The Bacon's Breakfast Battle

So how does Mr. Bacon and I spend a day off together with only one kid at home?  Baking in the kitchen of course!  Well not every day but we do enjoy cooking with each other.  Lately we've been discussing breakfast ideas for our busy mornings. We do stock our freezer with plenty of homemade pancakes and waffles made from my home made mix.  But we were wanting something with more protein in it and eggs always make a good breakfast.  We were looking to put egg bake into a easy, single serve breakfast.  So we started brainstorming some ideas and we came up with egg bake muffins.

Out came the ingredients!

Egg Bake muffins:
 Eggs
 bacon
 breakfast sausage
 sauteed mushrooms
 cheese
 hash browns
 bread
 salt & pepper
 milk

Lots of great fillings for our egg bake.  That was the easy part!  How to assemble them was where Mr. Bacon and I had differences.  His idea was to layer the ingredients in the muffin pan and then add the scrambled egg over the top. Not bad but I thought it might be better mixing all ingredients in a bowl and pouring them in the pan.  Who's idea was better? We'll find out. We figured we'd  try out different types of egg bake in each muffin cup.  So we got busy mixing.

I mixed up all my ingredients in my bowl, and Mr. Bacon got busy layering.  Each has one egg mixed with milk and seasonings, hash browns, mushrooms, bacon, sausage, and cheese.  Make sure before you put anything into your muffin pan, you grease it well first.

Here they are side by side. They don't look much different right now.

After seeing them side by side, Mr. Bacon did admit he thought mine might turn out better.  So we decided to mix up a few more of the mixed one's since Bacon Bit could eat three all by himself!   During my mixing, I was a bit distracted and I noticed I didn't add in the hash browns.  No problem, we decided it would still make a good experiment for us.  We filled the two middle cups full and decided to only fill the other one 2/3's full to see if that made any difference.

Then there was one lonely cup left.   I decided it might be good to try one like the egg bake recipe I have. I mixed up one egg, a splash of milk, seasonings, bacon, sausage, and about 1./3 of a slice of bread diced up.  Mixed it all together and dumped it in.  Now they are all ready for the oven.

Since we were only trialing out our egg bake muffins we only made up a small 6 cup muffin pan. And to help save on electricity we popped them in our toaster oven to bake them up.

  Bacon Bit thought it was just as fun to watch them get big as Mr. Bacon!  It took them about 25 minutes at 350* to turn golden brown and get fluffy.  Your oven may be a bit different, especially since these were cooked in a toaster oven, so watch them starting around 20 minutes.

They look pretty good!   I found the one's with the hash browns and the bread in them got fluffier than the one's without.

I have to say we were surprised they all popped out of the pan just fine with no sticking. Mr. Bacon was a bit worried that when he layered the hash browns on the bottom of his muffin pan they might stick.

 Here is the 2/3's full muffin with no hash browns in it.  This one we decided to put in the freezer to see how it would taste re-heated.  I'll let you know how that turned out in a a bit.
Wonder how do they look from the inside? Delicious!

Like any good food critiques, we sat down with half a muffin of each to taste test them.  Yes we have quite hot dates huh?!   The verdict is in and the mixed egg muffin tasted the best.  The layered one was good, but you could taste each layer and the hash browns at the bottom seemed too mushy without being mixed together with all the other ingredients.  The muffin with no hash browns wasn't bad, it tasted more like an omelet.  But we both preferred the hash browns added in.  As for the one with the bread, it was just too much bread in it for our taste.

The best thing with these, is you can specialize them to everyone's liking.  All the kids except Bacon Bit think we are poising them when we add mushrooms to anything. So we can leave them out when we make their muffins.  I can't wait to remake these this weekend and let the kids design their own eggs. 

As for that frozen egg muffin, it re-heated perfect!  About a minute in the microwave and you have egg bake for a busy morning.  We waited to try it until Bacon Jr. was home and let him have a say in how it tasted too and he can't wait to have them on busy school mornings. And he's excited to help make them next time too!  And what did Bacon Bit think of them?

Well he ended up eating almost three of them, just like predicted!  I'd say they were successful!

Thanksgiving leftovers in January

I love making extra food to save.  It's one mess and several meals.  This past Thanksgiving I made a turkey with all the fixings.  We had several leftover days and a few turkey sandwiches from it but there was still turkey leftover so I tossed it in my foodsaver and froze it for another day.  Yesterday I rummaged though the freezer and the pack of turkey crossed my path and it was my inspiration for dinner.  What to do with turkey? Make thanksgiving dinner again right.  However I hate making a lot of dishes, especially in this house.  We don't have a dishwasher so I try to limit how many dishes I use.  So how do you make Thanksgiving dinner in one pan, read on!

What you need for thanksgiving dinner in a pan:

Turkey- I used about 5 cups or 1.5lbs worth I'd guess. It's what I froze.
Potatoes- for making mashed potatoes
Green Beans- one frozen bag or 2 cups worth
Stuffing- use your own homemade or pre-made box
Gravy
Shredded cheese

First peel and dice your potatoes, I used 5 medium/large potatoes.  Put them in a pot of water on the stove to boil.  Many of you have made mashed potatoes for years, but there are a few cooks out there learning, I'll walk you though how I make mine.

 Cover them and place them on med heat. Let them boil for about 10-15 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.  While those are boiling it's a great time to make up the gravy.

Take about 1.5 cups of chicken broth and place them in a skillet.  Turn it on and let it come to a boil.

In a 2 cup measuring cup place 3/4 cups of water and 1/4 cup flour and mix well.  Pour that into your boiling broth very carefully. 

 

Stir constantly with a whisk until thickened.  If it's too thick, don't worry just add a bit more water until you get gravy consistency.  Oh and don't forget to add some salt & pepper to it too! About 1/4 tsp of each is what I add.  

 

Now that the gravy is ready to go, it's time to mash the potatoes.  Drain the potatoes and place them back in the kettle.  

I add in about 1/2 cup milk, 1/3 cup of plain Greek yogurt or sour cream depending on what I have on hand, 2-3 tbsp butter and 1/4 tsp salt.  Mash them up with a potato masher or mixer.  It's that easy!

Now it time to assemble our dinner.  In a 9x13 greased pan, place your stuffing. I used a box mix I had on hand.  I also added the 2 cups of water the box called for.

Now take your turkey and lay it on top of the stuffing. I cut mine into smaller pieces before laying it on top.  If you don't have leftover turkey, no problem. Cooked chicken works for this as well, use about 1-1.5lbs of chicken for the recipe.

Next layer is green beans. I tossed mine on frozen.  Then pour your gravy over the beans.

 

Last step is take the mashed potatoes and spread them over the top of it all.  I tossed a handful of shredded cheese on top too because everything is better with a little cheese right?! 

 Now its time for the oven.  Bake at 350 degrees for an hour.  It's that easy.  This would also be a great way to use up those thanksgiving leftover when you have them too.  You could even prepare this ahead of time in a freezer safe pan and place heavy duty tin foil over it and toss it into the freezer for another day.  That's great for when you are just sick of eating leftovers from turkey day but don't want to waste them!  

After it's hour in the oven it's ready for the table!  Only thing missing from this Thanksgiving in January is the biscuits, cranberry sauce and extended family members!

Lots of new challenges, let chat over a drink

It's been a whirlwind with moving a family of 6 to a new town, new schools and starting new jobs, but we are finally settling in! Temporary anyway.  We have stumbled upon many challenges in our new town that has strained our budget a bit, but thankfully we are figuring it out and I figured it was time to start to share my challenges with my readers.  Thank you to all my loyal readers who keep messaging me saying they can't wait for me to come back and welcome to all my new readers!

Where to start off a new post?  How about with a drink?

 

Ahhh, nothing like a rich chocolate hot drink on a cold day.  And even better with frosty the snowman melting in it!  A few weeks ago I stopped at one of my favorite coffee shops because they had a great deal going on.  Ok a confession, I love Caribou Coffee's turtle mocha's.  I rarely get them because well at almost $5 a drink, I have better places to go with that money. But they were offering a buy one drink, get a second for $.20!  It was too good of a deal to pass up.  And I was even feeling in the giving mood so I got 2 sets of their special and decided to surprise Mr. Bacon and Brother Bacon with a morning break at their work.  With 4 turtle mocha's I set off.  Sometimes there are other's helping at the work site and I'd figure I'd come prepared with an extra drink to hand out, however that day it was just the 2 of them.  I dropped off their coffee and had a dilemma on my hands, there was no way I could handle the caffeine in 2 big cups of coffee like that.  I hate the though of dumping a treat like that so I did what any budget saving person would do, freeze it!

It was a great time to try out the cool ice cube tray Sister Bacon bought me for Christmas too. Coffee bean ice cubes! Perfect for freezing my coffee for my iced drinks. 

In went the turtle mocha and out came cute coffee bean shaped cubes!

 I tossed a few in a mug, and then added some hot water and a packet of hot cocoa mix I got in a gift basket for Christmas also. 

Mixed it all up but it was still missing something.  Melting frosty the snowman!  Nothing better than a scoop of whipped cream in your hot chocolate.  A few days before I had some left over whipped cream from a recipe. No wasting it here, (and good thing I got to it before the kids because they'd eat it by out of the bowl!) so I took out a mini cupcake pan and added a few spoonfuls to each spot.

 

And had some fun decorating them, a few with sprinkles, others with some mini chocolate chip eyes and orange sprinkle nose.  Then they went into the freeze. I popped one out and tossed it in my drink to melt away.  Delicious!  The Bacon kids love these in their hot chocolate too along with a few marshmallows!

So now that I have my warm drink, on to those challenges.  A few things we are figuring out is managing in a house half the size we used to have along with a much smaller kitchen and fridge.  This has put a challenge on how much we can keep on stock in our pantry and fridge. We are finding that we are shopping for 1 week only at a time now because there just isn't much room to fill up the fridge.

Where to shop is another challenge, Walmart here is not so great.  I have to say there are good Walmart stores out there, we were spoiled where we used to shop.  This one has many empty shelves and the produce is less than desirable.  So we are exploring other stores.  Thankfully I have found a great bread store!  I can get healthy whole wheat bread for $1-$1.25 a loaf.  So I stock up the freezer with it.  We'll keep exploring around town and working on our budget now that we shop weekly.

We're also working on adjusting to a 2 parent full time job family and we have also added to our family! A month before we moved we had a  kitty adopt our house, she was a stray and we decided to give her a home and welcomed Meow Bacon to our family.  And Brother Bacon's dog had a litter of puppies who needed a new home so we welcomed Woof Bacon to our family just last week.  It's a crazy new life and so many things have changed and challenged us the past 3 months but we continue on our path to save money!  I hope you all stick around, I will be having more recipes to come and I'm hoping to update the very popular and over a year old post  on how we budget our grocery money soon too.

 

Did the bacon just move?

What? Bacon move? No I'm sure I cooked it all the way.

No not my breakfast, the Bacon family?

Yes it's true we are moving! Three hours north!  It's been a busy long process and we can't wait to be all settled in. It will be a new adventure with new stores to shop at with all new prices to fit into our budget. Also Ma Bacon got a job. I know many who visit here say I can make all the homemade goodies because I don't work much.  Well We'll see how that works with Ma Bacon taking on a new roll of full time worker and mama!  Please stick around. I promise more posts to come when we are all settled in and have internet again! Thanks again to all they readers- old and new who keep visiting my blog!  I love hearing though comments and emails how helpful it's been. 

I will never buy ice cream again!

Guess what's been sitting in my Amazon shopping cart for MONTHS? Nope it's not my sanity! HA, give up?  I've been drooling over an ice cream maker.  In fact a Cuisinart ice cream maker. I try to rationalize how it would make sense to actually buy it. I'm not one for machines that only do one thing. Also we have an electric ice cream maker sitting in a box in our garage. But it's kind of a pain to use.   I also debated about the kitchenAid ice cream maker since I already have the mixer and Sister Bacon raves about hers.  Oh the decisions.  One thing I knew for sure is that I would love to make more homemade ice cream. If you've never had it you are missing out. There is nothing better than that first dip of silky soft ice cream. I also like I can control what goes in it.

So the ice cream maker debate continued on, should I get it? Should I wait for Christmas or a birthday present? Should I just dig out the one from the garage and struggle to make it more often with the machine we have? Oh the decisions!  Many days I just ignore it sitting in my amazon cart.  That was until the one day I stopped by a garage sale this summer.  And guess what was staring at me, yes my ice cream machine. And it was BRAND NEW in the box for $8!  Shocked to say the least I snatched that box and wouldn't let go.  I'm pretty sure there would have been a fight if anyone even came near me to ask what was in the box!  For $8 this thing was coming home with me and I have to say I love it.  I'm glad I waited to get a good deal on it but if I knew how easy it would be to make homemade ice cream I would have splurged sooner and bought one!

So if you are like me and have been wondering if you should get one or not, don't hold back!  You won't be disappointed at all. 

Since it was new it still have all the paper work with it and the kids and I thumbed though all the recipes too. We decided our first try at it was going to be just basic vanilla with some extras to add in. 

Here is the basic Vanilla recipe my machine calls for. This recipe will work with any ice cream maker that has a 1.5 qt bowl capacity.

Vanilla ice cream
1 cup cold whole milk
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups heavy cream
1-2 teaspoons vanilla to taste

that's it! How awesome is 4 ingredient ice cream? You can substitute lower fat's in this recipe. This first time we made it we used half and half instead of heavy cream and skim milk instead of whole.  I also have decreased my sugar to 1/2 cup instead and the kids (or Mr. Bacon for that matter) have noticed a difference.

Mix the milk and sugar in a large bowl until the sugar is dissolved, then add in the cream and vanilla. Stir until everything is mixed well.  Pour the liquid into your ice cream bowl, add what every parts your machine says and turn the thing on!  Can you see the kids had a blast watching it go around!

Even Bacon Bit needed to take a look!

Around and around it goes!  It can be a bit noisy but no more so than the kids!  The process takes about 25- 30 minutes to get ice cream.  While it was mixing we decided to crush up a pack of m&m's to mix into the ice cream. We added about 3/4 cup of them during the last 5 minutes of making ice cream.  

Let me tell you it was AMAZING! So much the kids and I ate it all for dessert that night! Yes we did save a small bowl for Mr. Bacon too.  But the next day we decided we should make a second batch just to make sure it still tasted good. Right? Ok so use what ever excuse you want, once you have homemade ice cream you'll want it every day!

This time while it was mixing up we decided to chop up some Reese's peanut butter cups. 

 

 Again about 3/4 of a cup full.  And add them during the last 5 minutes of mixing the ice cream.

Mixing, mixing, mixing... done!

Delicious homemade ice cream. Yes this tasted just like a DQ blizzard only better! We really do enjoy our ice cream maker, my only regret was not getting it sooner!

Woof Woof! Bacon Bit's Birthday

Someone told Bacon Bit he could grow up. I'm not sure who but didn't he read the book on being the youngest baby? He can't grow up so fast!  This past weekend Bacon Bit turned 2. Hard to believe my baby is a toddler and running all over.  Thankfully the terrible two's haven't set in yet.  Although I think I remember the three's being worse than two with the other kids.  Regardless if he followed my directions or not on growing up, we had yet another birthday to plan and that includes another cake! 

Lately Bacon Bit's interests have changes like our weather here, one day it's Bob the Builder, the next it's Diego.  Thankfully one thing has stayed the same, his love for his puppy!  This is Puppy, a well loved blankie I made him before he was born. So well loved I need to repair it again. But puppy goes everywhere with him.  So I thought that would be my inspiration for his birthday cake. After all this is probably the last one I get to pick out, next year he'll be telling me what cake he would like to make.  I love making the kids birthday cakes. Not only is it cheaper, it's fun to watch how their interests change over the year with what they want.  So off I went to find ideas on puppy cakes.

I found some inspiration on the Internet for some puppy cupcakes.  A quick trip though the pantry and then off to the store to find some supplies that would work and we were all set to go!  Here is what you need to make these cute puppies yourself:

Cupcakes- homemade recipe or from a box, just bake them up!

Then I took some of these vanilla and chocolate cookies for the face. Twist them apart and use a knife to scrap off the cream filling. Yes the kids loved that I was doing this. They happily volunteered to eat the cookie insides! 

 Next you need to dig out some of these candy pieces for the eyes and nose.  I used yellow for eyes and brown noses. These are Reses' pieces because I had them laying around. M&M or any other candies would work too.  If you don't have candies just frosting works too. 

 Then I mixed up a very small batch of black frosting and put in in a baggie with a piping tip. 

  Now it's time to assemble the cookies.  First take your cream-less cookies and break about a third of the black cookies off to make the ears.  Keep the vanilla one's whole as this will be for puppy's face.

 

 Next is all about placement. Frost your cupcake. I tinted my frosting brown for this, but pink puppies would be cute too!  Then place the vanilla cookie on the bottom of the frosted cupcake. Add the eyes and use frosting to secure on the nose.  then I added the ears to the top.  Finally I took my black frosting to make eyes and a mouth. There you have it! Aren't they just cute!

  WOOF WOOF WOOF!  A whole bunch of puppies! 

 

 Add a few candles for the birthday boy and we are set!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BACON BIT!