Dinner : Potatoes and Cream of Mushroom Soup

This can easily be turned into a full meal in one pan. My mom used to always serve it with some pork chops cooked on top of it. I'm not a big fan of pork in general but it would certainly be good with some chicken. However, when I made these I wasn't really in the mood for anything but the potatoes so I thought I would try them out relatively plain.

I was surprised at how few potatoes I needed to use also. I think next time I would add more cream of mushroom soup as well, but I'll chalk that up to the fact that this is the first time I have ever made this myself.

Ingredients:
* 5 baking size potatoes
* 1 or 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup

Directions:
Heat the oven to 375 degrees F. I used a relatively small and square casserole dish that has a lid, but any oven safe container would be good. If you are putting meat on top this will help keep the potatoes from getting too crisp on top. The lid helped keep the potatoes nice and soft, but some aluminum foil would work just as well. Be sure to spray whatever you use with some olive oil or grease it somehow.

I wanted to make as little work as possible for myself so all I did was scrub the potatoes. I did not peel them. You could if you're so inclined. If you have a mandolin, it will make slicing the potatoes very quick. It also made everything nice and uniform.

If you do have a mandolin, be very aware of where your fingers are! If you don't have a mandolin, just cut the potatoes into thin slices. They can be as thick or as thin as you would like.

Then in a large bowl carefully mix the potatoes with the cream of mushroom soup. Once it's well mixed, pour the potato mixture into the cooking dish. Cook for about 45-60 minutes covered. It will be done when the potatoes feel soft to a fork all the way through.

Cookies: Soft Pumpkin Cookies

I always have leftover pumpkin when I make Pumpkin French Toast. I hate letting it go to waste so I tend to make cookies. I use Nestle's Old-Fashion Soft Pumpkin Cookies recipe as the basis, but I end up with just a touch extra pumpkin leftover and once again, I don't want to waste it. So here is my alteration of that recipe.

Ingredients:
* 1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick)
* 1 1/2 cup brown sugar
* 1 1/4 cup canned pumpkin puree (this will use up the rest of the can)
* 1 egg
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 2 3/4 cup flour
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon baking powder
* 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions:
Heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Ready your cookie sheets. Mix all the ingredients above, one at a time until each is well blended into the others. I made nice average size cookies and was able to fit ten per cookie sheet, but they don't spread much so you could easily make large cookies and space less per cookie sheet without much worry. Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes.

While they are baking you can mix up the glaze.

Glaze ingredients:
* 2 cups powdered sugar
* 3 tablespoons milk (I used 1%)
* 1 tablespoon melted butter (unsalted)
* 1 teaspoon vanilla

Glaze directions:
Mix everything together with a whisk until well blended. If you need to make it runnier try adding extra milk little dribbles at a time. This combination worked well and turned it into this consistency.


When your cookies are finished baking allow them to cool on the pans for about 2 minutes.

Instead of moving the cookies to wire sheets, I place wax paper down on clean counters. It certainly helps make less of a mess to clean up after icing the cookies. When I iced them, I just took a spoon and added some to each cookie until all the icing was used up evenly amongst the cookies.


The original recipe says to wait until the cookies are cooled but I'm impatient and wanted to eat these! I waited about 15 minutes after they were done in the oven before frosting them. They still turned out great. They turned out so soft and cake-like. I really love cookies with a nice soft texture.

Breakfast : Pumpkin French Toast

Once again, this may be breakfast fare but we had it for dinner. I love breakfast food so I subject my family to lots of "breakfast for dinner" meals. They never seem to mind.

The funny thing about this recipe is that it's actually from an advertisement. GLAD had a several page section with multiple "make ahead meal" recipes at the back of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food Magazine in September 2006. This was one of those recipes. I seem to use this issue often. I also don't make this recipe entirely as stated in the ad. I don't let it soak overnight as suggested because once I smell it, I'm too anxious to dig in. So this is how I make it.

As an aside - I really love pumpkin.

Ingredients:
* 12 slices of bread
* 1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree (be sure to use 100% pumpkin)
* 1/2 cup milk (I used 1% as usual)
* 4 eggs
* 1/4 brown sugar
* 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1 teaspoon ground ginger
* 1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:
Heat the oven to 250 degrees F and ready one cookie sheet. As you cook each slice you'll want to place it in the oven on a cookie sheet to keep everything warm until it's all done.

I used my electric griddle for this and sprayed it with olive oil, but any large pan on your stovetop would work as well as long as you grease it a bit before cooking. While the griddle was warming I mixed all the ingredients together except the bread. Using some tongs I placed one slice of bread in the mixture at a time and flipped it over to make sure it was entirely covered everywhere. Then I placed it on the griddle.

It only takes a few minutes on each side. Just ensure that they have browned a bit without looking overdone or burnt.

Once again, as each slice is ready place it on a cookie sheet and place the cookie sheet in your warm oven.

We served this with the fake maple syrup. I've never been a fan of real maple syrup as I think it's too strong, but if you enjoy the real thing it's a really great combination. One of the few syrup covered things that I don't grab for the fruit flavored syrup.

Between the four of us, we devoured all twelve slices. I'm sure if you have extra it would save well in the freezer once cooled and then you could reheat it in the toaster.

Breakfast : Bacon, Egg and Cheese Strata

While it might be breakfast food, we ate it for dinner one night. It would certainly make a good brunch dish as well.

We had bread that was starting to stale and I wanted to use it up before it went bad and some bacon sounded really tasty.

Ingredients:
* 6 slices of bread
* 6 to 7 eggs
* 3 1/2 cups milk
* 1 pound of shredded cheddar
* 8 slices of bacon

Directions:
Heat the oven to 375 degrees F. First I stacked all the slices of bread and cut them in thirds lengthwise and crosswise.
I spread them across the bottom of a 9 x 13 casserole dish. Be sure to grease it up spray with olive oil first.

We buy frozen precooked bacon, but it's never quite crispy enough for me. I fried it up first on our skillet it, patted it with paper towels to get rid of excess grease, then crumbled it into nice small pieces after it was cool.

While the bacon was cooling I mixed up the eggs and milk. After all the yolks were broken and the eggs were well blended with the milk I dumped in the cheese and bacon and gave it a good mix so everything had been at least coated with the egg mixture.

Then I poured it all on top of the bread cubes. The cheese of course settles on top of the eggs, the bacon pieces mostly settle on top as well.
Bake this until the cheese starts to turn brown. But be careful, it would be very easy to overcook the eggs and you want them to come out nice and fluffy. I cooked this for about 20-25 minutes. Watch it very carefully at the end. If you think it's ready and it wiggles too much like jello then you'll want to cook it a bit longer. It should look like a solid mass when you're moving it around (if that makes sense).

We all thoroughly enjoyed this and my boyfriend is already begging me to make it again!