French Toast

The other day, I went to Lunds to grab a few quick things and came across a loaf of Texas Toast. I love Texas Toast. It makes great grilled cheese sandwiches, but my favorite thing with Texas Toast is French Toast. Imagine that French Toast made with Texas Toast, is that wrong?

Anyhow, both Emily and Louie wanted to help. I got out the eggs and the bowl, turned around to grab the bread and they started right in on cracking the eggs.


I planned to make the whole loaf, so they got to crack LOTS of eggs! No shells in there either! Such good helpers!

The French Toast was delicious and because we made the whole loaf, we have all this left for quick breakfasts during the week. Just pop it into the toaster. YUM!

A couple people asked what recipe I used....I never use a recipe. But here's how I make it.
Mind you, it made 15-16 slices.

1 loaf of Texas Toast
10 eggs
1/2 -3/4 cups cream (I normally use milk, but had cream in the fridge, so it would be a crime to NOT use it)
1 tsp cinnamon
dash of fresh grated nutmeg
1/4 cup maple syrup (not the Aunt Jemima crap, real maple syrup...just a hint: Trader Joe's has the BEST price on a big jug of it....No high fructose corn syrup.)
3-4 tbsp melted butter (or Pam spray if you're not into butter)

Combine all the ingredients (minus the bread) in a deep bowl, I use a souffle dish because I don't make souffle and it just sits in the cupboard abandoned and unused.) Mix really well (another really GREAT use for the immersion blender, if you have one) with a hand mixer.
Warm your griddle to a medium temp and brush with melted butter. Add the bread to the egg mixture, one slice at a time. Turn it over and let it soak for a few seconds to absorb the egg. Place the bread on the griddle. Let it cook for a minute or two, check to make sure it's not getting too brown. Adjust the temp accordingly. Turn over and let it cook for another 2 minutes. You want to leave it on the griddle long enough to make sure that the egg cooks through the bread. Letting it soak gives it the light fluffiness of restaurant toast. So delicious!

Note: I'm HORRIBLE with the griddle, but getting better now that we have our new stove. I'm impatient and always turn the heat up too high and burn anything that is on it - grilled cheese in particular. I've been using the big, double wide electric griddle we got for a wedding gift and never had room to use it. Now we can with our glass topped stove and it's a snap to make pancakes, french toast, etc. Don't turn the heat up too high, but don't leave it too low or the egg won't cook in the center..... just keep an eye on it.

The maple syrup is an ingredient that I've used ever since I worked in the coffee shop at Midway Hospital in highschool. We used to use syrup instead of adding sugar. It mixes in easier and it gives a great flavor. Enjoy!

Blogger blahs

It seems that everywhere in the blogging world, everyone seems to be in a slump and suffering from the blahhhhhs. I am no exception to that! Not sure why, just not feeling it!
But a post isn't a post without a picture or two....


A couple pictures from our trip to Target Field on Labor Day. I rented a wide angle lens, just for fun. It poured rain for a good chunk of the game; thankfully, just before it rained, we ran up to the Town Ball Tavern to grab a bite to eat and ended up spending several innings, warm and dry!

Beauty Shop

How do you wash a little girls hair, when she has a cast on her arm that can't get wet? you play "Beauty Shop!"

This is the best part.....wrapping the towel like a princess (at least Emily thinks it looks like a princess).

Update: She has an appointment on Wednesday afternoon with an orthopedic over at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. we'll see about the cast after that....

One Little Monkey....sleeping in the bed

and last night, in her deep, deep sleep...after a tiring first week of kindergarten....she fell out of bed and broke her arm...
Emily fell out of her bed, for the first time ever, last night. She was in such a deep sleep, when I went into her room after hearing the loud THUD at 11:15pm, she was completely disoriented and had no idea where she was. When it initially happened, I didn't think it was too bad, so I tried to get her back to sleep.

But after a few minutes of crying, I realized that she really was hurt and not being her (overly) dramatic self. So, I called Dan, who was out with a couple friends last night and told him to get home....ASAP!

He came home and I moved Emily to her seat in the van and they headed to Children's Hospital ER. After a short wait of less than 5 minutes, they brought her in to get checked out. X-Rays and some other doctor stuff took place. A prescription of Tylenol with Codeine later and her arm wrapped up like this:

they arrived home about 2:30am. Unfortunately, Emily isn't able to participate in her much anticipated swimming lessons and inner city tennis that we had lined up for Saturdays this fall. Instead, she's is spending the day, snuggled in to her Shaggy Puppy Sleeping Bag and watching a series of princess movies on the portable DVD player.

She's got a pretty good set up in there, don't you think?

First Day of School

Big things happened around here in the last week.....Louie started his second year at Nativity Preschool (NELC) and is loving it! He is in a class of 9 kids, 7 boys. Mrs. Rogers sure has her hands full with that class.

When he was leaving for school, I asked him if I could take his picture and this is what I got....

Little Miss Emily had her first day of kindergarten at Cherokee Heights Elementary on Monday. Her bus picks her up at 7:05AM (early!) so she needs to be out of bed by 6:30AM (really early!).


Knowing that Monday morning was going to be a busy morning and also, not wanting to be the bus stalking mom, I decided to fore go the photos on Monday morning....I got her all dressed in her uniform and drove over to school on Sunday and took some photos. Good thing...
Here's a little run down of her day:

6:30am wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, brush teeth
7:00am bus arrived to pick up (5 minutes early!)
7:50am arrive at school and go to classroom
8:05am school starts
8:20am breakfast (thankfully, she'll get a nice protein filled breakfast at school)
10:45am lunch
2:00pm snack
2:35pm school ends and get on the bus to go home
3:40pm arrive home

there is lots of fun kindergarten stuff going on during the day and she was wiped out when she got home. Immediately upon arriving home, she laid down on the couch and didn't get up until dinner at 5:15. Baths at 5:45, brush teeth, read stories and tucked into bed at 6:15pm! Whew! She was very tired and it took a while to wake her up in the morning.
Tonight, bedtime isn't going as well. She has been in her room since 7pm and I can still hear her moving around in there. Hopefully, tomorrow will be a good day.

A little info about her class: there are 7 boys and one girl (Emily). Ms. Sherrow, her teacher is wonderful! Emily is loving her new school and she's not even objecting to getting up at 6:25 every day.
New students were added to her bus route, so her pick up time was moved to 6:55am! CRAZY!

Louie's Birthday

Louie celebrated his 4th birthday in August. We started the day with his breakfast of choice....oatmeal with a candle in it.

Then, we opened a present from the Florida Jansen's....2 Leapster games: Finding Nemo and Batman! So exciting.

His birthday party was over at Wabun park again this year, it was a great day! Topped off with this masterpiece:

Louie loved his cake and all of the awesome presents that he received from family and friends. In typical 4 year old fashion, he's already planning for his next birthday....or at least Santa's upcoming visit in December.

4 years ago today.....

it was horribly hot and humid and I was 3 days from my due date with Louie.....



Unbelievably, this is one of three photos that I have of me pregnant, all three of the pictures, I was pregnant with Louie. Sadly, I don't have one picture of me prego with Emily. I thought we had plenty of time to take fat prego pictures later on....unfortunately, with Emily, there wasn't any "later on."
But, I remember this picture. Our friend, Audrey encouraged me to take a shot before we headed to the hospital in the next couple of days. So, I posed, a sort of irritated, disgusted pose.
I never enjoyed being pregnant, it was not a beautiful time in my life. But, getting two beautiful kids out of it was totally worth it!

Evolution of a photo...

2007 - in front of the otter tank at the Great Lakes Aquarium

2010 - in front of the same otter tank at the Great Lakes Aquarium

Not only did our kids grow up, but I also learned how to actually take a photo with my camera! Thank goodness! I hate looking back at the dark photos with a big flash glaring from them.

Keeping it Green!

and the boring details. We contracted a new garbage company in the last month. After we were getting nickle and dimed by the mega giant, BFI, I contacted Veolia. They didn't have a fuel surcharge and were't nickle and diming us for our trash collection.
Well, in the last year, we've had a ridiculous increase in the quarterly cost of collecting our trash. Ramsey County was one of the culprits, charging a huge tax, but when I took a closer look the fuel surcharge went from 0 to 65 in 8 short months. We were getting ripped off!
So, along comes the Garbage Man, door to door. Guaranteed ZERO fuel surcharge and minimal collection fees $22/month! Same size barrel, for what were were paying $39/month with Veolia. Sign me up!
This morning, I saw first hand why they don't have a fuel surcharge, their truck is just a little bigger than our mini-van sitting in the driveway.
(and bonus, they don't charge for that extra junk that you might try to sneak in once in a while!)

Target Field

We went to the Twins game the Friday night before the Fourth of July. Our kids have never stayed up for fireworks, so that night was a big treat! We arrived late and there was no line to sit in the big glove.

Target Field is beautiful at night.

Emily had her ears plugged, in anticipation of the fireworks. She really doesn't like loud noises.



It was a really fun night and a great time with the kids. They loved their first time watching fireworks.