waking up in the 'burbs

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Another sign that you’re an urban girl in a suburban world? When the timer for the muffins goes off and you think it's a car alarm and let it go on for 10 minutes before realizing it's coming from the kitchen.

That happened. But the great thing about these muffins is that, apparently, you can’t really cook them too long or mess them up too badly. Believe me, I’m not a baker. The reason I made these is because of yet another Suburban Catch 22: The bus takes the kids to school (whoopee) but it picks them up at 7:15am (whatttt?)

So our leisurely two-pan breakfasts are about to end and I am trying to think of ways to get food in their bodies before they leap into this new world. We're not a cereal family and Mack turns into Darth Vader without some protein. So I found a recipe from Tory Avey and made it simpler and more kid friendly.

These are light and airy but definitely sweet and they have a little protein from Greek yogurt and a little fruit from applesauce. The best part is they only take about 10 minutes to make and only one bowl. And like I mentioned earlier, you can cook the hell out of them when you mistake the timer for a car alarm.  

Feel free to freeze them too and then you can defrost them in the microwave while yelling "STOP FIGHTING, GET DRESSED, YOU'RE LATE!"

Banana Muffins

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp unsalted butter, room temperature
2 eggs
1/4 cup applesauce
3 ripe bananas mashed
1 cup Greek yogurt (whole, 2% or nonfat)
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Cut the butter into small chunks and place in a large mixing bowl along with the sugar and brown sugar. Use an electric mixer (or standing mixer) to beat together the butter and sugar for a few minutes. 

Add the eggs and applesauce and mix till smooth. Add the mashed bananas, Greek yogurt, and vanilla. Stir, then slowly add the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, cloves and nutmeg while mixing. Scoop into greased muffin tins and place a chocolate chip on top because kids fall for that sort of thing.

Bake the muffins for 25 minutes. Makes about 24 muffins.

 

instant pot: breakfast

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So far there has only been one Instant Pot failure—steel cut oatmeal, from a recipe I found on a random blog. That's one of the problems with the IP--there just aren't that many trustworthy recipes yet. With a lot of ad-libbing I finally got the oatmeal to be oatmeal and with a better recipe, it can be done.

Unfortunately just the idea of tasting the somewhat unusual looking oatmeal sent Nate running into the other room. "You win some you lose some" I said aloud which Mack and Michael turned into a song about tornados and dragons called "The worst hike ever." So at least the creative juices were flowing and eventually Nate came out and joined us. 

A better turnout (not that Nate ate it but the rest of us loved it) were these egg muffins which were softly steamed and juicy. 

the everyday and the dutch baby

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Most weekends we make pancakes which are our everyday pancakes. I use a healthy-ish dry mix and we add eggs, milk and oil. The kids know the "recipe" by heart and love to help and the pancakes, which I make on our griddle, are pretty good. 

But this was a different kind of weekend. We had three birthday parties lined up, plus dinner with friends and a date night. And of course at birthday party number 1 on Saturday morning, a lovely pool party on a rooftop in Brooklyn, Mack slammed his face into a wooden planter while running from a water gun fight. 

We spent the next few hours in Urgent Care waiting for a doctor to look at his swollen bleeding eye. It turns out he is fine, just beat up, but anyone who knows Mack will probably feel more compassion for the doctor in this scenario. The very nice doctor in training who had never met Mack and didn't realize what he was in for or that the last time this boy had a medical procedure, the hospital security guards were called in to help hold him down. Not kidding.

After the crying, screaming, thrashing, begging and whirling insults, we finally got a drop into his eye. Six lollypops later, we were on our way home with a prescription for more drops (god help us) when Mack realized he wasn't returning to the lovely rooftop birthday party (since it was long over) and that he would not in fact be eating cake. You can imagine the rest. 

Anyway, this was no weekend for everyday healthy pancakes so we made this recipe from 1966 that blew us all away: creamy and buttery, custard-like with crispy edges. All it needs is a little powdered sugar on top. 

DUTCH BABY

1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
Pinch of nutmeg
4 tablespoons (one half stick) of unsalted butter
2 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar

Heat oven to 425 degrees. Combine the flour, milk, eggs, and nutmeg in a bowl. Beat lightly. 
Melt the butter on the stove in a cast iron skillet with a heatproof handle. When it is very hot, (be careful not to burn!) pour in the batter. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the pancake is golden brown.
Sprinkle with the sugar.

egg+bacon+toast=muffin

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File this under mommy was really impressed with herself, and as usual when mommy is impressed with herself, kids give the following review: “Um, kinda good but I don’t really want to eat it.” Same thing happened when I made these DIY Muffins.

Which is outrageous because there is nothing bad about eggs, bacon and toast in a muffin tin. Seriously, these “muffins” are delicious and if you don’t let on how excited you are there’s a good chance your kids will be into them. Right? isn’t that how it works?

Anyway, without further ado here is a very easy and impressive breakfast treat:

  1. Preheat oven to 400
  2. With biscuit cutters or a glass, have the kids cut circles out of soft bread. (I kept the holed out sliced for egg in a hole – another fun egg dish which the kids actually like.)
  3. Butter a muffin tin and kids smush bread circles into the bottoms.
  4. Microwave 4 slices of bacon on a plate for 1 minute then shape the slimy bacon slice (meaty part on top) around the edges of the muffin. (Kids were grossed out by this part so I did it.)
  5. Then crack an egg into each tin. (Or into a bowl first so you can remove any shell. You could also beat the eggs with a little milk and cheese and pour that in.)
  6. Bake for about 20 minutes (Start checking at 15 minutes. Whites will be a little jiggly but bacon should be firm.)
  7. Cool and eat or slice in half and share. Or eat them all yourself and tell everyone how talented and creative you are.

the great grape wars

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The GRAPE WARS, (whoever shows the bigger grape wins), brilliantly created by Michael this morning, led to both kids eating many many grapes. And so the wars will continue. (After I clean everyone's fingernails.)

the sun will come out

As summer approaches with the speed of lightning, our apartment is back to bright, hot mornings when we all fight for a shady spot at the table. And now we have a new breakfast that mirrors the outdoors. As Mack says, "Sunny-side Schtup." The kids love to break their own yoke and dip bacon or toast into it. Today Mack said: the sun is coming out from the clouds. Outside and on our plates!

breakfast pasta

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A stupid-simple, obvious ripoff on carbonara, but the kids liked it (mostly for the name though nothing about this dish is not delicious) and it added some protein to the usual plain pasta dinner. It also inspired our enthusiastic discussion of: "why can't you eat pasta for breakfast or breakfast for dinner?!" Next up: veggie pancakes?

BREAKFAST PASTA

  • 1/2 lb spaghetti
  • 1 egg
  • 2 slices turkey bacon
  • Parmesan cheese

    Cook spaghetti and add 2 tbsp of the cooking water to raw egg. Beat egg and stir into pasta with crumbled bacon and cheese. 

class breakfast

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I signed up to make muffins for Family Breakfast Potluck in Nate's class and my first thought was: how can I make something that requires almost no effort but isn't store bought (I am class mom after all!) .

But then I started reading food blogs for my new column in Brooklyn Based and I came across many exciting muffin recipes by mom-bloggers who are way more energetic and patient than me. Adding fiber cereal and chia seeds and all the amazing ingredients that I"m sure the other kids in Nate's class would eat but Nate won't. And they were all far more complicated recipes that I would spend hours making and then be disappointed that Nate rejected-we've done this routine too many times.

So I basically made our usual add eggs, milk, oil to whole wheat pancake mix then poured the batter into small muffin tins, threw in a couple blueberries and a drop of Nutella and baked for 10 minutes. They were pretty yummy (though toppings tended to settle at the bottom during cooking.) I served them in an empty egg container because they were the exact size of the holes.

Lemme say they were not a hit. I think they looked too healthy next to the frozen mini waffles, cookies, doughnuts and bagels (lame!).  The best dish was eggs baked in muffin cups sprinkled with bacon pieces. Next year I'm making that!




abcdef breakfast

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Yesterday, while breakfasting on bagels and bacon, Nate pointed out that both items began with the letter "B". Then Michael said we should do a different letter every day for breakfast! Then I was shopping for cantaloupe.

We've only done a few letters but it is proving to be a good way to introduce some new foods (or just get Nate to eat something other than frozen waffles) in the name of the "game".

So far we skipped A (see above) but followed through with...

B: Bagel with Butter and Bacon (accompanied by Bear and Buffalo)

C: Cantaloupe and Cinnamon Cereal with (not shown) Coffee.

D: Danish and Dip (yogurt and honey) with fruit

E: Eggs and English Muffins

F. French toast and Fresh Fruit