Family Brunch

Every once in a while we have a confluence of family in the area. A few weeks ago this happened, and we decided to host everyone for Sunday Brunch. With nine adults for brunch, I knew we'd need a spread. Being my usual self, I decided to have fun with this!

Menu:

+ Fruit Salad

+ Monkey Bread

+ Biscuits with Homemade Peach Preserves, Homemade Plum Preserves and Honey Maple Butter

+ Sausage, Egg and Cheese Casserole

+ Smoked Salmon Pinwheels

+ Shrimp Cocktail

+ Mimosas (of course!)

Obviously some of these items were store-bought and required little effort on my part, but it was fun to put together the whole spread, and boy was it yummy! I bought the shrimp and the salmon pinwheels, and in the interest of time baked biscuits from a can. One fun feature was that my homemade jams were made with fruits from my CSA last summer, and I had the last few frozen peaches to put in the fruit salad!

It was such a yummy and relaxing way to end the weekend, and I loved everything!

Fruit Salad with Mint and Honey

Peach Preserves, Plum Preserves, Butter and the Little Lady (hiding my Honey Maple Butter!)

Shrimp Cocktail and Salmon Pinwheels

Monkey Bread and Egg Casserole

The Sausage, Egg and Cheese Casserole was easy - I put it together the day before and just popped it into the oven on Sunday morning. Here's how I did it - it's based on a Cooking Light recipe for a Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Casserole, but I made a few adjustment of my own!

12 ounces sweet Italian turkey sausage

2 cups skim milk

2 cups egg substitute (like Egg Beaters)

1 tablespoon dry mustard powder (like Colman's)

1 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground pepper

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

3 eggs

16 slices of bread, crusts removed

1 cup shredded low-fat cheddar cheese

1/2 teaspoon paprika

Brown the sausage, stirring to crumble it. Remove from heat and drain any excess fat. Allow to cool.

Stir together the milk, egg substitute, mustard powder, salt, peppers and eggs in a large bowl, whisking gently.

Cube bread slices. Add bread, cheese and cooled sausage to egg mixture.

Spray a baking dish (I used a lasagna dish, which is a little deeper, and is about 8x12) with cooking spray, and pour in the mixture. Cover and refrigerate for 8 hours, up to one day.

When ready to bake, pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Remove casserole from fridge and let stand at room temperature for 20-30 minutes.

Sprinkle top of casserole with paprika. Bake for 40-50 minutes, until top is lightly browned and eggs are set. Let stand for at least 10 minutes, and serve. It's also great at room temperature!

Plums Galore!

This summer I missed a week of my CSA while I was away.  That week there were PLUMS in the fruit share.  I simply adore plums.  The following week, I expressed my excitement about the availability of plums that week, too, as I had missed the first week.  My wonderful CSA farmer exclaimed, "Oh you missed them last week?  Let me give you more!"  And thus I went home with 30 plums.

I am not kidding when I say I love plums, but a person can only eat so many plums in a week, before they start to go bad and get a little soft.  However, finding myself newly interested in making jams, I decided that plum jam could be a lovely adventure!

I pulled peels from the plums, and measured out how much fruit I had, then used a little over one part sugar to two parts fruit (it was about 60% sugar to 100% fruit).  I added some lemon juice and let it cook down.  Those plums broke down quickly into a soupy, sweet, fruity compote, but still required some intensive cooking time to take on that jammy consistency.

Sweet and richly purple, this jam was not very chunky with fruit, but was still very thick and amply fruity.  I quickly used the funnel to pour jam into the sterilized jars.  I sealed them, processed them and let them cool until they made that lovely little POP that told me they had sealed.  One jar went away as a gift, but the other is awaiting opening for some lovely hot biscuits, or perhaps with some pork tenderloin.  I can't wait!