Day 15 - Stuffed French Toast

Recipe from Jamie Oliver Online

Mmm...mmm...mmm...Banana French Toast.

Make it with GF Bread or Regular Bread. We used both.

French Toast is one of my favorite breakfasts which is why I had it the morning after my birthday party. We decided to make Stuffed Banana French Toast.

It was pretty easy. All you have to do is peel and slice bananas--or one banana, I should say, since one banana makes 2 french toasts--and drizzle honey on them. Once you have your bananas all ready, make the egg mixture. It had 4 eggs and milk. We added a little vanilla.

You whisk that together and then dip some bread--any bread you really want, but we used French bread in this case--in it. And then put it on the griddle, add the bananas with honey, and then lay another piece of bread on top.

Let each side cook for 3-5 minutes because that's how you get it nice and cooked.

All my friends helped!

Some of my friends didn't want to try it, but everybody did. And then two of them LOVED it and wanted more. Everyone else liked a lot. My big brother, Alex, yet again, even had some of my delicious cooking.

2 THUMBS UP

I will definitely make this again.

Day 14 - Bacon and Cheese Omelette

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

Today I, as in Jared, made a delectable bacon, cheese, and egg omelette.

Obviously an omelette is made of eggs. (If you don't know that, you might want to consult your doctor about your knowledge)

It was fairly easy to make which was a relief after last night when we made two dishes and the failure of the lemony lemon cake.

All I did was put eggs in a bowl, put in some salt and pepper, mix it up, and then you put it into a hot frying pan after you put in a chunk of butter and let it melt.

New cooking station...

You wait until it's kind of cooked on the bottom but kind of not cooked on the top. Then you add the cheese and bacon, which I was supposed to cook in the pan, but I used the microwave.

Perfectly cooked omelette

When it's just about cooked, I folded it in half like a taco.

Folding it like a taco

It cooked for a couple more minutes and ta da! If you do this you will have made your first bacon and cheese omelette. We will be sending you your certificate in the mail and you will receive it shortly.

Perfecto!

Notice from the pictures that we have made a better work station so we're not running around all the time. We have added a cutting board that we're leaving out all the time just like Sam the Cooking Guy from Just Cook This... 'cause we don't have a whole counter made of wood like Jamie.

I like the new station. It brings joy to my heart. Seriously.

Happy Eating...until next time...

DOS (2) THUMBS UP

Day 13, part 2 - Lemon Drizzle Cake

Recipe from Jamie Oliver's Website (his cake looks way better than ours)

This is the second part of, like, a duo, for today's cooking. I, Jared, am writing this. We made a lemon cake that was a failure.

Using our new hand mixer

We're not really sure why. First it didn't rise. It was really lemony because all the lemon was really concentrated when it was supposed to be spread out. So I didn't like it at all, really, and this is the first thing I didn't really like, so I was disappointed.

It took a lot of lemons!

I didn't like it because it was too concentrated and the texture was kind of weird for me. Part of the problem might also have been that the recipe ingredients were in grams and we had to convert it and we may have done it wrong. We also used a new gluten free flour mix.

We couldn't get the cake out of the pan!

So, next time, we'll use a smaller pan, double check our measurements, and leave out the tangy syrup stuff.

Our first failure

But my madre liked the cake even with the lemony craze.

It was only 1/2 inch tall! Guess the pan was too big.

One a happier subject, we found Jamie Oliver's cooking show, called Jamie Oliver At Home and it was pretty awesome.

0 THUMBS UP for me, but 29 THUMBS UP for my mom.

Day 13, part 1 - Pesto

Cookbook - Jamie's Kitchen

It's my birthday today!

Today we made pesto to go with tortellini (and we made quinoa pasta shells).

I love pesto.

We've never actually made it from scratch before. We've always bought it from a store. We were kind of stuck on what to make because I wanted tortellini for my birthday dinner so we decided to do pesto which I thought was a great idea.

I love pesto on tortellini, on panini. Really on whatever you put it on.

This is the kind of confusing part of the night. It was confusing because we had two things to make. We decided to make a lemon cake for my birthday cake, and the pesto.

So my oldest brother, Alex, decided to make the pesto since he likes pesto on grilled sandwiches.

First he chopped the basil

Then he added the pine nuts

What he did was he got several handfuls of basil from our garden--sort of a garden. Not really. It's just a basil plant. You get one clove of garlic, pine nuts (which were $9, and we didn't use them all. We bought too much), olive oil, and parmesan cheese. He used the food processor (or you can chop it if you choose, but he used the food processor because it was easier and my mom told him to).

Alex and Claire--that's his girlfriend-- both thought the store bought pesto

was more creamy, but the homemade was more flavorful.

You puree all the stuff together. Ours turned out kind of chunky and we didn't have time to do it again, so it was thicker than the store bought one, and less creamy. BUT we read the ingredients on the store bought one and they used canola oil and more cheese and a bunch of other stuff.

So what we made was, I think, way better than the store bought one, and it was healthier.

2 THUMBS UP

Wish my dad was here (he's in BOSTON at a CONFERENCE.

On my birthday.

But hi Pop!

And happy birthday to me!!!

Day 12 - Chicken Fajitas

Cookbook - Food Revolution

Here ye, here ye! On this magnificent day, I have made a truly spiffy meal. This particular meal was from Jamie Oliver's food revolution cook book!! And it was already gluten free.

Holy cow!! Isn't that crazy!!

So anyway I, me, as in Jared not Sofia (she is at our dear grandparent's house), made some yummy (did you notices that I use that term a lot?) chicken fajitas.

Before I get into that I need to tell you something: I got some new cooking materials. I got a pepper grinder, a hand mixer (really it's my mom's 'cause hers broke--only $20 at Walmart), a olive oil dripper type-o thing, and some other stuff.

Now back to cooking, the meal was under the twenty minute area in the book.

BUT IT WAS A LIE!!!

Just the twenty minute part. But then I am an inexperienced cutter. And not a good speed demon chopper. So if you're a good cutter then it's 19 minutes (or so says the recipe).

I HATE cutting raw chicken!

All you do is cut some onion and bell pepper (I don't like the onion, but I used it) and season it with paprika and cumin. Drizzle the olive oil (with my new drizzle bottle) over them, and let it all sit for five minutes.

Now cut your chicken to about the length of the bell pepper. Then put it all on a hot grill pan and move it around so it doesn't burn.

And voila! some fajita chicken!!!

Notice my mom's homemade Spanish rice, made from scratch, that is very delicious...

best in the world!

____________________

2 THUMBS UP!

Even my oldest brother and his girl friend gave it two thumbs up (hey AJ and Claire), and it was fun to make.

So, until next time....................

Day 11 - Scrambled Eggs

Cookbook - Food Revolution

Yesterday we received some brilliant news. We discovered through our psychic mind powers -- or through twitter -- that Jamie Oliver is now following A Kid's Cooking Challenge! We used our super brain power math skills and found out that he has more than 533,000 people following him. Of those, he only follows around 3,700. So we are in the 1 1/2 percent that he follows!

As Jamie would say, "That is spiffy and brilliant!"

He also DIRECT MESSAGED US, so clearly he has brain psychic power abilities, too, since he obviously felt our longing for us to direct message with him.

Now back to business.

The business of cooking. And since Jamie Oliver is in the business of cooking, that's obviously still on the same business so we're going to continue with the same business.

Today I was feeling a little bit lazy. All people feel like that sometimes, I think . . .

I made some classic scrambled eggs, with gluten free toast, of course. It was magnificent.

Usually when we make scrambled eggs, we spray the pan with a cooking oil like Pam or that kind of stuff. But this time we used some butter in the bottom of the pan. I thought that was pretty spiffing (which my mom thinks is not a word but really is).

I also added some pepper, and I don't normally add pepper. I enjoyed the peppery flavor. It was kind of subtle, so it wasn't overpowering, so it was perfect.

Except that nothing in life is perfect, so it's kind of ironic, but that's not the cooking business. These were as perfect as they could be without being perfect.

2 THUMBS UP

I shall definitely make this multiple times in my future.

Day 10 - Rice Pudding

Cookbook - Jamie's Kitchen

My brother again today was not home. He is at his friend's house. So I decided to do something quick and easy and that tasted really good. I made rice pudding and it tasted so good.

The part that makes it easy is that all you have to do is get sugar, milk, butter, and rice. And a little vanilla and salt. You let it simmer for about 30 minutes to 35 minutes and then let it cool for 5 to 10 minutes.

It's a really fun and easy meal. I like rice pudding. I like rice. This is nice and sweet. Just put some cinnamon on top to even out the flavors.

2 THUMBS UP!

Day 9 - Fruit Smoothy

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

Today is Sunday and we made a smoothy. It's a mix and match smoothy. The recipe calls for different stuff. You can do different kinds of frozen fruits and then it's just kind of what you like. It says to use plain yogurt, but we didn't have any so we used vanilla yogurt.

The weird thing is that it calls for oats. The oats slows down the sugar from the fruits going into your blood so it doesn't rush through your body all at once. You can also put in nuts. You can also add honey to bring out the flavor of the strawberrries or the bananas if you can't taste it that well.

I didn't like the graininess of the oats, but we used steel cut oats. We were supposed to use regular oats. So with steel cuts oats it was grainy and I give it 1 THUMB UP.

But if you use regular oats, I probably would have liked it a lot better. I'll try it again another day with regular oats--not today, some other time--and see how many thumbs up I'll give it.