptious.  I know that your family is going to love this! It is also special enough for company or taking to a goody day at work.  The spicy pumpkin and sweet and crunchy pecans make for a perfect October breakfast!   ...

We haven't had many snacks in our house since both of our girls are never there.  It seems like when I have something, it lasts forever so the assortment of things to eat at my house are limited.  Sunday I wanted to make something sweet.  I had apples but was too lazy to make a crust or peel apples.  Pitiful, I know.  I also didn't want to buy any ingredients.  I remembered I had a delicious recipe for Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cake in a little cookbook called  Comfort Foods - Beta Sigma Phi .  It has wonderful recipes in it!  And a book called "Comfort Foods" would be MY kind of cookbook, that's for sure. This cake is heavy - more like a zucchini cake or carrot cake.  It's also moist and lightly chocolatey.  I love it!  You all know how much I love Chocolate Chip Baked Oatmeal and this cake has similar flavors but with more of a dessert feel to it.  Its also something you can make with ingredients fro...

Sunday mornings usually start with something special for breakfast at our house.  It was cool and crisp Sunday morning and I managed to drag myself out of bed BEFORE my husband so I actually had the kitchen to myself ha-ha.  I started some bacon knowing that would probably bring him stumbling into the kitchen pretty quickly. I also discovered I didn't have any flour, so that meant no biscuits, pancakes, muffins...  Hmmm... we couldn't have just bacon and bread...  no way!  BUT then..... I remembered that I had made some homemade pancake mix the last time I made pancakes. Boing!  Boy, was I glad I did that!  (I had just mixed up the dry ingredients and added them to a canning jar. I wrote the additional wet ingredients I needed for the recipe on a piece of paper and stuck it with some tape on the jar.)  Hurray, we were having pancakes after all!  Making homemade pancake mix saved lots of steps....

  Our office has been super crazy these days.  Crazy busy and super understaffed.   Who says the economy isn't booming??  At least in my neck of the woods.   Since we have all been working so hard and yet staying "nice" to each other LOL, I decided to treat everyone with a couple of pans of homemade cinnamon rolls.  This picture is the little pan I made for us at home.  Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the finished big pans!   They're yummy and not nearly as much work as these directions appear.  I usually make the dough in the bread machine so the only "work" is rolling them out, cutting them, and putting them in the pan.   Here's how I make Homemade Cinnamon Rolls AT HOME MY WAY:   Homemade Cinnamon Rolls     (Bread Machine instructions for making the dough) 1 1/3 cup very warm water (hot but no hurt) 1 packet of yeast (or 2 teaspoons) 1/4 cup white sugar 1/4 cup oil 1 egg (sl...