Homemade Egg McMuffin

Ingredients (no brainer really)

• 1 large egg
• 1 english muffin
• 1 piece of pre-cooked Canadian bacon (usually found in packs by the hot dogs)
• 1 slice of American cheese
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Poach an egg.

• This is probably the most intimidating part, but it’s easy once you get the hang of it. There’s lots of ways to do this based on the equipment you have on hand. After a few attempts I’ve found that an egg cooker is the perfect device to mimic the true McDonalds taste of an Egg McMuffin. I bought have this one and I love it. If you have an egg cooker, use that to steam your egg following the instructions for that appliance.
• If you don’t, that’s okay. I’ve done it without one and it’s just as fine and delicious. Use this recipe by Simply Recipes. I personally don’t like the vinegar so I never use it.
• Finally, I like to use organic eggs. While it’s more expensive, I actually think it tastes a lot better. I always use eggs like that when I’m baking. Maybe I’m crazy, but it makes a difference.

2. While your egg is being poached, fry up the bacon!

• Super simple. Just heat up a skillet on medium heat, and toss in a slice. Cook each side for about two minutes.  Canadian bacon is so lean and low in calories. It doesn’t leave behind a lot of grease and the likelihood of getting splattered and burned is so low.

3. Prepare your english muffin.

• This is all up to you. If you want the true McDonalds experience, do nothing but open it up. If you want a little more crunch, which I like, toast it to your taste.
• I’m using whole wheat muffins in the picture above.

4. Place your cheese.

• At McDonalds they just throw on the whole slice. I like to take the slice and split it in half and put it on the top and bottom halves of the english muffin.
• Think outside the box on the kind of cheese you want to use. We usually have White American cheese from our local deli on hand for sandwiches. I plan on switching over to that when we get some more.

5. Assemble the delicious breakfast sandwich.

• Once your egg is poached to your liking, put it all together. Add some salt and pepper to the egg. And that’s it. If you’re going to travel with this, wrap them up in aluminum foil. We’ve been doing that each morning this past week and taking them to work. It travels well.

6. Instead of hashbrowns, go with fruit, and voila you have one great and pretty healthy breakfast.

Whenever I think or hear about grilled pizza, I’m always intrigued. I once had it a friend’s party and it was excellent, but I’ve never had a lot of luck after that. You can buy pizzas to grill at target, and those just ended up burned. It takes quite a magic touch. I had forgotten about my desire for grilled pizza until I stumbled upon this recipe on Mel’s Kitchen Cafe. In this recipe you make your own dough and sauce and this intrigued me. She also provides fantastic step-by-step instructions.

I am such a novice at making dough, dealing with yeast, and the like that it took me a bit to make my batch, but I did do it successfully. The sauce was super easy and perfect for pizza. Then I made browned and crumbled some sweet italian sausage and used pepperoni for toppings.

The actual art of rolling out the dough and getting in the grill went only okay, and after the fact we agreed that it would have been better to make smaller pizzas that were thinner. All-in-all they were tasty and not terribly hard to make.

Check out the recipe on Mel’s Kitchen Cafe.

In the midst of all this, I threw together a peach pie, and I’ve got to tell you that it turned out perfect. The peaches were mixed, with some that were more ripe than others so the filling is scrumptious. I highly recommend this easy and delicious pie that anyone can make.

I followed Ina Garten’s recipe for Lemon Chicken Breasts, and I didn’t make any adjustments, except I didn’t have skin on boneless breasts and I brushed on some of the marinade over the top of the breasts, where she only did olive oil.

The marinade/sauce was really quite easy to make and the smell made us salivate. Thankfully I had some wine I had been saving that was perfect for it. There aren’t a lot of ingredients and it’s relatively simple to put together. I think if you don’t have fresh thyme, you could easily use dried.

One thing I forgot, but thankfully remembered right after I put it in the oven was cutting a lemon in eights and tucking them between the breasts.

The chicken cooked flawlessly in about 40 minutes and was nice and juicy. Some lemon chicken dishes I’ve tried are kind of flavorless, this one was definitely not. You’ve got to love garlic to make this dish!

I served it with some chicken rice and steamed green beans, like Ina.

The first thing I did when I regained my freedom is I read a book, and quickly it became about enjoying the pleasurable things in life and shoving off responsibility. So I took a nice vacation last week where I read more books and played outside in the summer (first time in years), grilled steaks and saw movies. It was definitely what I needed.

As we all know, vacations end. It’s time for me engage in my life again and my work. I need a reset. I need routine. I need inspiration.

Space

Cleaning my space at home — it helps me want to be here and eases my mind from the stress of looking around and feeling burdened by the mess.

Cleaning out my pantry and refrigerator – out with the old and stale, in with the new and fresh. Less is more in terms of keeping food, in my opinion. Right now our pantry is bursting with stuff. There’s no space. It sounds like we have a lot of food, but we sit around thinking we don’t have anything to munch on. That’s because finding things in the fridge and pantry isn’t easy and it doesn’t feel good.

Laundry and organizing my closet — will make getting dressed for work easier in the morning. Anything that helps me get to work in the morning would be very helpful right now.

Cleaning, organizing and rearranging my office – I need a change to my space there. There have been so many other changes there, circling around me, I need to make a change myself so that I can complete this transition and want to actually be there.

Connections, Communications, and Productivity

Inbox — I actually did this recently, but I still have so far to go. My work inbox has over 12,000 messages in it. For a while I had 2,000 unread messages (mostly from Facebook and Borders and messages that didn’t really apply to me). I cleaned those out and that feels like a burden has been lifted. Now to clean out the old ones that I don’t need anymore. I love to lighten my load. I did this also on my GMail for my personal e-mail.

Google — I am a fan of Google’s application suite. It happened during my big project when my assistant showed me how awesome Google Docs is. We were able to really collaborate on documents and I could access those documents from any web browser, easily and quickly. Since then I’ve been using it for everything in my personal life and continue to use it at work for various things.

One of the ways I use it is for tracking tasks. I started doing this during my big project. Instead of all of these complicated task management programs, I simply use a Google document to write down what I need to do each day, what I’ve done (after the fact) and indicate when stuff gets done. I mix up both work and personal things because it’s way easier to only have one document. There are a lot of benefits to do this than just knowing what I need to get done. So many times I can’t remember what I’ve done. This tracks it. It’s a running list that just keeps going. So call it a task list, journal of sorts that I can access from anywhere (browser on whichever computer I’m on and from my iPhone and iPad) at anytime and easily edit.

Tasklist in Google Docs

I also use Google for my personal e-mail, personal calendar, and Google+ for connecting with others professionally and personally.

Mind and Body Nourishment

Meal Planning — a little time and planning up front saves a lot of time, money, and calories during the week. It also eases stress. It avoids that pesky question (that I often get), what’s for dinner? For inspiration I turn to “This Week for Dinner,” a blog that promotes meal planning and sharing menus. I’ve also just started using my Google calendar to help me plan and help me remember.

Meal planning with Google Calendar

Breakfast and Lunch – I’m pretty good about packing breakfast, but I stink at packing or planning for lunch. Most days I skip lunch and scavenge for snacks instead. There are so many things wrong with that, but the worst thing about it is that I end up so hungry for dinner that I don’t want to cook and I pick up food on the way home. I need to correct this.  I’m currently reading:

• The No Excuses Take Your Lunch To Work Guide
• 25 Tips for Better Brown Bags

Reading — Summer is a great time to turn off the TV. It’s also a great escape, so I’ve been spending more time reading. It relaxes me at night and it helps me wake up in the morning. I know — waking up and reading in the morning is weird, but that’s my favorite time to do it. I love using Goodreads to connect with friends and get ideas of what to read. It’s also a fun way to keep track of what you’re reading and gab about it. Find me on Goodreads and add me as a friend!

Exercise and Play — My gym routine got totally out of whack during the big project. I have a fabulous gym membership that I haven’t used in weeks. I need to start going back, so I’m fitting that into my schedule. Also — besides boring exercise, I’m just looking for more opportunities to play. Whether it’s golf or tennis, or flying a kite. Anything that gets me off the couch is a good thing.

Conference — I’m planning on attending a work conference in the fall that will help inspire me and hopefully that spark will come back. Right now things are not so good there after they made some personnel and organizational changes. My feelings and attitude are not what they should be about a job that I used to love so much. I need to find that purpose again so that I can put my best into it. Being happy at work is obviously very important.

I’d love to hear your tips and advice on helping me get back on track. What do you do when you slide away from the norm?

The best part about it is not the space it freed up, but the ability to see what is in the pockets and grab it easily. One thing I hate is not eating the food that I do buy, so this helps curb that problem. Since I did this we’ve already had popcorn, which was stashed in the back of the pantry and we’ve been eating the Weight Watchers carrot cakes that I bought with coupons.

I also put the kid’s snacks in there at a height where they can reach them and their cups. This allowed me to repurpose the pink plastic bin that used to hold their snacks and sat awkwardly on top of the cat food bin. I’m now using the pink bin to hold all my baking items like cupcake liners, sprinkles, and cake decorators.

Some other good uses for a shoe organizer:

• Scrapbook materials and crafts (thanks for the tip Jen!)
• Bathroom accessories and beauty supplies like hair and make up brushes, lotions
• Mail and bills
• Tools and garage type stuff

The taste of warm bananas reminds us both of our childhoods when our parents would seek out Bananas Foster. This delicious flambéed dessert originates from Brennan’s restaurant in New Orleans, which out parents have frequented many times over the years. You can now find it at other fine dining establishments, and if you see it on the menu, get it. It is divine.

To make Nutella and Banana French Toast, we decided that it would work best as a sandwhich, and we were right. If you want, you can add syrup to it as well and eat it with a fork and knife, which is what one of our taste testers did.

Nutella & Banana French Toast

Makes 4 servings

4 eggs
2/3 cup milk
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of Vanilla
8 thick slices of 2-day-old bread, better if slightly stale. Try Challah, which is excellent for French Toast.
1 small jar of Nutella
2 bananas, peeled and sliced
Butter

1. In a large shallow bowl whisk together the eggs, milk, cinnamon and vanilla.
2. On dry bread, spread a layer of Nutella on each slice.
3. On four of the slices, place aroud six sliced bananas on top of the Nutella, and then top with the second slice of bread that only has Nutella.
4. Take the entire sandwich and dip into the egg mixture, allowing the bread to soak up the mixture on each side.
5. Melt some butter over a large skillet on medium high heat. Add as many sandwiches will fit at a time. Fry until brown on both sides, flipping the sandwich when necessary, about two to three minutes on each side.

And that’s it! Chances are you will only need to eat one of these, they are incredibly filling and delicious.

First, I got rid of things from my entertainment center, as you may have seen in a previous post.

Then cleaned out my closet and found about 25 things.

And then I hit the jackpot in my bathroom, where I was easily able to find over 60 things to toss out. I have one of those two drawer plastic bins in one of my bathroom cabinets, you know, to keep things “organized.” Turns out, it was more like a prison for lotions, hair products, and tons of other crap that I never ever use, and are way past their expiration date, if they have one.

The life of a girl. I love the old Sonic Care. It looks so old compared to the one I use today.

So I was able to donate two bags of stuff to the ARC and throw out third.

It’s not much, but it’s a small dent. I think I might try to do this again a couple of months from now.

If you played along, how did you do?

This is exactly the kind of advice I need right now since I am still stalled on getting rid of 100 things. Here’s a short video she has related to the book:

So I’ll definitely be checking this out. I only wish it came on the Kindle since I’m trying to have less stuff! Oh well.

So I wake up this morning, feeling hungover from the Olympic Opening Ceremony and late night chatting with some friends. I stumble out of bed, get dressed and cleaned up, and I come down stairs to assess the damage. It looks way worse in the daylight. Which is sort of a sad statement in it’s own right. I haven’t seem my home in the daylight since last Sunday.

I am so tempted to get into my big chair and ignore it all, but I know that just won’t cut it and I’ll be miserable. So I did what I tend to do when this happens. I turned it over to HGTV to be inspired!

HGTV on Saturday mornings is all about home improvement, which is perfect for me. I need to see other people up and active to make their homes a better place to live in (or sell as the case may be for some programs). So I subject myself (such a terrible thing, ) to watching as much HGTV as I can on Saturdays to get me going. Everyone in my house is the better for it!

Now I could write a whole other post about the other kind of therapy I get from HGTV, but I’ll just say that watching all those episodes of House Hunters and Property Virgins, makes me get serious about my financial situation so I can one day buy my own place too.

Thanks HGTV!

I know that, so why don’t I do that?

Well so far my decluttering efforts have been focused not on those easy spots but on hard stuff.

For example, I thought that I could make some money from some of my scrapbooking supplies. I pulled together some pretty awesome Creative Memories stuff that sells very well on eBay. I went as far to take pictures and write descriptions. But then I couldn’t pull the trigger. These things in particular are retired 12×12 pages and retired 12×12 albums.

Well, I chickened out at the last minute because it didn’t feel right. And I’m actually kind of glad I did. My desire to make money from my stuff was outweighing my ability to think logically about what I should get rid of. So I held back and thought about what exactly I was doing. The white 12×12 pages can still be used with all of my old 12×12 paper. And I almost sold the 12×12 coverset that I have been saving to put my already made, just need journaling, Ireland pages. That was a close one!

What I did realize is that I will never use 12×12 black pages. They just aren’t my thing and are left over from when I was a consultant. So after some much thoughtful consideration, that is what I put on eBay.

So maybe I’m starting with the big stuff, and I need to focus on just the trash around my house. Build my way up to the stuff to donate, and then the stuff to sell…if I want to.