baked cinnamon french toast

Posted on March 14, 2013 by dallaswoodburn

Do you have stale bread to use up? This recipe for baked cinnamon French toast is a winner! As soon as I saw this drool-worthy recipe on The Pioneer Woman’s blog, I knew I had to make it.

The recipe would be perfect for a weekend brunch, and it’s so easy you could make it on a weekday, too! Here’s my recipe, slightly adapted from The Pioneer Woman’s original version:

baked cinnamon french toast

1 loaf slightly stale sourdough or French bread
8 eggs
2 cups skim milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp cinnamon

for the topping:

1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick cold butter
fresh fruit {optional}

1. Grease a 9 x 13-inch glass baking pan with butter. Tear bread into chunks (or cut into cubes) and evenly distribute in the pan.

2. Beat eggs. Add the milk, cream, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 tbsp cinnamon, and vanilla.

3. Pour the egg mixture evenly over bread. Cover tightly and store in the fridge several hours or overnight.

4. In a separate bowl, make the topping: mix flour, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 2 tsp cinnamon, and salt.

5. Cut butter into small pieces.

6. Stir the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles fine pebbles. If you are baking the casserole in the morning, keep the topping in a plastic bag or container in the fridge until ready to bake.

7. When you’re ready to bake the casserole: preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

8. Remove casserole from the fridge and sprinkle flour crumb mixture over the top. {If you’re using fruit, sprinkle on before the crumb mixture. Next time, I’m going to try using apples. I think strawberries would be delicious, too!}

9. Bake for 45 minutes for a softer, more bread pudding texture. Bake 1 hour or more for a firmer, less liquid texture.

10. Scoop out individual portions with a large spoon. Top with more fruit if desired and drizzle with maple syrup.

Enjoy! Store any leftovers covered in the fridge and microwave to reheat. I enjoyed this dish for a decadent breakfast three days in a row. 🙂

How do you add little moments of luxury to your weekday routine?

Kitchen Tip Tuesdays: making the most of oven time

Posted on March 12, 2013 by dallaswoodburn

Hi everyone! Today I’m excited to be participating in Kitchen Tip Tuesdays, hosted by Tammy’s Recipes!

I have a simple tip to share: something I’ve just started doing recently that relates to meal-planning, saving time and saving money/energy!

I eat a lot of chicken — for most meat recipes I use chicken, whether it’s baked with veggies, diced up in soups and chili, shredded in the crock pot, or tossed with a bit of mayo to make chicken salad sandwiches.

I used to just bake the chicken when I needed it. But one night I had an idea: why not bake some extra chicken to use later in the week? It seems simple, but it had never crossed my mind. Now, whenever I am baking a chicken dish, I put a couple extra chicken breasts in the oven. I usually cook them in a glass pan with a little bit of water or chicken broth in the bottom of the pan to keep them moist.

That way, I have cooked chicken to use the rest of the week! Now it’s so easy to add cooked chicken to salads, rice, sandwiches, or pasta. Making dinner is so much quicker!

This tip can also work with roasting veggies, baking cookies, or making bread. Now pretty much whenever I need to turn on my oven for one dish, I think, “Is there another dish I can also cook right now? This maximizes my use of the oven and saves energy, time, and meal preparation later!

What are your kitchen tips? I’d love to hear in the comments section below!

orange chicken in the crock pot

Posted on March 6, 2013 by dallaswoodburn

I have an easy crock-pot recipe to share with you today! My inspiration came when I saw this bottle at the grocery store …

Zesty orange sauce! As a fan of orange chicken, I was intrigued. Plus the bottle was on sale, which was enough motivation for me to grab it off the shelf and take a chance on a new recipe! While I was there, I also picked up a couple carrots, celery, and a package of frozen asian veggies.

This recipe could not have been easier, and was great over rice. It heated up nice for lunch the next day, too!

crock-pot orange chicken

– 1 package chicken breasts OR 1 package frozen chicken tenders {whichever you prefer}
– veggies of your choice {carrots, celery, onion, broccoli, snow peas all work great!}
– 1 bottle orange sauce
– rice for serving

1. Place the chicken in the crock pot and cover with veggies.

2. Pour orange sauce over everything.

3. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. Serve over rice.

There you have it! Another easy and inexpensive crock-pot meal!

What are some of your favorite go-to weeknight recipes?

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if you enjoyed this post, you might also like these recipes:
– pulled pork in the crock-pot
– crock-pot chicken with black beans & corn
– crock-pot chicken & veggie stew

creamy blended cauliflower & potato soup

Posted on February 27, 2013 by dallaswoodburn

Look what I got!

Yaaaaay, a stick blender! I’ve been wanting one of these ever since I started cooking more at home and using my regular stand blender to make dishes like homemade hummus. I love my stand blender, but cleaning it out can be a pain — the stick blender appealed to me when making smaller blended dishes like personalized morning smoothies, or …

… creamy blended soups like this one!

As soon as I came across this recipe on Two Peas & Their Pod, I knew I had to try it out with my new immersion blender! It turned out great, and was much easier than I expected. If you don’t have an immersion blender, you could use a regular stand blender to blend this soup in batches. I tweaked it slightly, omitting the cheese and adding potato and kale. Here’s my recipe:

creamy cauliflower & potato soup

– 1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets
– 1 russet potato, diced
– 3 tsp minced garlic
– 2 tablespoons olive oil
– 1 medium onion, diced
– 2 celery stalks, diced
– 1 cup chopped kale
– 4 cups vegetable broth
– 2 teaspoons thyme
– 1 tablespoon rosemary

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

2. Toss cauliflower and potatoes with olive oil and a dash of salt and pepper. Spread evenly on a cookie sheet and bake for 20-30 minutes, until cauliflower is golden brown.

3. While cauliflower and potato mixture is roasting, saute onion, garlic and celery in olive oil over medium heat for 5-7 minutes. Add vegetable broth, kale, thyme and rosemary and bring to a boil.

4. Add roasted cauliflower and potato. Simmer 20-25 minutes, until vegetables are tender.

5. Using an immersion blender {or in batches in a blender/food processor}, blend the soup until it is smooth.

6. Season with additional salt and pepper, to taste, and serve warm. {Ours tasted perfect paired with these low-fat garlic cheese biscuits!}

This soup was delicious, perfect for a snowy winter night. And I love how healthy it is! Such a creamy soup, without any cream!

Anyone else loving immersion blenders and blended soups?

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if you liked this recipe, you might also enjoy:
– chicken & veggie stew in the crock-pot
– savory pumpkin & kale stew
– my favorite mashed potatoes
– easy sausage, veggie & potato bake

red velvet crinkle cookies

Posted on February 19, 2013 by dallaswoodburn

As promised, here is the recipe for the cookies I made last week for Valentine’s Day. They look fancy but they are super easy to make and are absolutely delicious. If you’re a fan of red velvet cake, you will love these cookies!

you need:
– one box of red velvet cake mix
– 2 large eggs
– 6 tbsp butter
– 2 tsp lemon juice
– 1/2 cup powdered sugar or confectioner’s sugar
– 1 tsp cornstarch

directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

2. Melt butter; set aside to cool.

3. In a shallow dish or pie tin, sift together powdered sugar and cornstarch.

4. Combine cake mix, eggs, butter and lemon juice. Dough will be slightly crumbly {and bright red!}

5. Shape dough into 1-inch balls and roll them in the powdered sugar until well-coated.

6. Bake for 9-11 minutes, until edges are set. The centers might look slightly undercooked, but they will harden as they cool. If you like your cookies chewy in the middle, I’d recommend taking them out after 11 minutes! {The recipe I found also emphasizes only cooking one sheet of cookies at a time.}

7. Top the cookies with more powdered sugar if desired.

And that’s it! The cookies will stay fresh for up to a week if stored in airtight containers. {You might want to use wax paper to separate the layers so they don’t stick together.}

Hope your Tuesday is terrific!

goals & meal plan for the week of 2/10

Posted on February 10, 2013 by dallaswoodburn

Last week absolutely flew by! It was a productive and balanced week — filled with work time, crafts, fun, friends, and lots of yummy food — but looking over my goals, I was feeling a little discouraged. How could I feel so productive all week, but then have so many uncrossed-off goals at the week’s end?

Then I found this amongst my school papers:

It’s my “mind-dump” to-do list from the past couple of days. Whenever I have a lot of little things running through my mind, I like to get out a piece of paper and write everything down, which usually helps clear my head so I can focus better on my tasks for the day. This list is filled with tasks big and small — grading to finish up, a specific email to send, housekeeping chores, a fellowship application to finish up — and it was quite long! I was really happy to find this and see all the items crossed off, because it reminded me that I actually did a great job working towards my goals this week. Some weeks just have more unexpected tasks crop up than others do, and sometimes surprises take precedent over the goals you set at the beginning of a week or month. And that’s okay.

This week, I finalized some paperwork about my thesis defense, submitted short stories to three journals, went out on a date night with Mike, got together with friends for a lovely catch-up visit, talked to one of my young writing mentees over Skype, prepped for a workshop I’m teaching in a few weeks to fellow graduate instructors at Purdue, sold a couple of chairs via Craigslist, made pumpkin pie and a batch of chocolate-covered pretzels, started a Valentine’s Week series on this blog … all sorts of good things that were important and fun and necessary, but hadn’t showed up on my goals list for the week.

All this was also a good reminder that I tend to over-reach at times with goal-setting, biting off more than I can chew. In the past couple weeks, I’ve been setting ambitious goals to work on my YA novel manuscript AND revise large chunks of my thesis. It just isn’t happening. It’s not possible for me to do both, at least not right now when I’m working on broad, sweeping revisions to my thesis that require a lot of rewriting and additions of brand-new material.

So I’m stepping back a little and reassessing my writing goals. For the next three weeks, I’m going to focus all my attentions on my thesis novel and see how far along I get. I think I’ll feel better about my writing goals if I’m celebrating the work I DO get done, not feeling guilty about the writing I don’t have time to do {for me lately, the YA novel manuscript.} And from a practical standpoint, it is easier for me to immerse myself in one large project at a time. Trying to work on two novels at once left me feeling drained and a little lost between the different worlds, storylines and characters I was creating.

So, that’s my big changes for goals this upcoming week! Have you ever needed to step back and reassess your goals? Is anyone else like me, sometimes biting off too much at once?

Here’s how I did on my goals from last week:

write 10 more pages of my YA novel
revise next 4 chapters of my thesis novel {worked on some major revision, but it’s a little slower going than I thought it would be}
~~blog about Week 5 Act of Kindness Challenge & complete it myself this week~~
finish reading & blog about 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess {finished reading this; blog post coming soon!}
~~finish reading & blog about The Secret Keeper~~
~~finish the scarf I’m working on~~
clean out & organize filing cabinet
~~mail out my Valentines~~

Here are my goals for this upcoming week:

revise up to page 60 of my thesis novel
blog about Week 6 Act of Kindness Challenge & complete it myself this week
blog about 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess
clean out and organize filing cabinet
knit 25 rows of the new scarf I’m working on
make 3 changes/updates as part of the #28DBC

And here are some recipes on my menu for this week:

– tilapia with pineapple salsa
– chicken with stuffing in the crock pot
– teriyaki meatball bowls
– mini hot cocoa cookies

What are your goals and meal plans for this week?

This post is linked up to Menu-Plan Monday!

goals & meal-plan for the week of 2/3

Posted on February 3, 2013 by dallaswoodburn

Here’s how I did on my goals from last week:

write 10 more pages of my YA novel {wasn’t able to write as much as I hoped on this project this week, but planning to make it more of a priority in the upcoming week!}
~~revise first 3 chapters of my thesis novel~~
~~blog about Week 4 Act of Kindness Challenge & complete it myself this week~~
~~finish grading the next assignment for both classes~~
~~submit at least 3 pieces to journals or theater companies~~
~~finish reading Best American Short Stories 2012~~
~~knit 25 more rows of the scarf I’m working on~~
clean out & organize filing cabinet

And here are my goals for the upcoming week:

write 10 more pages of my YA novel
revise next 4 chapters of my thesis novel
blog about Week 5 Act of Kindness Challenge & complete it myself this week
finish reading & blog about 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess
finish reading & blog about The Secret Keeper
finish the scarf I’m working on
clean out & organize filing cabinet
mail out my Valentines

Finally, here are some recipes I’m planning to make this week:

– honey-mustard pretzel chicken
– some sort of fish dish — perhaps tilapia or salmon?
– homemade chicken salad
– blackberry muffins
– peanut-butter blossom cookies

What are your goals & menu plans for this upcoming week?

2-ingredient pulled pork in the crock pot

Posted on January 30, 2013 by dallaswoodburn

I have another recipe to share with you today as part of the crock-pot challenge issued by Julie at Peanut Butter Fingers! This is actually from a recipe I found on Julie’s site. I’m a big fan of bbq pulled pork sandwiches — but it seemed like a dish that took a lot of time and some sort of fancy meat cooker to pull off, so it’s always been something I’ve ordered in restaurants but never attempted to make on my own.

That is, until now! Julie’s recipe made it look so easy I had to try it. I am SO glad I did!

This is now one of my go-to crock-pot recipes! And perhaps my favorite part: it only needs TWO ingredients! {Plus whatever else you want to use to dress it up!}

2-ingredient pulled pork in the crock pot

– 1 pork tenderloin {I used one that was about 4 pounds}
– 1 can of low-sodium beef broth

1. Place the pork tenderloin in the crock pot and cover with the beef broth.

2. Cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 4 hours, until pork is cooked through and juicy. Tear it apart with a knife and fork and transfer to a plate for serving.

And that’s it! Here’s what my pork looked like when I arrived home from school:

And it smelled DIVINE! Here’s the result when I turned off the crock pot and transferred the pork to a plate for serving:

Then all I did was plop some pork on a bun, add some Famous Dave’s BBQ Sauce, and I had a delicious homemade dinner to enjoy! The sandwiches paired nice with a light salad and fruit. I’m thinking next time I might add pineapple slices to the top of the pork to make Hawaiian BBQ Pulled Pork Sandwiches!

Another reason I love this recipe? There’s plenty of leftovers for lunch tomorrow! Score! 🙂

What are some of your favorite crock-pot recipes? Have any of you made pulled pork in the crock pot before?

Have a wonderful Wednesday!
-Dallas

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If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:
– crock-pot chicken with black beans & corn
– easy honey-lime chicken enchiladas
– cilantro-honey salmon
– favorite mashed potatoes

***This post is featured on Menu-Plan Monday!

easy sausage, veggie & potato bake

Posted on January 24, 2013 by dallaswoodburn

Happy Thursday! I thought I would share a simple recipe with you today that my mom showed me back when I was home for Christmas. {Hard to believe that was a month ago!} It’s perfect for a cold winter night when you want to make something healthy and hearty — and an extra bonus is that it comes together really quick!

easy sausage, veggie & potato bake

– 1 package of your choice of sausage {i like turkey sausage or chicken sausage}
– 1 medium onion
– 1 red bell pepper
– 1 green bell pepper
– 3 cloves garlic, minced {i used 3 tsp of pre-minced garlic}
– 2-3 lbs of small red potatoes {depending on your amount of potato love}
– 1 cup chicken broth {i like the low-sodium kind}
– salt & pepper to taste

1. Quarter the potatoes. Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the potatoes for 10-15 minutes, until soft.

2. Brown the sausage in a skillet until cooked through.

3. While sausage and potatoes are cooking, roughly chop up the veggies. Combine in a big bowl with the garlic until well-tossed.

4. Once potatoes are cooked through, drain the water.

5. Once sausage is cooked through, transfer to a cutting board and slice into pieces.

6. In a glass baking dish, combine veggies, potatoes and sausage. Pour chicken broth over mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste.

7. Bake for 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven, until veggies are tender.

8. Serve plain or over rice! I like serving this dish with corn muffins.

What are your plans for this upcoming weekend? Mike and I are going to have a quiet night in tomorrow — I’m looking forward to cuddling up on the couch with a movie! {Looking to save money on date night? I compiled a list of some of my favorite strategies here.}

Till soon!
-Dallas

**This post is a part of Menu-Plan Monday!

goals and meal plan for the week of 1/20

Posted on January 20, 2013 by dallaswoodburn

What an unbelievable week! I had an absolutely fantastic time soaking up the sunshine, creative energy and literary brillance at the Key West Literary Seminar, and even got to meet my icon Judy Blume!! She could not have been more kind, warm or generous. What an amazing writer AND person! Here’s a picture of my writing workshop with her {you can see me peeking out from the second row; Judy is front and center}:

Here’s how I did on my goals for the past week:

~~finish the new one-act play I’ve been working on~~
~~write 10 pages of my YA novel~~
~~blog about Week 2 Act of Kindness Challenge & complete it myself this week~~
read Best American Short Stories 2012 that Mike got me for Christmas {got about halfway through!}
grade first assignment for both classes {Professional Email assignment}
~~knit 25 rows of the scarf I’m working on~~
go through stack of old magazines and purge!

And here’s my goals for this upcoming week:

write 10 more pages of my YA novel
blog about Week 3 Act of Kindness Challenge & complete it myself this week
finish reading Best American Short Stories 2012
finish grading first assignment for both classes {Professional Email assignment}
knit 25 rows of the scarf I’m working on
go through stack of old magazines and purge!
send thank-you notes to the lovely people I met at the Key West Literary Seminar

Julie at PB Fingers is hosting a blogger crock-pot challenge and I am planning to try out a new crock-pot recipe, as well as some of the following recipes:

– chicken tetrazzini
– slow-cooker honey-sesame chicken
– my california white chicken chili
– apple cinnamon steel-cut oatmeal

What are your plans for this week? I’d love to hear your menu plans & goals!

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