Toad in the Hole

"'We must stop eating,' cried Toad, as he ate another."  -- Arnold Lobel

This year, I am really making a concerted effort to save money.  Could I be trying to save up for a big trip in the future?  Possibly.  (More on that another time.)  So, one area we were positively wasting money on was eating out.  We are trying to eat at home a lot more.  So I am taking a closer look at all my Pinterest recipes and want to make a lot more of them.  The problem is the picky kid issue.  And now a second problem is I am now doing Weight Watchers, so I am really looking closely at recipes and trying to figure out if I can alter them somehow, or just say "The heck with it" and use up all my points.

After poking around all my recipes, I found this Toad in the Hole recipe that might fit all of my requirements.  I may have pinned this when I was looking at a lot of Gordon Ramsay recipes as it was surrounded by Yorkshire Pudding and Scotch Eggs recipes.  And I may also have found this:

Isn't he yummy?  But I digress.  Toad in the Hole has some ambiguity regarding the origin of its name.  The most popular  story I could find is that it represents a toad peeking out of it's hole.  I don't know about you, but I don't see it.

They look like sausages in a batter to me.  But that's not important.  What is is that it was DELICIOUS!!!!!  BOTH kids ate it.  Obviously that automatically puts it in our dinner rotation.  And it was easy.  Except for the sausages (or bangers as they like to call them in the UK), everything else you already have in your kitchen.  See the recipe here.  Thanks to Rockrecipes.com for this delicious find!


From my board "Food is essential to life."

Overnight Oats

"When a man diets, he usually eats oatmeal in addition to everything else he usually eats." -- E.W. Howe

Is overnight oats the new craze?  I am not a big oatmeal fan, something about the texture I'm sure, but I kept seeing these pop up all over my feed, so I thought I would give it a try.  And then when my mother-in-law brought me a HUGE container of oats, I knew that it was time.

I guess the appeal of it is that you can prepare it the night before and in the morning you can heat it up, eat, and go.  And making it in a mason jar makes it quite portable as well.

Now, I am definitely a chocolate and peanut butter kind of girl, so when I saw these Reese's Overnight Oats by Let's Eat Cake, I knew this was the one I was going to try.  It was super easy to measure everything out the night before.  I threw it in my lunchbag and brought it to work.  After I heated it up, that's when the magic began.  The peanut butter and chocolate chips melted together and made this smooth and creamy delicious oatmeal.  I will DEFINITELY be making this again!

(Image from Let's Eat Cake)

Now, hubby wanted in on the action.  But he said he didn't think he was really going to like peanut butter in his oatmeal.  Not a problem, because I also had another recipe for Pecan Pie Overnight Oats by Damn Delicious.  This was a little more time consuming because you mix together syrup and sugar and the pecans to make almost like a brittle topping.  (Honestly, I could have eaten all that by myself without any oatmeal.)  Hubby said it was okay, but he's guy.  I don't think they get overly excited by food.

(Photo by Damn Delicious.)

So, overnight oatmeal is a big success in my book!  I will definitely be doing this again, at least once a week.  Now to get the kids on board with the idea!

Do you have any favorite overnight oatmeal recipes?  I would love to try something with berries in it I think!

From my board "What's for Breakfast?"

Classic Mint Chocolate Brownies

As for the garden of mint, the very smell of it alone recovers and refreshes our spirits....." --Pliny the Elder

In our family,  we are big fans of grasshopper pie.  We even switched out a green grasshopper pie (made with creme de menthe) to a red "ladybug" pie (made with peppermint schnapps) for Christmas - and to be honest, it wasn't really the same.  So I have had my eye on these Classic Mint Chocolate Brownies by Sally's Baking Addiction for a long time now, and decided that it was time to give them a try.

(Picture from Sally's Baking Addiction.)

I am usually a stickler for following a recipe to a T.  However, although I was POSITIVE I had peppermint extract, there was none to be found in the cupboard.  What to do, what to do?  So I had to be creative, and I thought to what I use for our grasshopper pie, which is creme de menthe.  Is it okay to put that in a brownie?  Well, my kids eat it in pie, so I figured it would be okay.  And it was delicious - didn't taste boozy at all.  And while my kids liked it, they said the best part was the ganache topping, and we could have skipped the mint part in the middle.


From my board "Eat Dessert First."