Spinach Scramble

This is my default breakfast. When I don’t want to think about what to eat and I’m in a place where I’m eating well, I throw this together and it’s delicious and filling every time and packed with nutrients. It also comes in at under 300 calories. When I’m not in a place where I’m eating well, I eat cheese. Lots of cheese.

Place a skillet over medium heat. Add a teaspoon of olive oil, ¼ cup chopped onion, and 3 large sliced mushrooms. Mist veggies with cooking spray as needed to get a good sauté.  Cook until onions are translucent and mushrooms are nicely browned.

Add two large handfuls of spinach to the pan. This will look like an insane amount of greens, but don’t worry, it will cook down.

 

Then you can feel good about yourself and your nutritional superiority all day long. Stir the spinach constantly.

When the spinach has wilted, add two beaten eggs. If you’re lazy like me, you’ll just crack two eggs right into the pan and whip them up with your spatula as they cook. Keep the eggs moving until they're cooked and scrambled. There should be just enough egg to give you a shot of protein and sort of stick everything together.

Salt and pepper to taste and serve with your favorite salsa. I like to pour Pace all over the top of my scramble. So good. And your house will have that wonderful sautéed onion smell for a couple of hours.

Cut-and-Paste Recipe

Spinach Scramble

www.biteuponbite.com

1 tsp olive oil

Cooking spray

¼ cup chopped onion
3 large mushrooms
2 cups baby spinach
2 large eggs
Salt and pepper
Salsa

Place a skillet over medium heat. Add a teaspoon of olive oil, chopped onion, and mushrooms. Mist veggies with cooking spray as needed to get a good sauté.  Cook until onions are translucent and mushrooms are nicely browned.

Add two large handfuls of spinach to the pan. Toss and stir to cook down the spinach.

When spinach has wilted, add two beaten eggs and stir until egg is cooked. Salt and pepper to taste and serve with your favorite salsa.

World’s Simplest Fruit Salad

Don’t let your fruit languish, my friends! I always seem to have a drawer full of sad fruit that nobody wants. When the berries and bananas are gone, we’re left with apples, oranges, melons and a scattering of fruits that no one’s excited to eat.

I’ve adapted Heather’s husband’s fruit salad recipe to help me deal with this problem. It’s probably overstating things to call this a recipe. It’s more of a preparation suggestion. However, I’ve made this for showers and parties and always get compliments and recipe requests. So, here it is:

Choose a sampling of fruits from your fridge, or if you’re making this for a baby shower or potluck, choose a sampling of fruits that look and taste good together from your local grocer. This is good, even if all you have are apples and oranges but it's fun to go a little more exotic every once in a while.

Chop the fruits into small pieces, the smaller the better. For example, grapes are ideal for this when cut in quarters.

Place all the fruit in a bowl.

Add a dollop of yogurt. Less is more here. You want just enough to moisten and flavor the fruit but not enough that you ever have “gobs” or white. No one wants “gobs” on their fruit salad. I prefer vanilla yogurt for this but I’ve used just about every flavor imaginable. Personally, if I’m using plain yogurt, I like to add a couple of tablespoons of applesauce or all-fruit jam to sweeten it a bit.

Gently stir to coat the fruit and you’re done!

I’ve served this as a side-dish at dinner in individual ramekins with a slice of orange on top and the kids can’t get enough. They will literally eat two to three times as much fruit when I serve it this way than when I simply chop it and serve it on a platter.

Cut-and-Paste Recipe

Simple Fruit Salad

www.biteuponbite.com

4 cups fruit
¼ cup yogurt (vanilla preferred)

Chop fruit into small pieces, no bigger than half an inch. Place them in a bowl with yogurt and stir gently. Take a minute to wonder why you printed off this non-recipe recipe card.

Steel-Cut Oats - Crockpot Instructions

I first discovered steel-cut oats a few years ago when Dan and I spent a weekend away at the Salish Lodge in Snoqualmie, Washington. Our breakfast there was amazing, full of flakey pastries, fresh fruit, perfect fried potatoes, and eggs, but when we were done eating, I couldn’t stop thinking about the oatmeal. The texture. The deliciousness.

Steel-cut oats are whole oat groats that have been cut into pieces. Because they are minimally processed, they retain more of their nutritive value than rolled oats and when cooked into oatmeal, they are amazing.

You can get the best price on them when you buy them in bulk. Most grocery stores that sell bulk grains will have them and if all else fails, you can buy a bag of Bob’s Red Mill steel-cut oats at an inflated price. Here is what they look like:

Cooking them is simple but it does take quite a while on the stovetop so I’ve recently started cooking mine overnight in the crockpot. Waking up to a hot breakfast, already prepared, is one of my favorite things, right under getting a great foot massage and sunshine.

Start by measuring two cups of steel-cut oats into your crockpot.

Next, add a teaspoon each of cinnamon and salt and stir to combine. I like to add the dry ingredients before adding the water because then you have less chance of the cinnamon clumping up and over-flavoring one area of the oatmeal.

Then, you pour in your six cups of water and add a pat of butter, about two Tablespoons. A little of the cinnamon will float to the top but that’s okay. It should look something like this:

Turn your slow cooker to low, cover and let it cook overnight. Eight hours is plenty but it can go longer if you need it to. In the morning, give the whole thing a good stir and serve with your favorite toppings. Personally I feel better when I load up on fruits and vegetables and limit my grains so I like to start with a cup of peaches, berries or other fruit and then stir in about half a cup of the oats.

It also tastes great with a little fruit jam mixed in or topped with a sprinkling of brown sugar and raisons. This morning, Magoo made a smiley face out of dried blueberries on his and Laylee brutally drowned hers with milk. Whatever floats your boat.



If you have leftover oats, consider using them to make Heather’s recycled grain bread. It’s a winner. In the cut-and-paste recipe below, I’ve also listed alternate instructions for cooking the oats on the stovetop.

Cut-and-Paste Recipe

Steel-Cut Oats

(Makes 6-8 Servings)

2 C steel-cut oats
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
6 C water
2 T butter
Fresh or dried fruit, brown sugar, or milk to taste

Combine oats, cinnamon, and salt in your crock pot. Pour in water and stir. Drop in butter. Cover. Turn crockpot to low and cook for 8-10 hours. Stir before serving. Oats can be served with your choice of fresh or dried fruit, brown sugar, fruit jam, or milk.

Alternately – you can combine the ingredients on the stove top and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Then turn the heat to low and simmer for 30 minutes or more, stirring the bottom frequently until the oats reach the desired consistency. You can also soak the oats in the water over night and then add the other ingredients and cook them on the stovetop as listed above but the cooking time should go down to between five and ten minutes.

Heavenly Whole Wheat Banana Muffins

It's a darn good thing I made a double batch! That's all I have to say.
All instructions following, however are for a single batch, which makes 24 muffins.

When you have a pile of bananas on your counter that are starting to look like this...

...then you know it's time for the Heavenly Whole Wheat Banana Muffins.

Whether or not you add chocolate chips will depend on whether or not you are in the throes of a chocolate craving that must be satisfied or not... last two months of pregnancy... I need no more excuse.

Start by preheating the oven to 375 degrees.

It's a matter of texture preference how you mash your bananas, but I find I prefer banana muffins with the flavor, but without the large chunks of banana in the middle. You can mash with a fork, mix with a hand mixer, or like me, purée to a smoothie in your blender.

However pleases you, just squish up four overripe bananas.


Next I melt a stick (1/2 C) of butter so it can be cooling.


Next I add all wet ingredients first, and then dry ingredients after into my mixer or mixing bowl.

Wet ingredients:
banana purée
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 C applesauce or other fruit purée
1/2 C melted butter
2 eggs

Dry ingredients:
1 C brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 C whole wheat flour

I was out of brown sugar, so instead I added 3/4 C white sugar and 1 1/2 Tbsp molasses.


I used fresh ground wheat flour, a combination of hard white and hard red.


The applesauce I added was an attempt to reduce the oil in this recipe. You could attempt to replace more of the butter with applesauce, at a 1:1 ratio. I wasn't feeling that brave, today.


At the last minute, I folded in 1 C chocolate chips, but you could put in chopped nuts or raisins or nothing if you prefer. Just mix as little as possible to combine all ingredients and remove any major lumps.

You can choose to grease your muffin tins, but I prefer the cupcake papers, since they are so much tidier. Try not to overfill. I found one heaping soup spoon to be the perfect amount of batter per muffin.


Place in the center of the oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a fork or toothpick comes away clean. Mine were perfect after 18 minutes.

And I do mean perfect.

Cut-And Paste Recipe:

Heavenly Whole Wheat Banana Muffins

4 overripe mashed bananas
1/2 C melted butter
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1/4 C applesauce
1 C brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 C whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 C chocolate chips / chopped nuts / raisins (optional)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Prepare two muffin pans (24 muffins) by greasing, spraying, or adding cupcake papers. Mash bananas. Melt and cool butter. Combine all wet ingredients in mixing bowl. Add all dry ingredients one at a time. Mix to combine with no major lumps. Fold in chocolate chips or nuts. Spoon batter into muffin cups. Bake for 15-20 minutes until fork or toothpick comes out clean.

Enjoy!

Whole Wheat Pancakes / Pancake Mix

My kids adore hearty, fluffy whole wheat pancakes. Offer them Krusteaz, and they wrinkle their noses and play with the pancakes. "What are these things?" they seem to say. "Where's the real food?"



I love to make my homemade pancakes for them because it's fun to watch breakfast consumed with such joy. That said, if you make the whole recipe every time , your toddler may abandon all hope of ever being fed again, and wind up eating two bowls of cold cereal before the pancake ever appears on the scene. See yesterday for example.

So I like to make a big canister full of the mix. Mine that I made yesterday was 9 times the real recipe. I just start with a container that I want to use to store the mix, and measure the flour in by two cup increments until I know how many I am going to do. Then I increase the mix accordingly.


So here's the recipe. This amount makes about 6 pancakes if you use 1/2 C batter per pancake. Which I do. Who doesn't love a humongous pancake? This recipe fed my husband and I and our two little girls yesterday for breakfast.

Pancake Mix:
2 C whole wheat flour
1 T baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 T sugar
4 T powdered milk

This is it. Just put in the ingredients in these proportions and mix well. (Helpful hint: 4 T =1/4 C. Saves my sanity, since measuring out 9 T of baking powder and sugar is not how I want to spend my Sunday morning.)

These are all ingredients that I store separately in my cupboards, so I just let this mix sit in my cupboard in the canister. When I'm ready to make the pancakes, I just measure out two C of the mix, add 1 egg and between 1 1/4 and 1 1/2 C water.


Then I mix the whole thing and fry on a medium hot griddle.


I like to do about 1/2 C batter per pancake, but a 1/3 C might be a more reasonable size.


I use the 1 1/2 C water because I like thinner pancakes. But of course you run the risk of doing this:
which is LAME. :)

I have one more pet peeve with pancakes, and that is I hate trying to butter them after they've cooled. I don't want to see the butter on my pancake. I want the butter lovely and melted and invisible. I solve this and also the problem of pulverizing a pancake with insufficiently softened butter by melting the butter and brushing it on the tops of the pancakes while the underside cooks with a pastry brush. Perfect every time.



I like to serve mine with home-canned applesauce, fruit syrup, or fresh fruit.


Enjoy!

Whole Wheat Pancakes

I was going to say that this is not becoming a food blog but I can’t really commit to that because I love making and photographing food and lately I’ve been drawn more to blogs that offer me useful information so I may be posting more recipes or links to recipes I love. Today, I’m giving you my recipe for easy delicious whole wheat pancakes. Enjoy!

2 eggs
2 cups whole wheat flour (fresh ground is best of course)
1 ½ cups milk
2 tablespoons honey
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt

Heat a griddle, cast-iron skillet or non-stick pan. I use a cool-touch griddle heated to 375F. Mix all ingredients in a bowl until they’re pretty well mixed and mostly smooth. I give the eggs a stir before adding the other ingredients but it’s not necessary.



Grease the pan as needed. I use cooking spray but butter will be just fine if you like the taste of deliciousness. Use your ¼ measure from the vegetable oil to spoon batter onto your pans. Cook until golden brown on the bottom. Then flip and cook the other side. Top with fruit, peanut butter, yogurt, applesauce or syrup but probably not all at once.

If your family likes to mow food like mine does, you can double this. A single batch makes about 12 pancakes and you can reheat the leftovers the next morning or as a snack.