Recent Grub

I have definitely been neglecting the topic of food around here. Don't worry, we are eating, I guess I just haven't thought a lot of it to be post-worthy.

But here are a few things I wanted to share.

Apparently, steel cut oats are good for lactating mamas so of course, I wanted to try them out. Also, I like to try to eat a hearty breakfast if I can because sometimes lunch comes a little late for me. The only issue I have with this breakfast is that when I am home alone, it is a little time consuming with boiling and stirring so the babe has to be on her best behavior. I cook 'em up, slice up some fresh fruit, throw in some dried fruit, a little brown sugar, cinnamon and almond milk and yum, yum!

Next up, we have some cookies. Again, another recipe that caters a bit toward the lactating mama, but they are a little healthier, Ben eats them and they are good. They aren't too sweet which makes them a good snack. I saw them posted on Whitney's blog and the recipe is from here. I don't pump my milk very often so I don't have a great gauge as to whether they work or not, but I figure, hey, they are healthy-ish and it can't hurt right?

Moving right along, we started to get a bit unhealthy. While Ben was off last week, we tried a couple of new things. I have always wanted to bake bread from scratch but am always scared. I know. Scared of what? Don't  you just try something and if it works is does and if not oh well? Well, yes. But I pretty much like to succeed in the kitchen. Not fail. I'm the first born, what can I say?

We sometimes enjoy watching the Sandwich King on Sunday mornings. we have tried a couple of his recipes and liked them. So for some reason we think we should try Pretzel Buns with Grilled Dogs and Spicy Cheese Sauce. Yeah. Okay, so we make the buns which turned out delicious. the only complaint we had was that we used wax paper on the baking sheet and the buns stuck like a mother. Other than that, complete success. We were pretty proud of ourselves considering we used yeast, had to let them rise, boil them and bake them. 

The next steps were easy: make a cheese sauce and grill the dogs. We didn't love the cheese sauce as we followed the recipe and used Velveeta. Not awesome. The next day when we ate left overs, we just used regular hotdog toppings: ketchup, mustard and relish and like them a lot better. I think the fakey Velveeta was a little much. A lot much.

Last but not least, we went for homemade pizza. 

We have a confession. Most Friday nights we get a Papa Murphy's take and bake pizza. I don't know why this started but it's typical. We actually hadn't done it in awhile, maybe because we are on a tighter budget, we have been having leftovers or whatever. Anyway, last Friday we decided we wanted to make our own pizza including the crust. Since we had succeeded with the pretzel buns, we deemed ourselves seasoned bakers and figured we couldn't go wrong.

We got the crust recipe out of my trusty Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and went to town. We didn't want to go to the store so we used all ingredients we had on hand: made sauce from scratch, ground pork, tomatoes, cheese and jalapenos. It was delish. I don't know if Ben and I will keep it up now, but I definitely think it will be fun to have a weekly family pizza making night with kids.

Nothing too exciting, I suppose, but it always feels good to try new recipes, discover healthy recipes we like and eat yummy food at home!