ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

BREAKFAST BURRITO, TOMATO JAM, BREAD

It all started with wanting a couple of breakfast burritos at McDonald’s. A bit spendy for one of my favorite breakfasts. I have been telling people it was $3 for a sausage burrito but according to the app it is $2.19, but I feel like I paid more. Regardless, I want to save money. I figure I don’t really need to watch video’s on YouTube on how to make a breakfast burrito, but still still wanted to see what was out there. First video the person made a tomato jam to go with their breakfast burrito. I LOVE tomatoes and wanted to do that too, but not pair it with breakfast burritos.

Thanks to an early Black Friday deal, I finally got a 7 quart dutch oven for $50. Obviously not a Le Creuset or Staub, but I am not rich and so far have been happy with my Food Network one. The first thing I had to do was make bread. I found a nice no knead recipe for the dutch oven and my third loaf this week is in the oven right now.

Breakfast burrito

I watched a few videos. Interesting to see all the different versions. Some people fully cook the burrito first and then freeze it. Some partially cook. One thing the same is they wrap it some way and put them in a freezer bag. Today I was my second time making mine. I stuck with traditional, sausage, pepper, onions, eggs, and cheese. The first time I made 10. Even though I only doubled the recipe today, I made 30, but I had a lot of filling left over which I just called my dinner.

I need to work on my portions so I make the amount of filling I need for the amount of tortillas I have. So today I did two packages of sausage, 20 eggs, a frozen bag of peppers and onions which I thawed and cut more (in the future I will just buy an onion and pepper fresh and cut it down, I have frozen bags for any last second cooking), and two 8 oz bags of cheese. This may be fine if you have more than 30 tortillas to fill.

So once you make them and freeze them, what next? Some reheat them in the oven and some in the microwave from frozen. I take two out of the freezer and put them in the fridge the night before I am going to eat them. In the morning I take them out of the foil, wrap each one in a paper towel, put on a microwave safe plate, microwave for a minute and a half. I think they are perfect. Breakfasts will now be easy every morning. On the weekends I might do pancakes or other things, but when I go to work, it is nice to have something I don’t have to worry about.

tomato jam

I have made tomato jam three times this week. The first time I followed someone’s recipe exactly. It called for one cup of brown sugar, which many recipes call for 1/4 to 1 cup of a form of sugar (including honey, agave nectar, etc). It was awful! At least for me, I had to throw it out. Second time I did what I want. I did tomatoes, onions, chive blossom vinegar (I didn’t have any balsamic on hand), and sorghum syrup. It was perfect and delicious. I realized I forgot cumin, but I was still happy with it. And I only used 1 tbsp of sorghum syrup, which was perfect.

Today I forgot the vinegar, but this is what I did, and you can change your portions of each ingredient if you wish.

• 1 3/4 cups diced onions
• 2 1/2 cups peeled and diced tomatoes (you can peel them with a vegetable peeler)
• 2 tbsp molasses (wanted to try that since sorghum isn’t always easy to find)
• 2 tbsp cumin
• 2 jalapenos

You just put everything in one pot over medium heat, stir every 5 minutes or so for a half hour. It is possible it might be done sooner or later. When you stir the bottom and it doesn’t come together right away, then it is about done. I let it cool down and then put it in these cute little jars that are by the mason jars where I shop. I enjoy putting it on my homemade bread.

Next time I will go back to 1 tablespoon of sorghum syrup. Also, make sure I add maybe a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. The jalapeno is optional for me.

homemade no knead bread

The first time I remember learning about baking bread in a dutch oven was when I checked out Ken Forkish’s book “Four Water Salt Yeast” from the library. This was a long time ago, and I don’t own the book, so I don’t remember what recipe may have accompanied it. Ever since then, I have wanted a dutch oven for this purpose. There are other things I want to try and cook as well. I used Taste of Home’s No Knead Bread recipe. Super easy. Most no knead recipes are similar, usually just difference in yeast used and rise time. I’m going to make bread all the time now.