This morning we woke up to snow in 7b. Thankfully it didn't stick and the rain chased it away.
The children learn Life Skills in an effort to make them self sufficient in the future.
Yesterday I made French Toast, bacon cheese grits and bacon. Today my youngest made the same three dishes to show what was remembered. The older two and dad were not home either time.
First, we put a mixture of half milk and half water on to boil for our grits, since that is what takes the longest to cook.
Then we spice up our liquid, adding a little garlic powder, salt, pepper and Cajun seasoning.
While the grits are coming to a boil, we start frying our bacon. We usually bake it, but sometimes we add a little bacon grease to our grits and you don't get as much from baking it as you do frying it.
Next we stir our grits in to the boiling milk mixture.
And flip our bacon...
After we take our bacon out of the frying pan to cool (into a paper towel lined dish), we pour a little bacon grease into the grits to give it a little flavor. Or don't, your preference.
Then we crumble the cooked bacon and add a large handful of shredded cheese. You can do slices too, whatever floats your boat. We've also been known to add in havarti, marscapone, cream cheese and/or heavy whipping cream at this point, to make it a little creamier.
It's time to stir.
And put in a bowl, so the pot can soak while we're eating.
Now we're ready to start our French toast. Usually we will turn the oven on warm, so the slices won't get cold while we're cooking... but since there were only two of us, we put it directly on the plates.
We start with putting a little evoo (or bacon grease) in our frying pan. The same one we fried our bacon in, because I don't believe in dirtying a million dishes. Turn to medium low to heat the oil or grease.
Then we grab a shallow dish. We crack and beat an egg in the dish, then pour in some heavy whipping cream (or whole milk and some melted butter). We whisk that all together. Then we add cinnamon sugar (or cinnamon + brown sugar), a pinch each of nutmeg and ginger, and a good dollop (maybe 2 T of homemade vanilla. Then we stir that again.
Usually we'll use 2-3 eggs, but 1 is perfect for just two people.
We slice a loaf of French bread into 1/2" slices. We only used 6 slices (about 1/3 loaf) today. Then we lightly, but thoroughly cover both sides of the bread slices with the egg mixture.
Carefully place a few of your slices in the hot oil. We were using a small pan, so 3 fit nicely with room to still flip them.
We didn't get a picture of our finished product because the little one was ready to dig in.
Little one doesn't like shrimp, but I do... and honestly it was about noon when "breakfast" was done, so I turned mine into shrimp and grits.
So in my same pan, I sautéed my sliced mushrooms and a few sweet peppers and shallots in a little butter and Worcestershire sauce.
Then I added some heavy whipping cream, Cajun seasoning and my shrimp.
I let that cook down a bit until my shrimp were nice and done and.... perfection. No I did not eat all of this. Nor did I get to enjoy the French toast. But this was soooo good, so I wasn't even mad.
I didn't wipe the plate first, because I was bordering on hangry at this point...
In this house, we love to cook and bake, we grow our own food. And of course we love to eat. Most of our food isn't usually this naughty; this is pure comfort food.