Morning Foods – Page 4 – Rosemary and the Goat

Ham, Mushroom, and Grits Breakfast Casserole

This is one good breakfast casserole and another grits recipe.

I love grits and I really love stone ground grits. The grits in this recipe are Charleston stone ground white grits. I thought I was ordering the mixed (yellow and white) grits but clicked a little too fast on Amazon. To me, stone ground grits are the best and if not stone ground then regular grits, not the instant variety.

The weekend we were getting our kitchen back together after the paint job, I decided to make something nice for breakfast. We had been eating out every meal for over a week even though the painting only took four days, we had a mountain of pans and dishes and stuff to go through before my kitchen was back in operation. Just getting my pantries (food & pan) back together was so great because I didn’t have that “hoarder” feeling any longer. I don’t think I could have looked at all those piles of pans, gadgets one day longer.

Were you raised eating grits for breakfast? We weren’t, in fact, I don’t think I even ate grits until I was older and my mother started making cheese grits to go with bbq. I remember when we were living in Overland Park, KS and one of my back neighbors was from Atlanta and I told her I had never eaten a bowl of plain grits with just butter and salt and pepper. I knew I loved cheese grits but not sure about the plain ones that looked like a bowl of gruel. Well, one morning she showed up at my back door with a bowl of hot buttered grits. We had no fences in this neighborhood so you could just walk over and visit with someone without having to go to front door or gates to get in. Those grits were so good. I don’t remember the girl’s name but I do remember her grits.

December 13, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Grits, Greens, and Egg

Get your greens early in the day.

Do you get enough greens everyday? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. With this recipe you can get some greens with your breakfast.

Originally I had planned on using fresh baby kale and sautéing it and putting that around my grits. But, the morning I made this I went to the refrig to grab my bag of greens and it wasn’t there. I forgot I used it a couple nights earlier to make my pork and kale dish. Luckily I had a bag of frozen spinach in my freezer.

I’m probably the only person reading this post that actually likes canned spinach. I always have a few cans in my pantry and always have some in the freezer and still buy fresh spinach when I want it in a salad.

This recipe turned out really good and looks oh so good in a bowl or plate. I love dishes like this one that combines a lot of flavor and fits neatly in a bowl. The bacon adds the saltiness you want, creamy cheese grits go so well with the spinach and the perfectly fried egg I did in my little pan I brought back from France makes the perfectly composed plate. And you’ll notice the grated yellow stuff on top of the egg. Well, that’s my cured egg yolk that took me 6 days to make. (More on that in another post.)

November 14, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Breakfast Stuffed Potato

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, this will fill you up.

I know I’m always saying that breakfast is my least favorite meal of the day and it still is and that’s why I’m always looking for something special to make on the weekends. If you eat this potato for breakfast you probably won’t be that hungry at lunch but that’s ok; that’s reason enough for me to eat my favorite lunch of cottage cheese and boiled egg and tomato.

This past week we were in Austin babysitting our 2 year old grandson, Thomas. Talk about a cutie pie, just to hear him say the work “snack” and they way he draws that word out brings a smile to my face; and like his Gran, he loves cottage cheese. He uses it as a dip on his favorite water cracker.

I remember when he was younger (that’s not too long ago) he would eat salmon roe with his little fingers and eat all kinds of things I probably wouldn’t eat. This week I had a list of things to prepare while his mom and dad were vacationing; things like lamb meat balls, cheese, eggs, all kinds of fruits, empanadas that mom made and put in the freezer and he loves his bread. On Fridays at school he makes challah and when he came home with his little bag the first thing he says is “my challah”. Everything that week was “my…” , “my helicopter in the sky”, “my truck”, “my bus” (the real ones) and when he saw a picture of his mom and dad it was “my momma” and “my dadda”.

September 20, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Eggs Baked in Cream Gravy with Bacon

Eggs, Bacon and Gravy, what more could you ask for.

Recently I was looking through a stack of food magazines tearing out recipes before the magazines got trashed. I saw a recipe in Southern Living magazine for Creamy Baked Eggs with herbs.

This particular recipe was baked in cream and herbs and got me thinking that wouldn’t gravy be a lot better tasting than just cream. I’m thinking a nice thin milk gravy made with bacon drippings, of course, would be so good with the eggs and then a good sprinkling of crumbled bacon and maybe some fresh chives and parsley. Then all this goodness could be scooped up and put on a big biscuit square.

August 31, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods/ Sandwiches

Avocado Toast

Get up, it’s time for breakfast!

Did your mother ever tell you breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Maybe she was right but seems like there are a lot of studies out trying to prove it is not so. Well you can decide for yourself if you want to eat breakfast or not. In my opinion if you don’t eat breakfast you’re going to be even hungrier at lunch time.

We don’t always eat breakfast when we travel; sometimes we just take an early lunch. The day I had Avocado Toast at Willa Jean’s in New Orleans it was for a “late” lunch after visiting the WWII museum. Believe me, by the time I walked to Willa Jeans, I had no trouble eating the whole piece of toast. There are so many creative breakfast ideas I have picked up from restaurants and they have all seem to have changed my opinion on breakfast not being my favorite meal of the day; it still isn’t my favorite but I do have an arsenal of things I like making for breakfast/brunch when we have company.

July 22, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Bacon and Avocado Quesadilla with Egg

Who says quesadillas have to be round anyway!

Just because I don’t have a pair of cowboy boots or don’t own a horse or even a ten gallon hat doesn’t mean I have not been around the stables a few times when it comes to whipping up some good Tex-Mex/Mexican food and this recipe just happens to be for breakfast.

Living in Texas for the past 26 years has made me somewhat of an almost Texan with some pretty good Mexican recipe skills. I like my guacamole hot, my taco shells thin and crisp (only the corn ones Crisp) and I like my beans a little tipsy instead of mashed.

All three of our kids went to UT in Austin and three out of five of our grandsons were born in Texas. We have eaten at so many Mexican restaurants over the years that I can tell from their salsa and chips if we are going to enjoy their food.

I love my pasole soup made with pulled pork and hominy and my homemade tamales are almost as good as my sister’s. I’ve been experimenting with some shrimp nachos recently and a few other types of Mexican treats with a Sherry spin on them; so when I recently came across a bacon and avocado quesadilla on a menu from E & O Food and Drink restaurant in Chicago, I knew I was going to have to give It my Tex-Mex-Sherry tweak.

June 21, 2016 By Sherry

Morning Foods/ Side dish

Bacon and Tomato Cheese Grits

Kiss my grits! (As Flo would say)

In case you don’t know who Flo is she was a waitress in the sitcom “Alice” many, many years ago. Can’t say that was a favorite show of mine but I can’t forget her telling people to “kiss my grits”.

Back in April I took a trip to Savannah with my twin sister and two friends from high school, Pauletta and Judy. We had such a great time and can’t wait to get together again. Funny, one of Pauletta’s walking friends asked her what she was going to talk to friends about that she had not seen for 40 years. Well, we never quit talking. It was fun reliving the past, hearing about everyone’s grandkids, and what the future holds for all of us.

Did we ever eat some good food while there! What is it about a “Southern” menu that you will always find shrimp and grits, fried green tomatoes and some good pimento cheese in with all your menu items making it even harder to decide what to order. I can’t pass up grits, I can’t pass up pimento cheese and I certainly can’t pass up trying someone’s fried green tomatoes. I had a great stack of tomatoes on our last day there that I can’t wait to try to recreate.

When we toured the Mercer House we heard stories about when Jim Williams lived there (remember the movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and he was accused of murder) and the parties he would give and one of his favorite things his caterer Lucille Wright (the most sought after caterer in Savannah) would make was shrimp and grits and pumpkin cornbread. I may be giving that pumpkin cornbread a try in the Fall so keep a lookout for it.

June 6, 2016 By Sherry

Cake/ Dessert/ Morning Foods

Raspberry Applesauce Cake

The kids are all gone!🙁

What do you do with all that special “grandkid” friendly food after they leave?

My refrigerator and pantry are always packed with things like applesauce, some good yogurt, some organic meat of some sort, lots of fruit, string cheese of course and lots of other things that I may not be eating if it is left over. As always, I buy way too much. But who wants to run out of food or goodies when the kids are visiting. I usually love the non-so-good-for-you-foods like Goldfish, popsicles, ice cream cups with about 6 kinds of sprinkles, and drink boxes (organic juice of course).

So recently my daughter was home for the weekend; and they had friends and kids at our house, so that meant stock up on some “stuff” for them to eat since they may not want to be eating the paella that we made one night.

On Monday, when the house was all empty except for the two of us, I decided to take on the bulging refrigerator. First, I threw all the fruit into my dehydrator, peeled and individually wrapped my bananas (they are like eating banana popsicles), threw some sweet stuff away. But, then there are the cartons of applesauce staring at me and I don’t even like applesauce.

June 1, 2016 By Sherry

Egg Dishes/ Morning Foods

Asparagus with Poached Egg, Toast and Bacon Vinaigrette

What better reason to have a brunch than a rooster table-cloth!

I didn’t need a reason to have a brunch but my rooster table-cloth has had me wanting to do brunch and have a bunch of friends over. The friends never got asked over for this recipe; someday they will.

While working at Williams Sonoma for 6 years I collected so many of their tablecloths and paid next-to-nothing for them once they went on sale. The rooster table-cloth is navy blue and have these cool roosters (and I’m not even a rooster fan.) along the border of the cloths which is just screaming or “crowing” make brunch and serve it on me.

So what should I do? Of course, make brunch but as it turned out the bunch with friends was just my husband and myself. I couldn’t wait to try to make this so rather than fuss with a bunch of other dishes and arrange time for friends to actually make it over for brunch I made it just for the two of us.

I was tracking down this chef (John Fleer) who now works at Rhubarb restaurant in Asheville and read where he had worked at the Blackberry Farm Restaurant located at the foothills of The Smoky Mountains in Walland, Tennessee, so I had to mosey on over to the Blackberry Farm website to see what was going on. Of course, the first place I look is the restaurant and the menu where I happened upon a menu item Asparagus with Poached Egg, Toast and Bacon Vinaigrette and thought I could do this without a recipe. We have eaten at Rhubarb in Asheville but this wasn’t on his menu at that time.

March 25, 2016 By Sherry

Dessert/ Morning Foods/ Pies/Tarts

Rustic Citrus Almond Tart

Rustic and beautiful citrus tart.

All I can say is “wow”, this was one beautiful tart. Not too tart and not too sweet, as Goldilocks said “it was just right” and I think all the ladies that tried it at my craft circle enjoyed it.

I’m sure you have all heard that snapping turtles bite and don’t let go. In Alabama they use to (may still do) call a snapping turtle “thunder turtles” because they believed that once bitten by the ST that it would not let go until it thundered. So, what does a snapping turtle have to do with this recipe.

Well, I have a problem letting go of an idea for a recipe I’ve seen or a product I have not used before. See the chunky sugar on the above tart. Well there’s even a story there. While in France back in 2012 (see, I told you I hold on to an idea for a long time) we spent a week in Provence after doing Paris (liked Provence much better) and we stayed in Eygalières in Provence area. This little commune, town, or whatever they call a town less than 1,700 actually had two bakeries a couple of grocery stores (very small, one English-speaking the other not) and one very good restaurant, sous les micocouliers which we ate at our first night there. I still get emails from them with their menus and I can’t read a word of it. (I just looked at their website and I never noticed they have “English” version.)

So, back to the story about the sugar. Every morning we would walk down to one of the local bakeries and buy some beautiful and delicious pastries (see below) for breakfast before heading out for the day. Usually at least a couple of the things we purchased had this sugar that stayed chunky. I couldn’t find it in the small local market but when I came home I looked until I finally located it I think on Amazon (of course). The sugar has been sitting in my pantry since then just waiting to be used for something special. This sugar will not melt and disappear as normal granulated sugar does at baking temperatures. I want to try it on some cinnamon elephant ear pastries sometime soon.

March 10, 2016 By Sherry

Breads/Biscuits/ Morning Foods

Sweet Potato Waffles

What a beautiful way to start a weekend.

Back in 2012 I posted my Bacon Belgium Waffles and told you about how my mother always use to put one slice of raw bacon across the batter after she had pour it into the waffle iron; and oh what a waffle that made. Once you have tried the bacon in the waffle, you will never want a waffle without bacon.

So, I have this new Paderno Spiralizer machine and was thinking about trying a different version on that waffle. Here’s how the morning progressed. My husband was up early and had already had a bowl of oatmeal so I had to convinced to try my waffle. After spiraling the sweet potato, which took all of about 2 minutes, I proceeded to try and cook them in the waffle iron (see pic below) but when I piled them onto the cooked waffle, they were pretty sad and pathetic looking.

My next step was to try deep frying them which only took about 5 minutes and I had a crunchy pile of coiled sweet potato fries which went on top of the bacon waffle, lathered in butter and surround with some pure maple syrup. Now, this was ready for him to eat and it got a thumbs up.

Then I started thinking of other breakfast ideas where I might use this new gadget of mine. How about some eggs benedict and you make a big pile of white potato curls and pile them high over the bendict or some scrambled eggs on top of a big plate of crunchy curly potatoes. I guess you are getting the idea that I love this new gadget that I got from Amazon.

February 19, 2016 By Sherry

Appetizers/ Bread/ Morning Foods/ Pastries

Granny Hester’s Sweet Potato Biscuits

Wish I knew this Granny.

I don’t often get foods from companies to try out for the blog so I was excited to get a note from Darlene, PPR Communications, Granny Hester’s Sweet Potato Biscuit asking me if I would like to try their sweet potato biscuits. The company is doing some testing in our area in Sam’s Club and she came across my blog. Their sweet potato biscuits are already being sold there and at our Trader Joes.

I love their story of how the biscuit recipe came about. Granny Hester came up with this recipe while experimenting for the perfect biscuit for her husband before he left for the Navy in WWII. The recipe was eventually handed down (like all good grandmothers do) to a granddaughter who started making these biscuits for family and friends and now works out of a 50,000 sq. ft. building (former sock mill) in Ft. Payne, Alabama.

I’ve done sweet potato biscuits before for an appetizer so I couldn’t wait to try out their biscuits with a couple of other recipes. For my first try I used the frozen biscuit, split it and then grilled it on a panini grill and topped with some pulled pork, slaw and pepper rings for a fancy slider for New Year’s Eve. It was really good that way because the biscuit got kind of crisp, almost like a chip.

My second try was using the biscuits with ham and orange marmalade; I made these many times when I catered. Cooked biscuits, split, top with ham and orange marmalade then back in the oven to warm up.

On Granny Hester’s site they have a Sweet Potato Cinnamon Roll made from their biscuits so that was definitely going to be breakfast one Saturday morning and those are in the opening picture.

January 5, 2016 By Sherry

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