I’ve been pretty busy here at home in the kitchen over the weekend. Friday I fell asleep (more or less passed out) on Marq and Melissa’s couch down the road, and woke up Saturday morning and came home. I realized I needed to take advantage of the weekend to get some pre-cooking done. Now that I’ve got a house payment, the money doesn’t stretch as far. I had (hopefully) gotten out of the grocery store with a month’s worth of food for about $100.
Yesterday I made some lasagne hamburger helper type stuff, and made plenty so that I’d have leftovers for lunch or dinner later. Then, I baked up 24 biscuits (3 cans worth) and two pounds of sausage (patties), and put together 11 days worth of sausage biscuits for me to take to work. Total cost was way less than buying those Jimmy Dean microwavable biscuits. I have them frozen in sandwich bags in pairs of two, so I just have to grab a bag in the morning and take it with me to work. Work actually gave us a t-shirt and a purple thermal lunch bag for Employee Appreciation Day, so now I have something to keep my lunch in when I pack it.
Today I ate my free Quaker Oats cereal bar that I got in the mail, and one of my Verve energy drinks. That is what substaniated for my breakfast this morning, unless you count my communion at church. Oh, that’s right – I forgot to mention – I went to the Methodist church this morning around the corner from my house (gas is killing me right now) and it was pretty cool. It was apparently World Communion Day or something like that. I went up to the front of the church with about 1/4 of the people and kneeled along side of this rail thing. They gave me bread and handed me one of those communion shot glasses. Then we stayed kneeling while the leader prayed, and then went back to our seats. They also had a greeting time, where they said “Extend peace to those around you,” and people came around and some said “Good Morning, nice to meet you, etc.” and some said “Peace be with you,” so I thought of Dane Cook and I said “And also with you.”
I’ve been watching a lot of cooking shows, and trying to find the simplest and easiest recipes. I realize now in retrospect there’s a lot of things I wish I’d bothered to ask my Mom to teach me to cook before I left the house. She taught me a lot still, but occasionally I come up with things I want to know. For example, yesterday I realized hey, I have eggs, bread, milk, vanilla extract, ground cinnamon, flour, sugar, and salt. I think that’s all I need to make French Toast. I looked up some recipes and realized I could use some Hawaiian Sweet Bread to make it even more awesome and thick.
The French Toast I made was amazing. Especially amazing for the first time I’ve ever made them. I cut them really thick, used the recipe to get the ingredients in proper proportions, and then I drowned the sweet bread in the custard (egg mixture) and threw it in a hot pan long enough to brown both sides. Here’s how they turned out (Click Photo to view Full Size):
