I’m not a big breakfast person, and probably in keeping with my sweet tooth, more often than not, you’ll catch me reaching for a pastry over an omelette. This was my nod at being seasonal and keeping my weekday breakfast interesting: a loaf of pumpkin bread with cream cheese swirled in the middle.
This was a delicious bread, kind of like a banana bread (which I’m sure we’ve all had before), but well, pumpkinny instead of banana-y, and richer in color. I included some of the usual suspects as far as pumpkin-friendly spices and a mix of nuts (walnuts, pecans) and chocolate chips. I’ve had images of deliciously frosted pumpkin cupcakes in my head for a while, so I also thought a swirl of cream cheese throughout the loaf would go nicely while still making a decent claim at this being breakfast friendly and not all out dessert. 
I’m also… click to read more…
Posted by mike on October 28th, 2008 in Breakfast, Cake, Dessert, Fruit, Snacks
As blueberry season comes to an end, you realize you can only squeeze in some many blueberry-centric recipes before you need a long-term plan. How will you cope without them in the coming months? 
The answer is simple: get out a clean jar or few and preserve some blueberry jam.
I’ve come to appreciate how easy it is to make preserves and that you can make some pretty neat things that you might not find in the grocery store, so why not make home canning and preserving a regular occurrence? If you haven’t tried it yet, go out, buy yourself some mason jars and give this one a try–it is so easy and so enjoyable to have jars of your own home-made jam to dip into throughout the year. Plus, if you ever use jelly or jam at all (usually goes on a bagel on a Saturday morning… click to read more…
Posted by mike on August 17th, 2008 in Breakfast, Dessert, Fruit, Sauce
Once I conquered my fear of making crepes and realized I could quite easily make these at home rather than reserving them as a treat best left to the hands of someone more experienced, they found their way into my weekend breakfast repertoire. Pancakes, waffles, bagels, and omelettes are all great Saturday morning breakfast food, but there’s no reason not to include some delicious Mango Nutella Crêpes in your routine as well.
After having made my first batch of crêpes, I still had a ton of nutella in the pantry, and nutella just screams crêpes to me (and in unison, my belly was also screaming crêpes, so it was decided). So while local strawberries have come and gone, it was onto another favorite fruit that has been looking pretty darn good on the store shelves these days: mangoes! Yes, this isn’t tremendously different from the prior crêpes, but can you ever have too many? click to read more…
Posted by mike on May 31st, 2008 in Breakfast, Dessert, Fruit, Mediterranean, Snacks
I don’t typically do much for breakfast, especially during weekdays when I normally just eat some store-bought granola bar with my coffee as I run out the door. I usually don’t have the time or appetite to have much more, but I did have the urge recently to improve on the quality of my breakfast, so trying my hand at my own granola bars seemed like a great place to start.
In addition to the obvious inclusion of oats and nuts, I also employed some spices (cardamom and ginger) as I thought these would rather nicely complement the filling: strawberries (since I know how nicely they can go together)! I was a bit worried that using fresh strawberries would result in a wet, mushy granola mess (since they macerate and get quite wet in the presence of sugar), so I sliced them thin and insulated the granola from them with a thin layer of strawberry… click to read more…
Posted by mike on May 25th, 2008 in Breakfast, Dessert, Fruit
My mother has been a loyal reader of my blog since the beginning. Aside from enjoying seeing what I write about here and making sure that I’m eating well 
, I think one of her favorite parts of this blog are the many comments you leave for me, my loyal readers. She was interested in Strawberry Seduction when I first posted it, and so she has happily joined the fray with some entries of her own (along with a good number of you–the round-up of all of the entries should be my next post!)!
Without a blog of her own, I am hosting her entries here, so please say hello, readers! 
So enough of my interruptions, here is her post:
Strawberry Supreme Chocolate Chip Cheesecake
- Crust:
- 1.75-2 cups graham cracker crumbs
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 6 Tbsp butter
- Filling
… click to read more…
Posted by mike on April 4th, 2008 in Breakfast, Cake, Dessert, Fruit
Crepes were always a rare but special treat for me as a kid. When we’d go on family vacations, there would be a few places that we absolutely had to go to for breakfast so we could have crepes. As simple as they are, something about them is just always a delight, and so for breakfast (or a dessert), today we have nutella and fruit (strawberry and banana) filled crêpes.
Given how special crepes were to me as a kid, when I was much younger, my brother and I had tried to make crepes for my mother on Mother’s Day (fancy schmancy breakfast in bed–what more could you ask for? ). Of course, having no real knowledge of cooking and a box of pancake mix did not spell success–along with the fact that we didn’t notice that the box was about two years past expiration. To make a long story short, those crepes were… click to read more…
Posted by mike on March 15th, 2008 in Breakfast, Dessert, Fruit, Mediterranean, Snacks
