Category: Breakfast

All Warm and Toasty

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After our good and filling Welsh duck dinner last weekend, we wanted our next recipe to be a bit healthier, and a bit less labor intensive. After flipping through our cookbook, Favourite Welsh Recipes by A. de Breanski Jr., we came across this recipe for Monmouth Pudding and knew it would make for a great breakfast.

The recipe is described in the book as one that was often served in Victorian times and was ideal for children and adults with “delicate digestions.” It’s basically a bread pudding that incorporates strawberry preserves. Traditional Monmouth pudding will reveal red and white stripes when served; however we opted to pick health over beauty with this one. While using white bread crumbs would no doubt make this a striking dish, the whole wheat bread crumbs don’t have quite the same aesthetic effect. That said, despite its lackluster appearance, it’s really a more healthy alternative. Continue reading →

Oh Canada!

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Mr. N in Ontario at 3-years. He couldn’t have been happier – there were Canada flags everywhere!

When Mr. N was about three years old he learned the Canadian national anthem. This may not seem unusual, except for the fact that we don’t live in Canada and we hadn’t taught Mr. N the song. One night, much to our surprise, he began singing the anthem as it played on TV at a sports event. Mike and I were rolling with laughter at Mr. N’s utter cuteness.

Turns out he picked up the song from a Hallmark e-card designed for Canada Day. Back when the cards were free they provided a great source of entertainment for Mr. N who liked to peruse the e-cards and send them to his grandparents – many of them just cracked him up to no end (And I could listen to his laughter all day – best belly giggle in the world!).

So when Mr. N learned that he was going to visit “Oh Canada,” as he called it, later that summer he was beyond excited. His first souvenir: a Maple Leaf flag. It still hangs on the wall of  his playroom today!

While Mr. N’s favorite thing about Canada is still the flag and anthem, he was also quite delighted with the attractions we discovered this summer including the Royal Ontario Museum, the Toronto Zoo and Casa Loma.

The spooky old tunnel to the stables underground at Casa Loma.

Miss A’s favorite thing about Canada, besides the lemon tarts, had to be the Centreville Amusement Park out on the Toronto Islands.

Miss A’s birthday this past summer at the Centreville Amusement Park.

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A Little Plate of Sunshine

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A carriage ride for our princess A.

We’re now on to our new international cooking destination. Mike is at the helm this time and has selected our neighbor to the north, Canada. Canada is the second largest country in the world, next to Russia, so we’re breaking it into regions and starting with Ontario.

On our epic road trip, we spent about a week in Ontario between Niagara-on-the-Lake and Toronto. One of our favorite days kicked off with a carriage ride through the downtown area of Niagara-on-the-Lake for Miss A, who was turning three the next day. You should have seen her little smile getting to ride in a princess carriage. 🙂

After our ride, the guide recommended a little place, Balzac’s coffee, for coffee, lemonade and in her words, “an amazing lemon tart.” Sold! Miss A and I both decided that we needed lemon tarts. So while dad and Mr. N enjoyed their beverages, Miss A and I gushed over our tarts. I don’t know if it was because I was hungry, that it was vacation or that this was just really that good; but this was the most delicious lemon tart I ever tasted. Even Miss A finished off her entire tart, and that’s saying something. Continue reading →

Breakfast Skillet Bermuda Style

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When we read about this recipe on Food.com, we knew it was one we had to feature on our Bermuda adventure. I mean how could we not with this “ringing” endorsement, “This dish is one of many in Bermuda that is loved by the locals, but avoided like the plague by the majority of foreigners….”

I have to admit that I had bought the ingredients for this dish weeks ago, but kept conveniently finding other options for those items. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep putting it off. So here it goes, an adapted version of the traditional Bermuda Salt Cod Fish Breakfast. We started by creating a foil pouch for some frozen hash brown potatoes, olive oil and salt.

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Planes Aren’t the Only Thing to Disappear in Bermuda

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After a few stateside picks, we’re venturing off to our next international destination. This time we’re going to head off the coast of Florida to Bermuda. I don’t know much about Bermuda other than what I learned from Scooby Doo about the infamous Bermuda Triangle when I was a kid.

Mr. N is fascinated by the spooky folklore as well and has done some of his own digging into the stories. According to Wikipedia, “The Bermuda Triangle is also known as the Devil’s Triangle, and is a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels allegedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances.” While we’re not planning to head into the triangle itself, we thought we would cook up a breakfast recipe from Bermuda today. Our selection – Bermuda French Toast was an absolute winner. Dad is still raving about it. Here to tell you about our recipe is our very own super sleuth, Mr. N. Take it away Mr. N….

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It’s a Barn Raising – of Sorts

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Both Mr. N and Miss A have summer birthdays. So this year, since we’re in the new house, we decided to get them a swing set for their birthdays. We purchased a beautiful set at a very reasonable price, the catch – we have to build it ourselves. This is no easy feat as you can imagine. There are literally dozens of pieces of wood and hundreds of screws, and nothing is labeled.

This job was beyond dad and I, so much like the barn raisings of long ago, we invited some extra hands to help us put this thing together.

So since we’re raising the swing set and our state this week was Pennsylvania, we decided to whip up a few Amish dishes to get in the spirit of things. We started early yesterday morning with an Amish Stuffed French Toast.

The first step was to cube a loaf of bread.

We placed the bread in a baking dish and then cut up a block of cream cheese and placed it in the bread.

The recipe then called for the use of a pie filling. Instead, we took fresh blackberries that we had frozen from my Grandpa’s garden last summer and combined them with a bit of sugar.

Next we poured them over the first layer of bread.

Then we added the remaining bread over the top. Finally in a bowl we mixed together eggs, milk, vanilla and maple syrup. We poured this over the top layer of bread, followed by a bit of melted butter and cinnamon. The French toast was then refrigerated overnight and baked for 50 minutes at 350F in the morning.

We served the dish with syrup and powdered sugar. However as good as this looked and smelled, it didn’t quite live up to our expectations.

Miss A rated it the lowest with 1 spoon. She barely ate any. Dad and I both gave the French toast 2 spoons. It was okay, but we think would have been better with white bread instead of wheat. And Mr. N seemed to enjoy it the most and gave it 3 spoons. He ate it for breakfast, dinner and again the next morning for breakfast.

As for the barn raising…

after a 12 hour day and having to wait out some rain showers (water and power tools don’t mix), it’s coming along. Here’s hoping tomorrow will be the final day for the “barn raising.”

Print this recipe: Amish Stuffed French Toast