How to make awesome French Toast!

Everyone knows that I like to do the price-match thing at Walmart.  And very often I forget to bring a cooler with any ice packs.  So instead of worrying about things spoiling in my car as I multi-task the crap out of a shopping trip, I buy a bag of Rhodes frozen white bread loaves.

This stuff is awesome. I makes excellent pizza dough and excellent bread.  

Well I got a little crazy at my other favorite store (Sam's Club) and bought too much meat.  Now these lovely loaves take up quite a bit of space.  Needless to say I had three loaves that thawed out and I decided to do the bread thing (rather than pizza -- since we did that the day before.)  

There was no way we were going to eat three loaves in one night, so I thought why don't I try to make french toast.  Come to find out, after sitting out all night it was finally "set." Which means --> It didn't squish down flat when I cut it -- like at dinner the night before.

I mixed up the normal eggs,  milk, vanilla and cinnamon french toast mix. Sliced up the loaf of bread, dipped it in the egg mix and slapped it onto a frying pan.  And viola!

THE PERFECT FRENCH TOAST!

Everyone loved it! Andddd C#1 road tested the leftovers this morning for breakfast and they heated up in the microwave quite nice, too. This "creation" is definitely a keeper!

I am sure anyone that makes "real" homemade" bread could use this neat little trick, too.  It was a good way to use a loaf of bread.

That's it for today. Till next time!

Concord Grape Cobbler

The grape pie that I made a couple days ago was a definite hit.  Not that I didn't already know that since this was my second attempt at making it.

http://beckysbiscuits.blogspot.com/2013/09/grape-pie.html

I thought it might be fun (and necessary) to make another grape dessert.  But, I was feeling incredibly lazy and did not want to make a pie crust.  I know -- I'm a big baby about that...

So I decided to make a "grape cobbler."  That should work, right?!

I grabbed my "go to" cobbler cookbook.  This book did not have any grape recipes to speak of. Hmmmm...

So then I thought, I can just fake it with the pie recipe.  And I did with a couple alterations.  Does that make it my recipe?!  I don't even know.  Probably not...

The BIG alteration was there is no crust! (YAY!) And the small alteration is that for the topping I used 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 cup brown sugar.  Soooooooooooo not really that different.  But it worked! And that is all I care about.  And it tasted fabulous...  That too.

So there you have it "Concord Grape Cobbler."  Easy peasy! Except for the deskinning/deseeding part.

Till next time!

Concord Grape Pie!

It is that time of year, again. But, sadly our grapes produced naught.  Thankfully I have a very generous friend who filled that needed void.  And alas, there was grape pie to be had...

Of course, grape pie is extremely time consuming.... UNLESS you have the right tools and certain "little" people to do your bidding.

I found the tried and true recipe from BH&G Encyclopedia of Home Cooking Volume 9 ---> "Concord Grape Pie" ---> on page 1051.

The recipe itself is pretty easy, but, the skinning and deseeding of the grapes does prove to be a mite tedious.  But, like I said before with the right tools and C#1 and C#2 readily available it made for a quicker job.  C#2 proved to be a whiz at removing the pulp from the skin.  But, refused to do it all. So, I instructed C#1 on how to do this task, too.  They didn't complain too much.

The inside grape pulp kind of look like eyeballs. Or something creepy like that...

The next fun thing is to cook the pulp.

And then probably the second most fun thing about making this pie is removing the seeds.

With the right sieve, this wasn't too bad.  

Then you have to mix the pulp and skins all together and the rest is easy...

The recipe is really short, which is exactly what I like.  And after it was all done it looked like this:

It is sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo good!!! It has been a couple of years, since the last time I (we) made this.

Here is the recipe --- well a very close replica:

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/pies/concord-grape-pie/

I also discovered that there were enough grapes to make two more pies!!! And with C#1 and C#2 ready to help (heehee!) those grapes were deskinned and deseeded in no time!!  I will freeze that extra filling for another day.  Maybe we'll be able to wait a little bit, before needing more...  It's so good, that will be very hard.

That's it for today.  Till next time...