What's For Lunch Wednesday

Well we had another Costco lunch today. I'll have to stop planning our trips for Wednesday! The girls had apple appetizers while we shopped and polished off a very large piece of cheese pizza for lunch. YUMMY!

Christmas Day Breakfast

Our traditional Christmas breakfast consists of our favorite Egg Casserole and Bear Claws. Both are SO yummy. I made them a day ahead and they kept perfectly in the fridge. It was so nice to just pop everything in the oven and concentrate on the fun!

Cinnamon Almond Bear Claws

http://www.odense.com/index.php?page=recipe&id=96

Ingredients

1-7 oz box Almond Paste, grated

1/3 cup sugar

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

Powdered sugar for dusting counter

1-17.3 oz box puff pastry sheets (contains 2 sheets)

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400° F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Beat Almond Paste, sugar and cinnamon with mixer or food processor until the texture of fine crumbs. Set aside.
3. Dust counter and rolling pin with powdered sugar. Unfold one sheet of puff pastry. Roll out to an 11 by 12 inch rectangle and brush with butter. Sprinkle center with 1/3 cup loosely scooped almond mixture and fold one side over filling. Brush unbuttered top with butter and sprinkle with 1/3 cup of filling.
4. Fold remaining 1/3 dough over entire rectangle, pinching edges to seal. Fold ends under. Brush top with butter and evenly sprinkle with 1/4 cup mixture. Cut into 8 equal slices (about 3&1/2" X 1&1/2"). Make five 1/2" cuts in each piece.
5. Place claws on baking sheet and separate cuts by spreading into a slight smile shape. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until tops are golden brown and pastry is well puffed. Place sheet on wire rack until claws are cool. Store in an air tight container.
6. While claws are baking; repeat steps 3-5 with second sheet of puff pastry and remaining filling.

Egg Casserole
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/egg-casserole-recipe2/index.html

Ingredients

8 hard boiled eggs
1/4 C butter or margarine

1/4 C all-purpose flour
2 C half-and-half
1 t House seasoning, recipe follows
1/4 t dry mustard
1 C freshly grated Gruyere
1/2 C freshly grated Parmesan

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Gently remove the shell from the hard-boiled eggs and cut in 1/2. Place cut side down in a baking dish greased with margarine.
In a saucepan, melt the margarine, add the flour, and cook, stirring for 2 to 3 minutes. Add the half-and-half gradually, and stir until mixture thickens and season with house seasoning. Add the dry mustard and the Gruyere and stir until melted. Pour the sauce over the eggs and sprinkle top with Parmesan. Bake for approximately 20 to 30 minutes until bubbling and top is golden brown.

Christmas Eve Dinner

Christmas Eve dinner is something we start looking forward to just shortly after Thanksgiving. Pee Paw makes his famous shrimp and ham and Nana makes the best baked beans and my favorite macaroni and cheese. Leyna's favorite parts of dinner were the ham and the rolls. Cora chowed down on the mac and cheese and fruit salad. And Daddy was nice enough to peel all of my shrimp for me. Now that's love ;) YUMMY!!!

Christmas Eve Eve Dinner

We decided this year that our new Christmas Eve Eve tradition will be to have Chinese food for dinner. We don't get it often so it's a good special treat and way different from all of the other foods we'll be eating over the next few days.
Tonight Cora feasted on Vegetable Lo Mein and Fried Rice, while Leyna stuck to Egg Drop Soup. I didn't get any pictures but it was all quite tasty!

What's For Lunch Wednesday

After a morning of shopping and snacking on trail mix, Leyna was very adamant about exactly what her lunch should consist of. It needed to be in a muffin tin. It needed to include broccoli, cauliflower, chips, salsa, and a cookie. Got it. Leyna's lunch is on the top and Cora's is on the bottom.

Leyna declined macaroni and cheese in favor of a slice of cheese, which she didn't eat anyway. Cora didn't eat her cookie... what's up with that???

Ick

They wanted pickles for breakfast this morning...

Is that healthy? I rounded the meal out with dry cereal and craisins!

Chocolate Pretzel Candies

In my opinion, there is no better sweet & savory combination than pretzels and chocolate. Leyna and I wanted to make some goodies for Daddy's co-workers so we whipped these little goodies up. They are so easy and SO addictive. Leyna helped to unwrap and place the Hershey Kisses. We used 4 bags of kisses & hugs so I think we made over 200 of these things. Yikes!

Chocolate Pretzel Candies
pretzels "snaps"
Hershey Kisses or Hugs
M&Ms

Preheat oven to 250. Lay pretzels on a non-stick or foil-lined baking sheet and top with one Hershey Kiss or Hug each. Place in oven for about 4 minutes, or until the chocolate is soft enough to give when you press it. The Hugs will melt a little faster than the Kisses and I know oven temperatures vary so you may have to eyeball it a bit. As soon as you take them out place an M&M on top of each Hershey Kiss or Hug and gently press it down. Place the cookie sheet in the fridge for 10 minutes to allow the chocolate to harden, then store at room temperature in a sealed container. Summon all of your will power not to eat them all in one sitting!

Chicken Nugget Parmesan

Okay, I know today was supposed to be WFLW but I completely forgot to take a picture of the lunch we had at Reagan & Reed's house today. I made several mental notes to myself to remember but I guess I lost them.
Luckily, I can make it up to you with this lovely little recipe I discovered tonight. The girls had very abbreviated naps this afternoon and I knew that dinner would have to be something they loved in order to get any food in their grumpy tummies. Spaghetti is always a hit but I wanted to add some protein and chicken nuggets came to mind. Then I thought, Chicken Parmesan! It was a huge hit and I think we'll be having it often.

Chicken Nugget Parmesan
chicken nuggets
1 jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce
parmesan cheese
2 C mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Spray the bottom of an 11x13 pan with olive oil. Cover the bottom of the dish with chicken nuggets and sprinkle them with parmesan cheese. Pour the spaghetti sauce all over the nuggets. Top with mozzarella cheese and bake for 30 minutes.
The girls and I ate our chicken parmesan over angel hair pasta and Daddy put his on a sub roll and then lightly toasted the whole thing in the oven. We were all happy :)

Pizza Friday - Pizza for lunch

Though I have no picture to prove it, we had pizza for lunch at Costco today. And I'm not sure what it is about this time of year but I just don't feel like cooking! So, I couldn't take the thought of making pizza dough and doing the dishes that go with it. Instead I grabbed a rotisserie chicken from Costco and whipped up this easy, tasty little dinner. The bread is "kinda" like pizza... I put butter, garlic powder, and honey on it and then baked it until it was a little bit toasty. Then I added some cheese and put it back in the oven until it was melted. The grown ups loved it and the girls wouldn't touch it but happily ate their chicken and veggies.

Milk too.

Please refer to the previous post. I just wanted to let you know that if you don't have syrup, milk will work too. Happy hair styling!

Syrup. It does a hairdo good...

Pizza Friday - Hawaiian Pizza

 

There's not much to say except that the girls did SO WELL working together to make the dough and it was GOOD.

What's in there?

After a full morning of grocery shopping our fridge and pantry are fully restocked and reorganized. I'm always interested in what other people have on their shelves, so I thought today I'd give you a peek at ours. I'll start with some shots from the fridge and then move on to the pantry shelf by shelf. I'm thinking maybe no one cares but here goes anyway! ;)

(Those are flax seeds and wheat germ in the clear bottles on the  middle shelf.)

Um, yeah. We love cheese.

The little green things are tomatillos, in case you're wondering.

LOVE Franks hot sauce.

The freezer is not very organized :(

Plenty of cereal and mac-n-cheese for the girls.

This spice shelf needs a little TLC...

Do you think we have enough vinegar? ;)

What's For Lunch Wednesday

I could just kick myself for forgetting to take a picture today! Argh. We actually had lunch at Chik-fil-A today and the girls surprised me by eating all of their food. Believe it or not, it doesn't always happen even when we go out and get something that's supposed to appeal to kids. Anyway, both girls had nuggets, a fruit cup, and chocolate milk. Try to picture that in your head :)