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!

Preserving Summer

This summer I enjoyed some of the best peaches EVER.  However, toward the end of the summer, I started to get a little sad about the fact that they would soon be no more.  I pondered how to save them in such a manner that I could enjoy them later in the year - especially when it's cold and dark and there is no fresh, local fruit available!

Some peaches simply got peeled, cut into chunks and frozen.  These will be yummy either in smoothies or just thawed and eaten as-is.  However, I still had a lot of peaches.  Having never experimented with making jams, I figured I might as well!

The experiment began with some exploration of recipes and methods.  I found the University of Georgia's National Center for Home Food Preservation to be very helpful; it had instructions on how to do the actual canning, complete with times for sterilizing jars, processing the jars and how long it should take to cook the jams, even.  For recipes, I trolled the internet and looked through a few cookbooks, too.

Ready to begin, I started by peeling and cutting up my fruit.  I dumped it, along with the sugar and lemon juice, into a dutch oven over medium heat, and stirred as it slowly degraded the fruit.  I used about two parts fruit to one part sugar, with the juice from half of a large lemon (it was a juicy lemon).  This cooked down and cooked down, filling the house with the smell of fresh peaches.

In the meantime, I had the jars boiling to sterilize them.  When the jam seemed ready, based on my using a spoon and seeing how gelatinous the mixture was, I pulled the jars out of the boiling water.  I then used a funnel to dump the jam into the jars, capped them, and quickly put them back in the boiling water to process.

After processing, I removed them and let them sit on the kitchen counter.  A bit later, I was rewarded with a reassuring POP as they sealed.  They are now in the cabinet, awaiting slightly cooler days that call for warm corn muffins, maple butter and fresh peach jam...I can't wait!