Banana Split Breakfast

Annalise asked me to take this picture so I could "put it on Facebook".  I told her I thought it was better suited for my neglected cooking blog!

Build a banana split for breakfast by splitting a banana, topping it with frozen vanilla yogurt, and drizzling it with pureed berries.  Add a cherry for fun, or chopped almonds because I love almonds.

The frozen yogurt is not the ice cream kind - I froze a large container of yogurt, which wasn't the best plan.  It was as hard as a rock!  We chipped off enough for our banana splits, but it even sat in the fridge all day and did not thaw much.  A better plan is to partially freeze a container of yogurt, how long, I'm not sure.  The presentation was not what I wanted, but it tasted great and the kids all loved it.

Daily Bread: Sweet Potato Biscuits

A big hit at a brunch we hosted recently - Sweet Potato Biscuits:

1 large sweet potato
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1/2 cup butter, softened
2 tablespoons milk

Scrub and pierce the sweet potato, then microwave on high for 10 minutes. Allow to cool a little before handling, then peel and puree in a food processor or blender. Measure out 1 cup and blend with brown sugar, lemon zest, butter, and milk.

In a seperate bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Wisk to combine completely. Stir in the sweet potato mixture until it forms a ball. Roll out and cut into biscuits. Bake at 425 for 10 minutes.

Daily Bread: Easy Doughnuts

In no time at all, I made these doughnuts yesterday:

I used a soda bottle cap to mark the hole in a counter-whop biscuit, cut it out with kitchen scissors, fried in hot oil for about a half minute per side (until golden brown), drained, glazed, and served. It was fast. And while they didn't taste exactly like the ones from the Publix bakery, they average about $.06 each (compared to $.67 at Publix) and you can eat them nice and hot.

Italy Day

Ever since "Grandma stood next to the volcano", Caleb has been interested in Italy. And who can blame him? The country looks like a boot kicking a tree! Where else can boast that? So he's had lots of questions about Italy and finally I decided we'd do something about it and have "Italy Day".

Besides learning how Italians say Mommy and Daddy and dog and fish, we ate Italian food all day!

For breakfast we had Mini Frittatas, cinnamon toast, and cappuccinos. For the kids I watered down some cappuccino mix (easier and cheaper than going to Starbucks). I decided to make cinnamon toast because I found a recipe for some cinnamon biscotti that sounded too complicated to make! And the Mini Frittatas are a Giada DeLaurentiis recipe and were really good and easy to make. Here's how you do it:

Mini Frittatas

2 eggs, beaten
2 Tbsp milk
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
pinch of salt
1 ounce diced ham, fully cooked
1 1/2 tbsp grated Parmesan
1 tsp dried parsley (she called for fresh, but my fresh parsley hasn't gotten to the eating stage yet)

Spray a mini muffin tin with cooking spray and preheat oven to 375. Mix all ingredients and spoon into mini muffin cups. I poured them in, which was the wrong idea. The ham sank to the bottom and some of the Frittatas were just scrambled egg muffins (which is actually how I described them to Caleb to sell him on the idea). Bake for 8-10 minutes, then using a rubber spatula turn them out and serve immediately. Really, I'm no omlette eater, but these were tasty.

I got 8 mini frittatas, just fill the cups up to the top and when you run out, fill the empty cups with water.

We were going to have Nutella on toast, but the Nutella was $10 a jar!

For our morning snack, we usually have crackers, but today we had biscotti. (On sale this week at Publix.)

Lunch was a thin crust cheese pizza. I'm sure real Italian pizza is much thinner, but we got the gist. I topped half of it with fresh basil from my garden. I have to say, even if you aren't interested in growing any other fresh herb, you should grow basil, it is so fast growing and so fragrant. I grew mine from seeds - I think it was a 75 cent packet and I have more basil than I can possibly use.

For dinner we had Beef Scaloppine and Maccheroni con la Ricotta. I forgot to take a picture.

For dessert, we had storebought Tiramisu. I read a few recipes, but decided they all called for too many expensive ingredients that I do not keep on hand. Caleb and Annalise LOOOOOOOOOVED it!

And Caleb learned a few things about Italy - including it is no where near Australia (even though both of them are far away from Miami), if there are sidewalks in Venice, they are not underwater sidewalks, and the happy birthday song in Italian has the same tune, but different words.