OAMC Waffles

I have been resistant to doing breakfast as part of Once A Month Cooking, because, frankly, my freezer is small and making room for something that doesn't take a long time to make in the first place seems an unwise use of space to me.

That said, we recently started making waffles using Bisquick. Now, we have tried, and I mean tried HARD, to have healthy waffles. We buy the Oat Bran Mix or the Multigrain Mix, and let's face it--they don't taste like waffles. They come out soggy or just plain wrong. And anything with flax in the mix, as healthful as flax is, makes our dishwasher into a seedy mess. It's just impossible to get anything clean. 

So, Bisquick. The problem is, we are a small family of three, and the recipe calls for one egg, and you end up with 6 or 7 waffles. We were trying to save the extra batter, but we really don't like eating waffles that often, and cleaning the waffle iron multiple times each week is a pain.

So last weekend, when my husband made waffles, I asked him to make all of them, rather than letting the batter go bad in the fridge. Now, these are not Eggos. There's no way they were going to fit in my toaster. But I recently got a pizza stone from Pampered Chef, and I thought that they might reheat well on there. Adam made 6 waffles, we ate 3, and I froze the rest.

When you freeze waffles, you MUST tray freeze them first, and then store them in a gallon freezer bag. Fortunately, I knew this tip. They only took about 15 minutes of tray freezing, and they were then ready to be packaged.

This morning, the kiddo and I got up early and I decided it would be our waffle day. I set the oven temp to 350, spread out 3 waffles on my pizza stone, and threw them in for 5 minutes. I came back, flipped them, turned the oven down to 300 and left them in for another 5 minutes.

And they were Awesome. With no mixing, no messing up the waffle iron, no bowls filled with mix, and with all three of them finished at the same time, the kiddo and I had an awesome breakfast of waffles and strawberries (the end of the strawberries from our CSA share!) They were, perhaps, even crispier than the ones that came straight from the waffle iron last weekend. I was amazed.

So, what do I think? Is it worth doing a month's worth of waffles? Maybe, maybe not. My husband really likes cooking breakfast for us on the weekends, and I hate to take that away from him. But we will certainly be freezing the leftovers again, for another weekday breakfast like the one we had today!

More Recipe Results

Last night, we had the Pork Chops with Good Stuff for dinner, and it worked out Beautifully!  About 40 minutes before dinner time, I put the frozen chops into a baking dish along with all the stuff, and threw it in the microwave to defrost for ten minutes. 

Then, 1/2 hour in the oven on 350 and another 5 probably-unnecessary-minutes at 400, and we had dinner. I served it with cheesy rice on the side, and it was a HUGE hit. The pork was so tender and moist, you'd never know it had been frozen. It didn't feel casserole-like at all because it wasn't! 

It's now on our "must make" list for future months! 

Recipe Results

Today we tasted the results of two recipes, my dream salad  and the Mango Curry Chicken.

So first, the Mango Curry Chicken results. I remembered at around 4:00 today that I hadn't started anything for dinner, and I decided to take out a bag of the stuff and throw it in the crockpot on high for a few hours. I figured if it was not done by the time we wanted dinner, I could finish it off in a frying pan.

We actually left the house for a short time and when we came back the sauce was bubbling away and the house smelled awesome. We turned it down to low, and I started the rice and salad. (Rice was basmati rice with a little chicken bullion and some saffron threads, which is a great match).

The result? OH MY GOSH soooo good. In the future I would cook it on low for a little longer, because the chicken got a little dry. It seems like the kind of dish that needs to be cooked either very quickly or very slowly, and I'd rather go slowly. So, next time, 4 hours on low instead of 2 on high and I think we'll have an even better meal. But it was fabulous.

Now for the salad.

Yesterday was the farmer's market. They had (1) spinach, (2) strawberries, (3) goat cheese, and (4) Kiss of Kerala jam (which I already had but it was worth noting that I could have gotten it yesterday if I had needed it. 

Adam washed and broke up the spinach. It was something between baby and grown up spinach, and I wanted it a little smaller. I had already bought the almonds so I started them glazing. Once the spinach was ready, I added in the strawberries and cheese, and made the dressing. Altogether, it was really 5 ingredients: the spinach, strawberries, cheese, glazed almonds, and dressing.

Can I just say OMGWTFBBQ. Best Salad In The Universe. Part of it has to be attributed to the cheese, which was from a local farm and must have had real gold in it or something because it was crazy pricey. But worth it. Worth it in a "we have to get to the market early every week now because otherwise we will miss out on that cheese" way. The flavors melded in a way that I can only describe as .... synergistically. I'm so glad I made extra almonds because I think I'm going to eat this salad for every meal until I'm out of spinach. Well maybe not that often. But definitely for lunch tomorrow. 

So yeah, make the salad. Make the chicken. Eat a lot. YUM.