Friday Recipe day

Sometimes it is a pleasant surprise when you have an abundance of a particular item and find it necessary to google the ingredient for new ideas.  Chocolate zucchini muffins comes to mind.  The Facebook pages these days are full of ideas.  Unfortunately, most of them look really really good, but probably not what your doctor wants you to eat.   Anything with  bacon and cheese in it can’t be all bad....can it? LOL

Today I saw french toast bites.  Looks like a little work but I can see where a child especially would think it was great.   They just cut the crusts off of bread and cut the bread in cubes.   They made an egg mixture with egg, milk and vanilla.   Dipped the bread and fried it off the same as you would if you were making regular french toast.   They sprinkled it with sugar and cinnamon .  Kids would like it and it would be less messy and more portable if need be.   Take breakfast to the beach?  

Another one I saw lately was one I had forgot about.  Sometimes , my mother would make Bisquits with cheese.  Roll your dough like you would for a cinnamon roll, fill it with grated cheese and herbs and cut it in slices.   Bake off according to regular baking powder bisquit directions.   This is a good alternative to ‘bread’ if you are having a main dish that hasn’t a lot of protein.  

Pudding is another good desert to serve if your meal is lacking enough protein.  Add bananas and you have a fruit serving too.   Even trying to eat on four dollars a day, you can still keep fresh fruit in the house.  

Potatoes have gotten a bad wrap lately, potatoes are full of protein and good vitamins.   Depression era recipe books are full of potato recipes.   It’s not hard to adapt them to more healthy, modern versions.   Potato soup is good and one of the recipes that I usually serve with cheezy bisquits.   Together its carbs, but also protein and calcium.   Active children need the carbs and protein.   Moderation is the key.  

One way to keep costs down and your waistline too, is to avoid having desert every meal.   Having cakes and pies on a special occasion, or just on Sunday Dinner is probably a good option.   Most doctors will probably tell you that the ingredients in all of those cakes and cookies are not the best option for your health.   Again, moderation is the key.  I think that you can reduce the sugar in many recipes, use recipes that incorporate other good ingredients (zucchini comes  to mind.  There is also carrot cake and muffins, you can replace some of the flour in some recipes with whole wheat flour. Chocolate is supposed to be good for you.

Chocolate Waffles.   They are the same as regular waffles, but have some cocoa powder in them.   We don’t make them often, but they are a favorite.   I also make a parfait with plain yogurt, fruit, and homemade granola.   Its good and full of a balance of grains, protein.

Cassarole are a good and easy dinner.   There are some people that got burned out as children on cassaroles—-ahh.   The intent of the sheet pan dinner.   They are coming into vogue but have been around for years.   Oven roasted veggies are a good alternative to boiling them.   The roasting seems to concentrate flavors and not boil away the nutrition.   Oven roast potatoes, carrots, onion , radishes, and parsnips and turnips if your family will eat them and you can find them inexpensive enough.   The radishes are a pleasant surprise.   They take on a sweet, rather than  sharp taste.  Just line a aluminum sheet pan with parchment, toss veggies with olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Bake at 350-400 degrees until vegetables are tender.   I bake them at whatever temperature that I need for the meat in the oven.   Usually 400.  

My daughter did new potatoes with garlic last week.   They were really good.  

Looking for new recipes, and thinking out of the box, can mix things up and make dinner more interesting.  









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