Also, we believe in a thing called "Saturday."

Good morning, friends and family!

Today, as most Saturdays, will be quite full. One must remember to eat a good breakfast, yes? Maybe twice...This afternoon we're helping my lovely in-laws move furniture, etc. into storage. We totally owe them some moving Karma, since they once helped us move up four flights of historic square spiral stairs in December. No joke. We owe everyone moving Karma, even people we've never met. So, I'm going to have a quick brunch (read: the best meal on Earth) with some friends first, but that's not until 11. 11?!? I get up with the sun! A pretty, throw-together First Breakfast (yeah, I said it) that I don't have to share with my golfing husband? Don't mind if I do. 

Dear One Life Fitness,

"First Breakfast" (and second...) is/are why we have to pay you for memberships every month, probably for the rest of our lives. 

Love and a bowl of cherries,

Sara

If you've been to our house for breakfast/brunch, I've probably made Baked Eggs and Strawberry Bread for you. I don't mean to be a bore, but it's one of my favorite easy breakfasts. Sometime, I'll whip up one of my (7) recipes for shrimp and grits or my mother's time-tested (and lightened up as of late) Christmas Morning Breakfast Casserole for you. But today, with my cup of coffee and NPR Weekend Edition on the radio, it's Baked Eggs. 

I made Strawberry Bread for Stephanie C. for brunch yesterday, and there's one slice left. My precious. And yes, that is two brunches this week! And it's not even my birthday! Find this super-easy go-to recipe here. Darn Martha Stewart and her minions. I mean staff. Oops.

And if I haven't already given you the Baked Eggs recipe, click on this. When I'm feeling blah, The Food Network can ALWAYS bring me a smile. This recipe great because it's flexible. You can follow the recipe, or use anything you've got around. Yesterday I used garlic sauteed spinach. Today, It was chopped green pepper that I barely even showed the pan. I love the crunch, and you get a bonus burst of Vitamin C. I've thrown lots of veggies, breakfast meats and all sorts of cheeses in here. It's never been anything but good and hearty. I use lower fat breakfast meats - Canadian bacon, turkey bacon, chopped lean ham, crumbled turkey sausage - and it keeps the dish from becoming greasy.

By the way, have you had the cherries this year? They are on sale EVERYWHERE and couldn't be any better. We've eaten three large bags in two weeks around here. And they're such a festive garnet color. (Go Gamecocks!)

Cook All Day, Work All Night

So, I was feeling a little overly-creative yesterday. There was a lot of throwing things together and seeing what happened in our kitchen all afternoon. Here for your viewing pleasure are "Something Blue" almond meringues with almond dust mixed in, miniature "Plain Old Chocolate" meringues and basic Vanilla. They were meant to be vanilla drizzled with butterscotch and sprinkled with graham cracker crumbs, but I ran out of time before I had to be at work.

The brownie/cupcakes you'll see are Dark Chocolate Coconut with toasted coconut and a Hershey's Kiss baked in. The Browned Butter Chocolate Buttercream I put together turned out too thick to thin, even with more milk. You know how I like to say "Waste not, want not?" Well, I took the frosting, broke it up and rolled it into balls, tossed it in powdered sugar and put it in the freezer. Yep, accidental FUDGE!!!!!! My parents will be thrilled.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this batch of vanilla. Paul bought a massive bag of organic sugar this week and it made the meringues look and taste a little different. I'm thinking that maybe the plain Kroger brand white sugar I've been using might be the best bet.

Too much sugar? Dinner was a bit of a throw together too. We still had two more servings of the Weight Watchers mac & cheese from last weekend. Sound good? Check it out here. 8 Weight Watchers points and 9 servings per pan. But I didn't know what to do with three tiny pork chop cutlets that have been hanging around since I made Pork Marsala for dinner Tuesday. So, here comes the weirdness...

Trim the fat from the chop with kitchen scissors. Sprinkle each side of the meat with a conservative amount of garlic salt. Place in a pan on medium-high with a touch of olive oil and brown both sides. Now, here we go. Add two soup spoon fulls of fresh apple butter to the pan about about one spoonful of tap water. Blend in the pan, roll the chops in the sauce and continue to heat on medium high for a couple of minutes. Give the mixture one good stir, cover and set to simmer for four or five minutes. But that didn't seem like enough. We had a ball of fresh mozzarella in the fridge. I cut a quarter inch thick slice of the cheese and laid one on top of each of the three pieces of pork. Serve all this with steamed zucchini to balance all the cheese. No joke. This was awesome.

Okay, now back to the sugar...

More like brownies than cupcakes. Mmmm. I took most of these to coworkers.

Wonder what else lives in our kitchen?

See? They can live together in harmony.

Organic Sugar Vanilla Meringues

I didn't realize at the time that this is Cookie Monster Blue. Awesome!

These were all half batches, so there won't be any waste, though there may be some extra waist. HA!

Almond and Chocolate, for Jess and Ash by request.

Sweetest thoughts, everyone. Have a great day!

Sara