Blog Archives

Recipe Time! Monkey Bread

Monkey bread is a wonderful food, with a strange name.  No one really seems to know for certain how it got its name, but rest assured – no monkeys are harmed in the making of this delicious treat.  And it’s not some weird code disguising something gross, like how “sweetbreads” are actually the thymus and pancreas of cows.  Monkey bread is made of biscuit dough cut into small pieces and covered in cinnamon, sugar, and held together with a kind of caramel.  Monkey bread made its first appearance in women’s magazines in the 1950s and fits very much with the vogue of using canned or frozen ingredients and spiffing them up in interesting (and occasionally horrifying) ways.  The 1950s ideology was all about making the modern housewife’s life easier with push buttons and quickly prepared foodstuffs.  I have fond memories of sitting in my grandma’s kitchen and eating monkey bread that she made, which makes sense since she was a young housewife in the 1950s.

I could go on about this stuff forever, since it is part of what I’m studying in school, but I digress.  Monkey bread is indeed an easy to make dish that can serve as breakfast, dessert, or just a little snack.

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Food 101: How To Make French Toast

Breakfast is probably the least sacred of meals during the day, often getting skipped due to time constraints and laziness. Which is unfortunate since breakfast is incredibly important from a biological and diet standpoint, and also because there’s some delightful treats that you don’t really see in any other meals the rest of the day. The ‘Big Three’, as I like to call them, which include pancakes, waffles, and french toast, are the three best and most important breakfast meals you can have at your disposal. They’re foundations that can be eaten many different ways and are really friggin’ delicious. Sadly, pancakes take a bit of preparation even with box mixes, and waffles require borderline commercial-grade machinery in order to be made. As such, those two are a bit of a stretch for everyone with a busy lifestyle. That’s why Meg and I save those for the weekends. However, french toast meanwhile is quick and easy enough for you to prepare any day of the week before going to work. And don’t be lazy, freezer french toast isn’t gonna save you that much time in the long run. If you have about 10 minutes, you can make french toast.

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Making Your Own McMuffin

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  The problem of course is that it comes in the morning, and no one likes mornings.  The fact that brunch and brinner (breakfast for dinner) are things is proof that people love breakfast foods, just not in the morning.
Generally in the mornings you tend to sleep as late as possible, then run out the door, neglecting breakfast and just grabbing something on the road on the way to your destination.  Unfortunately, a lot of times “grabbing something on the road” means stopping at a place like McDonalds and getting something like an Egg McMuffin.  Which is fine if you enjoy getting 87% of your daily cholesterol intake and 33% of your sodium intake down in your first meal of the day (you can see for yourself if you don’t believe me).  Also, your eggs will look like a hockey puck.

I can practically feel the spongy texture of the eggs from here.

I can practically feel the spongy texture of the eggs from here.

But what if I told you, you could make your own version of an Egg McMuffin (I call mine an Egg MegMuffin, but I realize that won’t work for people not named Meg) at home in under 10 minutes?  Surely you have 10 minutes to spare right?  It’ll be worth it, I promise.

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