Breakfast Burritos with Sausage and Peppers

A fun breakfast for Presidents Day  is Sausage Breakfast Burritos. 

It is easy to shred and chop lots of fillings and lay them out in colorful bowls for your guests to just  make their own burrito the way they like it!

chopped tomatoes

shredded cheddar cheese

1/2 of a Jimmy Dean sausage 1 pound chub.....we had leftovers so I froze it in a freezer bag. 

Scrambled eggs with red peppers......

All the fixins for Sausage and Egg Breakfast Burritos 

I use fried up and crumbled Jimmy Dean sausage and scrambled eggs with red peppers, some cheddar cheese, tomatoes, and top with salsa or sour cream.

honeydew melon 

Breakfast Burritos are a fun holiday treat!
Now I just have to decide if I'll accomplish anything today! Yum. 

Warm up the tortillas in the microwave and cut up some fruits for side dishes.  Then pour some orange juice and dig in!

Winter Soup Recipes

I was at the Sprouts Market near Fashion Place Mall yesterday with the hubs. We were getting lots of Farmer's Market produce because it is so fresh and delicious there. They had this most delicious looking soup bar! It made me want to go home and make soup. So I did! (after I got lots of yummy organic veggies and fruits!)

But before I did I had to sample some of their BUTTERNUT SQUASH soup. It was delicious. The veggie gourd is low in fat and high in fiber and potassium too. Yum to that, right? It had a hint of nutmeg in it.

Butternut Squash makes a delicious soup! I'll have to mess around with that one! 

Another soup I love to make is broccoli cheese or cream of broccoli.  It is easy and sosooooo yummy. The recipe is  HERE. 


I got a few yellow crook-neck squash, some zuchini and a really giant sweet onion and a giant yellow pepper!. And their avocados were GIANT! They know how to grow stuff! For sure!  I'll be making a great salad with those things. But what I really love are their fruits. They had blackberries for $2.50 a basket that were so big and sweet looking I bought 2 baskets! And the Cuties were so cute!

The recipe for this homemade chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles is HERE. It's another favorite soup of mine, perfect for the cold, rainy weather we've had lately, and especially today!

White Bean Chicken Stew

And here is my Clam Chowder Soup.  It's one of my hub's favorites.

Here is my recipe for clam chowder. You can delete the clams and add some parmesan cheese and it's a pretty good Potato Cheese soup too. 

But it got me thinking about how much healthy stuff goes into soup and how we could probably lose more weight if we just replaced a few pasta dishes with veggie soups and stews.  I'm going to make more veggie soups! Especially on a rainy day like we've had. Now if I can just stay away from the crusty bread and butter!

Spaghetti Alfredo

I was at the market the other day and I saw half pints of cream on sale for 25 cents. I thought to myself.....hmmm.....self.....why don't we make some alfredo pasta? Yum.

Spaghetti Alfredo Noodles is a great weeknight dinner.....super easy and super delicious! 

Spaghetti Alfredo  by the Weekday Chef

So I bought a bunch of different boxes of noodles and pastas, thinking that I would decide later what type I wanted to cook. But when I got home, I didn't realize one of my boxes of spaghetti had a lid that was coming apart. I picked it up and it fell all over the counter next to the stove.

So we made spaghetti alfredo for dinner.  It was yummdiddlyumptious!

Here is the recipe for Spaghetti Alfredo
1/2 cube sweet cream butter salted
1/2 pint of cream
1/2 to 3/4 cup of Parmesan cheese shredded
1/2 teaspoon Johnny's Garlic Seasoning Salt
A few shakes of dried parsley
A shake of Johnny's Seasoning Salt to your taste

I just drained the pasta and then mixed this stuff in quickly while the noodles were hot. Just toss it for a minute and season it and then eat it! So simple yet so divine!

These are orange rolls made with a roll dough recipe. I got the recipe from my neighbor Barbara B. and boy are they good! 

I put a side salad with grape tomatoes and green peppers with it and freshly made ranch dressing and some crusty french bread with real butter. Yes it is not a low calorie meal, but hey, you can't have your rice crispie treats and eat them too!

Rice crispie treats with butterscotch morsels sprinkled on top while warm. 

I have loved rice crispie treats since I was a little kid. The butterscotch morsels make them quite divine! The recipes are HERE. 

The homemade alfredo sauce  goes great with chicken if you have some leftover rotisserie or a grilled breast. But it is good by itself too on any kind of pasta. I've done it with shrimp too. Yum. It's so easy. I don't know why we don't make it more often!

Parmesan Breadsticks and Pizza Dough

Cheesy Parmesan Breadsticks from Pizza Dough.....

Homemade Pizza and breadsticks.....a great Monday night quickie dinner! 

I used this recipe to make some pizza tonight at home. I had some leftover Parmesan cheese from making chicken alfredo the other night. It is great on breadsticks too. So I used half of the recipe for a medium sized pizza for the hubs and I, and the other half I made some mini breadsticks that will will go great with some cream of broccoli soup tomorrow. (that's not sayin they will last till tomorrow!) tee hee....

Gather your ingredients, start with WARM water to sprinkle the packet of yeast into.  

These are the things I put on top of my cheesy-garlic Parmesan breadsticks! I keep Parmesan in the freezer in the baggie it comes in. I bring it out when needed and that way it is always fresh. It is GREAT on Italian green salads and also in pasta dishes of any sort! 

I just LOVE these little Skookie cast-iron pans I got for my birthday a few years back from my son Jeff and daughter-in-law Wendy. They are perfect for individual pan pizzas!  WOOT! Here is a link for the pans HERE.

Added the sauce and then topped with cheese.....easy peasy.....

Homemade Pizzas and breadsticks ......make it tonight! 

The Weekday Chef loves breads. It's sadly, my downfall. And Pizza and buttery breadsticks are kind of the devil. (stupid buttery morsels of delight....stupid things....) sounds of sniffing....

Here is the recipe. It is from Jamie Cooks it UP! (I love her!)
30 MINUTE PIZZA DOUGH 

1 C warm water
1 T sugar
1 T yeast (I use Active Dry Yeast)
1 t salt
3 T vegetable or canola oil
2 1/2 – 3 C flour

I just pour a cup of warm water in my mixer and then dump in the yeast and then sugar and leave them to bubble up for 5 minutes while I gathered the pizza ingredients. Then I added the teaspoon salt and 3 Tablespoons of oil. (Olive oil works great too) and added 2 cups of flour slowly and then about 2 3/4 when it was about done. Just add enough so it isn't sticky anymore and pulls away from the pan. 

Roll out the pizza dough onto a pizza stone brushed with oil. 

Breadsticks from Pizza Dough...I let them rise a little before baking.....then I painted melted butter on them with a silicone soft brush and topped them with Parmesan Cheese and Johnny's Garlic Salt Mixture.

 I used a little more than half of the dough on my pizza stone and rolled it out and then let it set while I grated the cheese. Then I used the other half, rolled it out in a short rectangle about 1/3 of an inch thick. Then I cut rectangles, twisted them and layed them in my little mini pizza pans. They rise while the pizza is cooking. 

I add PREGO spaghetti sauce for my pizzas and top with Mozzarella cheese and pineapple bits, bacon, tomato slices and green peppers and purple onion. Sometimes I add mushrooms and olives too if we have them on hand. It's yummyrific! 

Homemade Pizza  and Parmesan Breadsticks made from a really EASY PEASY Pizza Dough! 

Add favorite toppings to pizza and cook at 475 for 8 to 12 minutes depending on your oven. 

This is one of the easiest and quickest dinners around....homemade pizzas and breadsticks! 

Homemade Pizza dough breadsticks topped with butter and Parmesan cheese!

Maybe we'll start having pizza nights every Monday! mmmhmmm....

Homemade Soft Pretzels,

I love those to get one of those soft pretzels from the Pretzel Shack in the mall. Their soft pretzel bites and pretzel dogs (mini pigs in a blanket) are soooooo yummy I had to try to make some at home!

Here's my yummy soft pretzels! 

They took some time but were easy to make, and VERY light and soft. 

 I found a recipe from Smitten Kitchen HERE.  She adapted her recipe from Martha Stewart's. Then I looked at 3 more recipes and read comments for about an hour. Then I looked up recipes on the Food Network and All Recipes.com.  I chose this recipe because of all the positive comments. It is from the FOOD NETWORK. It is Alton Brown's recipe and there was also a video. The link is HERE.

Then I watched a few you tubes on pretzel making and Martha Stewart had a video too. Those are THE BEST ways to learn how to cook something! You tube videos!! I adapted this one after making it.  My recipe has a little more sugar and less salt. And I did not bake mine as long. I like them lighter and soft, not hard on the outside so I added DOUGH ENHANCER POWDER.

My dough mixed up and ready to cover.....

 Mix the warm water and sugar and then sprinkle on the yeast packet. Let it sit until it is foamy. They call that "proofing" the yeast, it will take 5 minutes. Then add the salt and melted butter and put your dough hook on your mixmaster. Add a cup of flour to start. 

Add the rest of the flour and some dough enhancer.  Knead for a few minutes.  

The Dough Enhancer makes bread softer and doughier. You can get it from Bosch bread making supply store.  They were easy and yummy and kinda fun! 

Soft Pretzels (my recipe adapted from Alton Brown)
1 package instant dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
4 Tablespoons melted BUTTER
1 teaspoon dough enhancer (optional for softer pretzels)
4 1/4 cups all purpose flour
Mix, knead, let rise for an hour, then roll out and make your pretzels. Place on parchment paper on cookie sheets and bake for 6 to 7 minutes at 425 degrees.

Now we are ready to roll the pretzel dough out.....it has puffed up quite a bit....

 Always use less flour to start on any bread recipe. Then slowly add in by cupfuls.  This dough was smooth, not really very sticky at all. 

Then place dough ball in an oiled pan and cover for an hour to let it rise. Then I rolled it out on my surface.  Make a big rectangle shape. My dough was about 1/2 inch thick, maybe a little less. 

I rolled pretzel dough  into a rectangle.....

Get your pizza cutter and cut the dough down the middle, then 2 more times to make 4 sections. Then cut each section into 3 or 5 strips, depending upon how large or small you want your pretzels. 

Cut Soft Pretzel Dough into 4 sections with a pizza cutter, and then cut each section into 5  skinny strips....to make 20 pretzels.

If it is for a party I recommend the 5 strips. This will give you 20 good, 3 inch bite sized pretzels. If you do the larger (palm sized thick pretzels) 3 strips will make 12 big and soft 5 inch pretzels. 

                            Here were my ingredients....and my cute new RACHEL RAY PAN! It is oval, and orange, with a soft, rubber handle and with a pour spout. SO CUTE right? I love her stuff! I got it on sale at J. C. Pennys! Only $15 bucks and I had a 20% off coupon if I opened a charge (yes I'm a sucker for a coupon!). 

(Mix a bath of 5 cups hot water to 1/3 cup baking soda in a deep fry pan. Set on warm on stove for after pretzels are made and formed.) 

I mixed up the baking soda and water hot bath....left it on low on the stove and then formed my pretzels....

They take less than a minute each in the hot water bath...just like a bagel!

I played with my dough making all kinds of shapes....it would be so fun for kids to do too! 

Roll it, flip it twice around, then turn each end up and pinch...

To roll them I made a long snake, 12 to 16 inches long, and then make make a loop, then twist it once again and take the tails and flip them up to the round loop and press them down. Then I turned each one over. 

Soft Pretzels.   That's it!  

Then drop them in the baking soda and hot water bath....just for like 45 seconds each...

Pick pretzels up with a slotted spoon and place on a cookie sheet with parchment paper on it..

More playing with soft pretzel dough....lol.....

Oh boy is this fun! I got about 3 cookie sheets full...About 20 pretzels....

Top each pretzel with a sprinkle of kosher salt before baking. (not much, or too salty!)

Sprinkled on the salt....

Then ready to bake! 

Bake in 425 oven for 5 1/2  to 71/2  minutes. Watch them as each oven is a little different. My top shelf cooked them faster than my bottom shelf too, so I had an extra minute on the lower shelf of pretzels.

Here they are just hot out of the oven....soft and yummy....If you like them hard on the outside just do an egg wash and cook them a bit longer in the oven...they will have a stiffer, smooth and chewy outside.....

Add the melted butter on with a silicone brush....

When they come out of the oven brush them with melted butter and a silicone brush. EAT! They are lightly crisp on the outside and buttery chewy inside. Yummy! The hubs loved them! He loves anything salty. 

Oh yeah....that's what I'm talkin about!  I brought them to my classroom the next day
for our little cast party....we are doing 4 little fairy tale plays....I brought O.J. to go with them...yum! 

Dip them in chili, mustard,light cream cheese with raspberry homemade jam, or cinnamon and sugar or just plain. Next time I'll try putting a 1/4 slice of hot dog inside each one and make pretzel dogs! That would go great with mustard.... mmmm.........