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.

Until a couple of years or so ago I had never had butternut squash soup. Not sure why. I don’t remember anyone making it growing up. In adulthood I had continued my picky eating from childhood and had not wanted to try it. I thought it would be gross. Only soup I liked was Campbell’s cream of tomato, still a favorite, and the occasional potato or chicken noodle soup.

I am still a picky eater, except for various Asian food I adore, but suddenly butternut squash soup looked appealing. I don’t recall seeing it at restaurants or in cans at stores. A couple of years or so ago I decided to try and make it. I followed a recipe exactly. It didn’t look like all the photos and it was bland. I consider myself a decent cook, and I rarely follow recipes, I always add and takeaway making a recipe my own, it usually works out. Making a recipe as is, is clearly a mistake. More just my inexperience making butternut squash soup. Looking back, it was too thin, too much whatever stock.

Recently I decided to try again! I looked at recipes and YouTube videos galore! It became clear I would not follow any recipe! The ideas I came away with are: roast vegetables in the oven, blend, then add liquids until desired thickness.

The only real recipe part, at least what I did, is roast: 3-3.5 pounds of butternut squash skin and seeds removed and cubed, 1 small onion, ends and skin removed and then cubed, and 3 mini bell peppers cut in half with ends and seeds removed. I put them on a foil lined cookie sheet in a 400° oven. After a half hour I took out the onions and peppers and put the butternut squash back in for another half hour.

At this point I tried to use a traditional blender. Not everything would fit but I tried with part of it and added a small carton of whipping cream and a little of the chicken stock. it was quickly clear this wasn’t going to work. So I put it in a pot and went to work with my immersion blender. I then slowly added chicken stock until I was happy with the thickness. Turned out 32 oz was the sweet spot. I had more just in case. Then I added spices, measuring nothing, but it turned out fantastic! Canned ginger, canned garlic, ground nutmeg, cumin, cayenne, black pepper, coriander, ground sage, Trader Joe mushroom umami, and cardamom.

I would have normally used fresh ginger and garlic, but can’t remember everything. In the future I may also add chive oil as garnish. Still, I am very happy with it.

By Jeanette Sunrain

This may not end up being the final version, but I am happy with it for now!

I have been doing solo Thanksgiving for a few years. All of us were in Wisconsin and then all of a sudden I was the only one. A couple have moved back, but they are an hour or more away! So a Pandemic Thanksgiving by myself is just a normal Thanksgiving. Didn’t feel like cooking and I have mostly been lazy these few days off but got some small projects done.

I ordered broasted chicken and mashed potatoes from a local restaurant. I used a generic stove top stuffing box. As expected it was meh. My family also makes an orange cranberry jello. I ended up making it on Friday. I wanted to use this fancy mold I found at Goodwill. I apparently didn’t let it set up enough, but it still tastes really good!

I am going to save Saturday for last and talk about today for a second. I have a hate/hate relationship with my stove. There are some things I can do, but anything to be made in a shallow pan is a pain. I hate Black Friday, but I had to go grocery shopping anyway and I usually do so at Meijer. The one I go to doesn’t get overrun with crazy people so I was able to get a $30 griddle for $20. Figure I can cook pancakes, eggs, bacon, whatever else on the griddle and not curse like a sailor. This morning I made pancakes and am super happy with it. Yes, my kitchen is small, crowded, and a hot mess!

Saturday my best friend and I went on a road trip to Viroqua Wisconsin. The independent bookstore, Driftless Books and Music, was selling grab boxes of books. You tell them the subject(s) you wanted and what you wanted to pay and they would put a box together for you. You PayPal the money and pick up the box from their porch. Some I will be giving to Goodwill because they aren’t my taste, but others I look forward to looking at. I love grab bags of books, but I also participated because I knew it would be a beautiful drive.

For the love of Zoom! As I mentioned above my family is spread out now. Last night we had a really sweet family get together via Zoom! Our first ever! It was really nice seeing everyone. I was the first one off since I still had another hour and a half drive home. When I got home I learned my three nieces were still talking to each other.

Already for a few months, once a week I have been doing a Zoom dinner with some friends in other states. It is the highlight of my week! Despite the pandemic, it is nice to have this way of keeping in touch with people. Even without the pandemic, it is a great way to keep in touch!

I saw this meme this last week. I had never heard of it before. Apparently this idea has been known about for years. Mix a can of soda with cake mix and bake according to the box directions. I chose the lemon cake with sprite soda. Took a while for the bubbles to calm down, but I kept on whisking. I buttered and floured a glass 13×9 pan and poured the batter in and baked for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

It came out really good, that is tasting good. It however, did not come out. Well it sorta did, but I dropped it on the cooling rack. Looks like a hot mess. I let it cool down while I was thinking about what to do.

This is what I did. Layers of cake with frosting. It didn’t look like I was using a lot of frosting when doing it, but I was wrong. Hopefully this won’t happen to you. I should have done cupcakes, but I am not disappointed.