Leftovers for Breakfast

I think I've mentioned here before that I don't often make breakfast. If I wake up early enough that breakfast is warranted, I either get a latte or eat whatever's left in the fridge from the past few nights. For example, this morning I ate a slice of cold pizza! And I know I mentioned eating the leftover yaki onigiri cold for breakfast. I'll also eat stir-fries, salads, baked goods--whatever is there and doesn't have to be prepared beyond maybe heating up for a minute or two.

Anyway, after a super late night on Saturday (Mike and I didn't get home until 4am after Cabaret and it was soooo amazing and Amanda Palmer puts on a damn good show and I had a drink with absinthe in it and it turns out I don't like absinthe), we slept late and I was in the mood for a real breakfast. Enter the leftovers from the night before--I was really glad, in the morning, that I'd been too rushed and afraid to make the Chicken Creole with an entire cut-up chicken, as per Becky's recipe. Because we ate all the chicken that I cooked in it, we had a whole bunch of the sauce left over, and I had a vision for that sauce.

Creole-Poached Eggs.

With well-buttered rye toast from my favorite bakery.

The recipe for this is basically "make Chicken Creole, have leftover sauce, crack some eggs into it and simmer until the eggs are cooked to your liking." It took maybe 15 minutes to whip up and we had a wonderful Sunday breakfast. At 1pm. And as far as I'm concerned, that's still breakfast because I had to drag Mike out of bed for it. (Hey, it was really only around 8 hours of sleep.)

This has completely cemented in my mind the importance of making big one-pot meals. You can poach eggs in the leftovers. I intend to try to find something else that I can do this with soon, because runny yolks mixed with vegetable-y sauce on delicious bread is possibly the best way to have breakfast, ever. And that huge pile of food is almost completely vegetables! It's even healthy!

Okay, so I'm super excited remembering this and now I'm sad that I don't have anything to poach eggs in for dinner. (And I really want to make huevos rancheros soon!) What does everyone else here eat their eggs with?

Pineapple and Red Onion Simmer Sauce, by ME!

I'm excited! I invented this all by myself. It started as a "oh no, what should I do with this chicken" that turned into one dish, and after eating that one I decided I wanted to invent something similar but not quite as cloyingly sweet. It came out really well, so I'm posting the recipe! However. Since I was making this up as I went along, I don't have exact amounts for anything--I just poured in whatever seemed like a good amount and added more later as it developed. I'm going to estimate the amounts that I used (I tried to do this as I was cooking so I could post it), but if it seems like a lot, use less and add more as you feel like it. And if you add the amount that I said and taste it and think it needs more, by all means, add however much you want!

RECIPE: Pineapple and Red Onion Simmer Sauce (for chicken or pork)

Ingredients:

-1 can pineapple (I used chopped so I could decide myself how crushed it was; you can use crushed if you want, and I'm sure it would still be delicious if you left it in chunks)

-1 medium red onion

-2 tbsp soy sauce

-1 tsp sriracha chili sauce ("rooster sauce")

-3 tbsp pineapple preserves (if you can't find these, you could either add another flavor with different preserves or just add some sweetener--it balances the salty and spicy flavors from the previous two ingredients)

-ginger, to taste (more ginger than the other things)

-a large pinch of cumin

-a dash or two of paprika

-2-3 chicken breasts or pork chops (probably 3-4 pork chops? they're smaller), cubed

Instructions:

1. Slice the onion into discs and cut each disc in half so you have half-circles of onion. This way, you'll have strips of onion in the sauce. Yay.

2. Pour the can of pineapple into a medium saucepan. If you want to crush it, use a potato masher to crush it to your desired amount of crushed. Add the onions. Put the pan over medium heat and simmer until the onion softens.

3. Add the soy sauce, sriracha sauce, and spices. Stir to incorporate. Continue to simmer until the onion is completely limp and the liquid has reduced considerably.

4. While that's simmering, chop your chicken or pork and toss it into a large frying pan. Brown lightly.

5. Once the chicken/pork is cooked through, add your sauce. Allow to simmer, infusing the meat with flavor, for 5-10 minutes. If all the liquid simmers off, stop cooking! You don't want to dry out the meat.

6. Serve over brown rice and enjoy!

Step 2: pineapples and onions, simmering away.

Step 3: this is the color that everything was. I didn't notice until now how much the liquid had reduced; I'm so used to reducing things that thicken that I was getting frustrated with it. It worked well, though!

Step 5: I used two pretty large chicken breasts and could easily have used another with the amount of sauce that I had.

Ta-daa! It really was excellent with the brown rice--I know it takes twice as long to cook, but usually if you're cooking a full meal and start the rice at the beginning, it'll be done right around when the rest of your food is done (or way sooner! luckily it retains heat well). Taking the health benefits into consideration (along with the taste), it's definitely worth using brown over white!

The meal that this was based on was mostly made of the pineapple preserves--I used about half a jar, mixed with some pineapple juice and soy sauce (and the rest of the stuff listed up there). It was quite good--tasted a lot like sweet and sour sauce that you'd get at a Chinese restaurant, but better. It had the same sticky-sweet feel to it, though, and that made me want to make a healthier version. If you want to reproduce the original one, use pineapple preserves instead of canned pineapple, dilute it with pineapple juice, and do everything I did here except the simmering it part. Oh, and leave out the onions! I didn't have an onion to put in it, even though I really wanted one. (So you don't have to leave out the onions. Actually, though, if you include the onions, you'll probably want to simmer it for a bit to soften them.)

This version didn't taste anything like sweet and sour sauce. It tasted like fruit and chicken, with a little bit of bite to it. The flavors mixed incredibly well and nothing was too overpowering. The sweetness actually made the leftovers an excellent breakfast--I normally eat leftovers for breakfast, but I felt slightly less weird about it this time since it tasted like something normal people would eat for breakfast. So this is an anytime meal!

And on a really exciting note, I found a setting on my camera that takes much less blurry pictures! So you may notice that I'm less frustrated with blurry pictures in the future. These ones all came out nicely, YAY!

I'll be back on Friday...with THE MOST EXCITING POST OF ALL TIME. I'm serious. (It will probably include people!)

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

I promised a post today, didn't I? Was I specific? I hope I wasn't specific. I intended to post my new favorite summer food (from Poor Girl Gourmet), but...well, last week, I went to water my tomatoes around 2 in the morning and the faucet for the hose broke and I couldn't turn it off, so we ended up having to turn the water in my side of the house off completely in order to avoid having a constantly-running hose until the plumber came. This happened...Friday or Saturday night (well, Saturday or Sunday morning). I ran away to Mike's house because not being able to use the bathroom near my room is kind of disconcerting when I wake up in the middle of the night and, well, forget that I can't use that bathroom. I returned to my house yesterday to sit around and wait for the plumber to come (he was supposed to come yesterday). He never showed up. I called and left a message asking if he could come today and for some reason I thought he was going to, but he didn't. So I wasted two days sitting around waiting for a plumber (and canceled plans with a friend I haven't seen in ages) and promptly ran away to Mike's house again, where I don't have to worry about whether or not there is water, because there is water.

However. I left my cookbook at home. Which means I can't share the recipe I planned to share, so you're getting pancakes that I forgot I had pictures of.

See? Pancakes!

These are Strawberry-Almond-Chocolate Chip pancakes. I adapted them from my Banana pancakes that I posted a long time ago. Strawberries mix in differently (and they're much more liquid), so you get a much denser pancake here--you could probably add a little bit more flour if you want them fluffy, but despite my usual dislike for dense pancakes, these were quite delicious. The recipe is just going to be for strawberry pancakes, though, because I honestly have no idea how many chocolate chips were added. Lots, I'm guessing--I always just pour them in until it looks like a good amount. Mike sprinkled slivered almonds on top of the pancakes after I poured them into the pan--they got slightly toasted and added a great texture to our breakfast!

RECIPE: Strawberry Pancakes

Ingredients:

-1 cup flour

-4 tsp sugar

-2 tsp baking powder

-dash of salt

-1 large egg

-1/2-1 cup milk (less for fluffier pancakes, more for denser)

-2 tsp almond extract

-2 tbsp vegetable oil (or melted butter)

-1 pint strawberries

-Chocolate chips (optional)

-Slivered almonds (optional)

-Butter (for the pan)

-Maple syrup

Instructions:

1. Mix dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda and salt) in a small bowl.

2. Mash the strawberries in a large bowl until they are liquidy, but with plenty of strawberry pieces remaining.

3. Add the egg. Mash it in with the strawberries.

4. Add 1/2 cup milk, almond extract and vegetable oil/melted butter to the strawberry and egg mixture. Stir.

5. Add the flour mixture to the strawberry mixture. If you want to add chocolate chips, this would be the time to do it. Stir until combined. Don't over-stir, a few clumps of flour are okay.

6. Add more milk, stirring, until the batter reaches your preferred consistency. The more liquid your batter is, the denser your pancakes will be.

7. Cook pancakes in a well-buttered frying pan over medium heat. (I use a 1/4 cup measure to pour the right amount of batter into the pan.) If you want to add slivered almonds, sprinkle them on top of the pancake as soon as you pour it into the pan. Flip when the sides look solid and the bubbles on the top are beginning to pop.

8. Transfer cooked pancakes to a plate and cover with a clean dishtowel to retain heat. Continue repeating steps 7 and 8 until all the batter has turned into pancakes.

9. Top with real maple syrup and enjoy!

If you have an absurdly good memory and have been reading my blog since February, you may notice I basically copied and pasted and changed a few things. But, I mean, it's basically the same recipe--just a different way to enjoy it! (And it's 11:30 and I'm lazy.) But really, I do love versatile recipes, and I feel like you could adapt this to fit a lot of different fruits (right now I would really love some nectarine pancakes!)

I don't know when I'll be back home with my cookbook (my staying there hinges on the water getting fixed) but I'll be back here, at least, on Tuesday. And I'm warning you in advance--you should all get REALLY EXCITED for next Friday's post. It's gonna be exciting. I can't wait :D

Wheatberries for Breakfast!

I don't post a lot of breakfasts on here. A long time ago, I posted a recipe for banana pancakes that I just titled "Breakfast." This isn't because I was too lame to come up with a good title, honestly (not that I really put much thought into them in the first place)--it's because I never really expected to have another breakfast to post. I don't really eat breakfast; I like to sleep late and I'm not usually hungry when I wake up, so I don't usually feel like getting up and cooking up a storm. It does happen, but rarely. Add to this that I'm not a huge fan of most quick breakfast foods--I hate cereal, toast is boring, I don't drink coffee, I dislike the texture of oatmeal and its relatives. (Cereal's the worst--for some reason, if I'm not hungry or only a little hungry and I eat a bowl of cereal, I end up feeling much more hungry afterward, as if it just reminded me that there's space in my stomach for food.)

However. I have recently discovered a breakfast that is delicious, filling, healthy, and really really easy to throw together if you plan ahead. As you may have guessed from the title, it involves wheatberries. As I said in my previous post, wheatberries, once cooked, last about a week when refrigerated--this means that all the planning ahead that is required is to boil up a bunch of wheatberries over the weekend and you've got breakfast all week! So, here you go, and it really could not be any easier:

RECIPE: Wheatberry Breakfast

Ingredients:

-about 1/2 to 3/4 cups cooked wheatberries

-2 or 3 scoops of all-natural chunky peanut butter (I use Teddy brand and love it. As for the chunky, I hate chunky peanut butter in any other form, but the crunch is great in this.)

-honey, probably about a tablespoon

Instructions:

1. Get out a cereal bowl. Pour the wheatberries into it. Add the peanut butter and drizzle the honey on top. Mix.

I'd just opened this jar of peanut butter--it's way easier to mix when it hasn't been refrigerated yet, but I must say I prefer cold peanut butter.

Mixed!

Okay, how easy is this? You get protein from the peanut butter, fiber from the wheatberries. The honey keeps the peanut butter from being too sticky and is super tasty. The chunks in the peanut butter are excellent with the texture of the wheatberries. And I bet you could throw some fruit in there if you wanted, too! Apples or bananas would probably be delicious.

What do you guys eat for breakfast? Do you throw something together quickly or cook an actual meal in the morning? Or do you rush out the door and stop for coffee and a breakfast sandwich on your way to work? (I must admit, that's how I usually get by when I have to be somewhere in the morning.)

Have a great weekend, everyone! I'll be back with another update early next week :)

Breakfast

I woke up today to a text message from my mom saying "today would be a good day for banana pancakes and a blog post." At this point I've got five posts worth of pictures saved up, but since it's midterms (and, since I'm taking that half-semester class, one final) time is pretty cramped and I'm just going to share today's breakfast and hopefully have time soon to get the rest of those up.

On the plus side (well, plus side for blogging), the second half-semester class I was going to take was canceled, which means I'll have lots of free time for the rest of the semester. Woo!

BANANA PANCAKES--Recipe!

(adapted from Recipezaar)

Ingredients:

-1 cup flour

-4 tsp sugar

-2 tsp baking powder

-dash of salt

-1 large egg

-1/2-1 cup milk (less for fluffier pancakes, more for denser)

-2 tsp almond extract

-2 tbsp vegetable oil (or melted butter)

-2 large overripe bananas

-Butter (for the pan)

-Maple syrup (because they're pancakes)

Instructions:

1. Mix dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda and salt) in a small bowl. (Really--you only have a little over a cup of stuff here. You don't need a huge bowl for it.)

2. Mash the bananas in a large bowl until they are mostly liquidy, but with a good amount of banana-chunks left.

3. Add the egg. Mash it in with the bananas. (You could probably toss it in when you're mashing the bananas in the first place, now that I think of it.) It's not really necessary to have the egg "slightly beaten" when you add it. I don't know why people always say to do this.

4. Add 1/2 cup milk, almond extract and vegetable oil/melted butter to the banana and egg mixture. Stir.

5. Add the flour mixture to the banana mixture. Stir until combined. Don't over-stir, a few clumps of flour are okay.

6. Add more milk, stirring, until the batter reaches your preferred consistency. I probably added another quarter cup after the half. The more liquid your batter is, the denser your pancakes will be.

7. Cook pancakes in a well-buttered frying pan over medium heat. (I use a 1/4 cup measure to pour the right amount of batter into the pan.) Flip when the sides look solid and the bubbles on the top are beginning to pop.

8. Transfer cooked pancakes to a plate and cover with a clean dishtowel to retain heat. Continue repeating steps 7 and 8 until all the batter has turned into pancakes.

9. Top with real maple syrup and enjoy!

I loved these. You could probably use whatever kind of extract you want, but I like almond. And I loved how fluffy they came out; I always have a hard time with fruit pancakes because of the added juices.

How do you like your pancakes? Do you prefer the authentic maple syrup, or the "Mrs Butterworth's" type? And what do you drink with pancakes? Milk? Orange juice?