Weekly Dinner Recap #1 - all the sparkle

Over the last few years I’ve realized that there are several recipes that Steve and I love to make but we forget about them for months or even years at a time. So I figured, if I’m trying to get better about blogging in general it’ll be an easy blog post to recap our weekly dinners and an even better way for me to remind myself of some of my favorite recipes.

For our first week, technically, we had dinner but we actually decided to spend the week having breakfast for dinner! I LOVE breakfast foods but I don’t always want to get up early enough to make a time-intensive breakfast so we make breakfast for dinner frequently. We had originally planned on different meals but when we did two days in a row of breakfasts we figured we might as well aim for the entire week.

Saturday – Omelets with Cinnamon Apple Crescent Rolls

I don’t follow a precise recipe for the rolls. To start, I separate crescent rolls into triangles, brush the dough with melted butter, sprinkle a little brown sugar and cinnamon on the dough, and roll it around an apple wedge. Then I dip the whole roll in a mix of cinnamon and sugar and bake at 350 until golden brown (about 10 minutes). They’re best served warm when the sugar is gooey.

Sunday – Baked Eggs with Popovers

Baked Eggs – I sprinkle parmesan, garlic powder, and paprika on the eggs before baking. I also tend to not have whipping cream on hand…milk works just fine.
Popovers – I use Alton Brown’s recipe, never fails us!

Monday – Pumpkin and Orange Pancakes with Roasted Bacon

Pumpkin and Orange Pancakes – This is a recipe from Anne Burrell and it’s AMAZING. These are even better the next day. I actually like eating them cold right out of the fridge for breakfast.

Tuesday – Sausage and Spinach Quiche with Home Fries

This is a recipe that my mom used to make when I was younger. She added mushrooms but luckily, now that I’m an adult, I can leave them out of the recipe instead of spending 15 minutes trying to pick them out and feed them to the dog without my mom noticing. If mushrooms are your thing, feel free to add a 1/2 cup of sliced mushrooms. In a large bowl mix together a package of Stouffer’s thawed spinach souffle, 2 eggs, 3 tbs of milk, 8 cooked and sliced sausage links, 1 cup of cheddar cheese, 1/4 cup of diced sauteed onion, salt, and pepper. Pour into an unbaked pie shell and bake at 400 for 25-30 minutes. It can be served warm or at room temperature.
I’m still trying to find the perfect home fries recipe…if I find it I’ll let you know!

Wednesday – Overnight French Toast Casserole

We’ve adapted a Paula Deen recipe for this overnight french toast. I love that I can prep it the night before (or morning of) a long teaching day and have it ready to go when I’m finished. I only use milk (instead of milk with half and half) in the batter. I also leave out the corn syrup and use only 4 tbs of butter in the praline topping (instead of 2 sticks!). We add walnuts before baking and I usually thinly slice an apple and tuck slices in and around the bread before baking. We’ve also found that it takes way longer to bake than her recipe suggests.

Thursday – Bagels and Cheesy Eggs

Nothing fancy…just bagels from Mr. J’s in Harrisonburg with cheese and tomato scrambled eggs. My favorite is a cinnamon raisin bagel, lightly toasted, with cream cheese and a thin slice of tomato with a dash of salt on top. Steve cringes whenever I eat it.

Friday – Waffles

This was a revelation…my normal recipe requires separating eggs, beating egg whites, etc. and tends to be something we normally need to plan for an evening when we have a lot of time. But we had leftover buttermilk from my birthday cake so I decided to give Alton Brown’s Basic Waffle recipe a try. It produced the most amazing waffles we’ve ever eaten. The only thing I added was a 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract. We will definitely be using this from now on. I should never have doubted Alton Brown.

Finally, this isn’t dinner (or breakfast) related but I can’t forget to share Steve’s cake creation for my birthday. In case you didn’t know, Steve happens to be a cake-baking god. I just don’t seem to have the patience for it…for some reason cake-baking is not my thing. But for my birthday Steve baked me a cake from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours. It’s the Devil’s Food White-Out Cake and it was amazing! It was a chocolate layer cake with a marshallow frosting decorated with cake crumbs. YUM! It also seems like it’s very customizable…I’m already trying to convince Steve to make it again but to put a thin layer of mint chocolate ganache underneath the frosting.