week 23: granola bars!

this week i am making complementary posts on HACSI and GBaB. they seemed mutually relevant but not quite the same, so i decided to keep up both blogs this week.

i have been wanting to make smitten kitchen’s chewy granola bar recipe for a while now, and after last week’s disappointment of how annoying it is to not be able to eat my breakfast before i get to work, this seemed like a good time to try something so portable.

i have some good news: i actually followed the recipe. well, pretty much. and you know why? this supports s’s oppositional defiant disorder diagnosis for me, but because she said i didn’t have to follow the recipe, it meant that i mostly chose to.

and! it made them turn out so beautiful!

week OMG-i-have-been-doing-this-for-so-long!/22: broccoli spinach spaghetti bake.

last week was a leftovers week, hence no post!

so i have gotten so good at this bringing breakfasts all but one day per week thing, that i have been using my time to push myself. i want, as i have mentioned before, to expand what i see as breakfasty. so when i saw this broccoli-spaghetti fritatta on the kitchn, it seemed like a good starting point. i thought, though, about how i like stratas more than fritattas, so decided to up the amount of spaghetti to have more the amount i would have of bread. by volume. is anyone seeing where this is going? if not, there’s an interesting point i would like to share with you all: you know what bakes differently than bread, when soaked in eggs? spaghetti. it’s so much denser, it’s a whole different world. also, i should have maybe doubled the spaghetti from the recipe, rather than quadrupling it.

but, hindsight is 20/20, and it’s still really tasty!

week 20: veggie pigs in a spinach-laden blanket!

last week was my february break–thanks for yr bizarro holiday schedule, massachusetts! so, no pre-made breakfasts–i had plenty of time to make them every day. friday, though, i got back on the pre-making train to prepare for this week of normal schedule time.

since i had all this time off, i put more energy than i normally would into making whole wheat croissant dough… but still not enough energy to make actual successful whole wheat croissant dough. whoops.

but all was not lost! my big success of february break was that s and i went to the barn in greenfield, an overstock grocery store that i love  (incidentally, it’s actually where i got the veggie dogs i used to make this week’s breakfast–but that’s not my point). i saw this:

i don't *even* want you anymore.

it’s the veggie egg/cheese/meat biscuits whose not-quite-goodness made me want to start this blog–i was spending like $5 to get a pack of four of them and then they were not even that satisfying. but for $1.50? i would have snapped them up! this time, though, i walked right by, after taking a picture, because i have been so successful at making foods i actually want to eat!

so instead, i bought supplies to make breakfast, for even cheaper, and went home.

week 19 update!

i totally made it this week. i could have even gone all 5 days–last night i really wanted to!–but on wednesday night i was really hungry and ate my breakfast at like 11:30 pm. bad idea! or rather, good idea at the time, but then regrettable upon reflection.

s peeled all of the rest of my hard-boiled eggs this week, so no more cool-guy egg sunglasses. it was way better.

next week is february break–a bizarro massachusetts thing that, working in a school, i am really into–so i don’t need to worry about breakfast. i have a pretty good store of breakfasts in the freezer, for a leftover week, but i also have some ideas i am excited about so i think i don’t need to use the leftovers right away.

anyway, this week’s stats:

• breakfasts bought: 1. success!
• pre-made breakfasts eaten: 4. one of which was at night. one day, i made a breakfast because i didn’t go into work at the regular time.
• cost on supplies for breakfasts made: no money!
• time to prepare breakfasts for the week: 50 minutesish.
• tastiness factor (scale where 1 is not tasty at ALL and 5 is exceptionally tasty): 4–the muffins higher, the eggs a little lower.

 

xoxo

 

love

eliz.

week 19: blueberry corn muffins and hard boiled eggs

so, in my attempt to find protein-sources-on-the-side that i will eat for breakfast, this week i am trying with hard boiled eggs, because i really wanted a muffin this week. it felt like this was a good week to trial it, since next week is a vacation week so i get a bit of time to reassess my direction after friday.

also, my co-op has relatively recently come into a large amount of cook’s illustrated magazines. if you haven’t read cook’s illustrated, i recommend doing so–it’s fascinating, and they are just so precise. they test out EVERYTHING and tell you the best way to, for example, defrost cupcakes. our house is, suffice to say, not like that. so nicole and i were talking about making a half-assed cooking semi-illustrated response–i feel like i have a few thoughts to work in that vein on this post! i will put them in italics.

week 18: tofu mini-fritattas and breadsticks!

last week i totally succeeded with the strata. this weekend, i was gone on the ema fund board retreat, which was awesome but weekend-consuming. while i was gone, shayn texted me that he had made me cheesy breadsticks for two reasons:

1. to use up some frozen pizza dough he had made before, and to use up some mozzarella he bought on anniversarication, and
2. because he is the best.

so that became what i based my weekend breakfast plans around.

last week, omer had posted a recipe for mini tofu fritattas on my fb page. i had been planning to make them some week when i make muffins–which i want to do soon!–but since i now had a grain and still needed protein and veggies, this seemed like a good time to do it.

my fritattas are not the beauteous golden things of the picture in the link. but more on that soon.

week 17: strata!

so, last week was such a relative failure (though! still only 1 bought breakfast!) that i had to go back to a more traditional breakfast, and i decided that i should plan to buy something so that i could be really excited about it!

i saw that veggie ham was on sale at stop and shop while i was doing our house grocery run. and i love veggie ham. it’s a strange love, but i am so into it.

from there, i knew: strata! i found english muffins on sale buy one get one free–we have bread at home, but i wanted larger chunks than i could get from thin slices–and i figured everything else i needed could come from the house stock.