It's Tuesday morning of Week Five.
It's Tuesday! On the menu for breakfast is a favorite with the kids- a skillet of scrambled egg, hash brown and sausage. Everyone eats this quickly without any complaint. All the ingredients compliment each other and it's versatile- you can throw in just about any kind of sauce: salsa (hot, green, chipotle, etc.), hollandaise, country gravy, cheese sauce, and so on. Or it's just good with salt and a generous amount of pepper, which is what I'm doing today.
For dinner, on the menu is my youngest son's absolute favorite meal - and one of mine too. It's cheese stuffed tortellini with pesto and alfredo sauce. I have made tortellini from scratch before but today I'm going the easy route. Prepared tortellini with prepared sauces - don't discount these, there are some really good ones on the market and it's so easy, so good and way cheaper than going to a restaurant for the same dish.
For dessert, Old Fashioned Molasses cookies are on the menu. These are amazing! Chewy on the inside with a crackled sugar coating, and rich spicy ginger, molasses and clove flavor.... with an aroma that is almost as good as the cookie itself. They are good on their own - but my kids love to eat them with frosting. Sometimes I drizzle a pretty pattern of frosting over all the cookies, and other times I just set a bowl of frosting next the cookies and let people decide if they want some on their cookie or not. Today I have leftover frosting from making and decorating Halloween sugar cookies a couple of days ago - so I will set that next to the cookies.
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| Scrambled eggs, Hashbrowns and Sausage |
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| Pesto Alfredo Tortellini Alfredo, Ciabatta, Green Peas and Old Fashioned Molasses Cookies |
BREAKFAST:
1. Heat a large frying pan over medium-high. Melt a little butter in it and spread it around the pan. Pour a bag of frozen Potatoes O'Brien into the hot butter. (Potatoes O'Brien have onion and red and green bell pepper pieces mixed in with the potatoes).
2. Meanwhile, heat a medium size frying pan over medium heat. Spray it with cooking spray. Put some breakfast sausage into it (I used Jimmy Dean's hot sausage). Break it into pieces with a fork to crumble.
3. While those cook, break enough eggs for everyone into a bowl. Add a little milk, salt and pepper. Whisk until a uniform mixture.
4. Let the hashbrowns cook until they are browned and unfrozen, salt and pepper, then use a spatula to flip them all over at once to the other side.
5. Continue cooking sausage until it is completely browned and cooked through. When the sausage is cooked through, dump it into the hash browns.
6. Put the sausage frying pan back onto the burner, pour the egg mixture into the hot sausage fat. Use the side of a fork or a spatula, to scrape the egg mixture off the bottom (the cooked egg). Keep scraping the cooked egg mixture from the bottom of the pan, letting the runny mixture touch the hot pan surface -- until it is all cooked.
7. Pour the scrambled egg into the hash brown and sausage mixture, mix up to make it all completely mixed. ENJOY!
8. ENJOY!
DINNER:
1. Heat a big pot of boiling water. Add your favorite flavor of tortellini and cook according to package directions.
2. Drain and pour back into the pot.
3. Pour a jar of pesto over and then a jar of alfredo. Mix well.
4. ENJOY! Serve with parmesan, hot peppers and ciabatta bread.
DESSERT:
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Pour oil and molasses into a measuring cup - I do this because the amounts add up to one cup and it makes the molasses easier to measure (it doesn't stick to the measuring cup with the oil in there).
2. Add the sugar and eggs. Mix well.
3. Add cinnamon, ginger, and cloves.
4. Add baking soda and flour. Mix well.
5. Shape into large balls, roll in sugar and place on greased cookie sheet.
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cool slightly (or completely) before serving. They will be puffed up when you pull them out of the oven, then they will "deflate" into a pretty, crackly cookie as they cool.
7. Frosting optional. ENJOY!!
