Home Smells Like Cooking: Week 8 Friday: Peach Oatmeal and Monkeybread; White Chili / Cauliflower/ Chocolate Gooey Bars

It's Friday morning of Week Eight.

It's FRIDAY. Smooth creamy oatmeal sweetened with peach jam will be great start to this day. To make it eve better, I am making caramel drenched monkey bread - light, crisp on the outside pillowy soft on the inside pieces of pull-apart bread dripping with caramel.

For dinner we are having white chili - tender chunks of chicken with white beans, slow cooked onions and green chiles. These are some of my very favorite things.

For dessert we are having gooey bars. I had these once when I was young -at some pot luck somewhere- and fell in love with them. They are gooey with marshmallow, chocolate and a sticky sweet topping. I've had trouble making them in the past - for some reason they love to overflow on me. I think it's because I like to add more toppings than the recipe calls for and then the sweetened condensed milk rises and the whole thing overflows. Today - I will be careful not to do that! I am really wanting to eat these - so they must turn out perfect! :)

Peach Oatmeal and Monkeybread

White Chili and Cauliflower with Chocolate Gooey Bars

BREAKFAST:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Add a stick (1/2 cup) of butter or margarine into a small saucepan over medium-low heat.

2. Add 1 cup brown sugar to the saucepan. Let it cook over medium-low heat.

3. Meanwhile, get out 3-4 cans of refrigerated biscuit dough.

4. I use scissors, but you could use a knife to cut each biscuit round into 4 pieces.

5. Cut all the biscuits into pieces.

6. By now the brown sugar/butter sauce is probably boiling. Remove it from the heat and set aside.

7. Make a mixture of white sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl. Also grease a bundt pan.

8. Drop a few of the dough pieces into the cinnamon sugar mixture. Roll or spoon the mixture over the pieces to coat well.

9. Put the cinnamon-sugar coated pieces into the greased bundt pan.

10. Do this with all the remaining pieces.

11. Pour the brown sugar-butter mixture (that you set aside earlier) evenly over the top of the dough pieces in the bundt pan.

12. Bake for 30 minutes or so until it is lightly browned on top.

13. Let sit a few minutes. Then (quickly) turn it upside down on a large pan or platter and remove the bundt pan.

14. Serve while still warm - it should pull easily apart into pieces.

15. ENJOY!

DINNER:

1. I never remember to soak the beans overnight, so I have to follow the directions on the package for the "express" method of preparing them. So I rinse them and then put them in a big pot. This recipe calls for 1 pound of white beans.

2. Cover well with water, bring to boil, cover and then remove from heat.

3. Let sit covered for 30 minutes or more, then rinse.

4. Put the beans into the crockpot.

5. Add 3 chicken breasts cut into bite-size chunks into the crockpot.

6. Add 2 cans diced green chiles and a can corn kernals to the crockpot.

7. Add chicken broth (or water plus chicken bouillon) - I used about 6 cups even though recipe called for 8 cups.

8. Add the spices -1 Tablespoon cumin, 1 Tablespoon oregano, 1 teaspoon cayenne and 1/2 teaspoon cloves.

9. Add salt and pepper to taste.

10. The recipe calls for zucchini but I found a really good deal on these chilis - they just said chilies from Mexico so I didn't even know what kind they were. I just chopped them up and added as many as I thought would be good to the pot - and froze the rest to use later.