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For a person who loves to both cook and eat, I struggle with lunch. I work from home, which is lovely, but it means that I can avoid making a plan for lunch, which means that I often skip it. Plus, I am usually trying to cram a full work day into the time when my kids are at school, which means I will try to skip lunch to eek out more work time (a bad habit).

Molletes help with this, though, because they’re so easy and good that I’m motivated to take the 5 minutes it takes to make them. They also use up leftovers.

Ingredients:

• bolillo roll or similar medium-sized roll
• small pat of butter
• mashed beans (refried beans, pinto beans, butter beans… whatever you have), heated through if you have time
• cooked ham, cut into small pieces; chorizo; or chicken or mushrooms or scrambled eggs
• shredded Chihuahua, provolone, or mozzarella cheese
• pickled red onions or pico de gallo or salsa.

 

Directions

1. Slice roll in half. Butter each side and briefly grill in an oven-safe pan.
2. Spread a thin layer of beans on the cut side of each roll.
3. Layer a thin layer of meat or mushrooms on top.
4. Finally, add a layer of cheese.
5. Broil molletes for 3 minutes or until deliciously gooey.
6. Serve with pickled red onions, pico de gallo, or salsa or all of these.

 

 

A friend recently mentioned a desire to eat more vegetables for breakfast–something our family is fairly good at. So this month, I’ll be sharing some of our favorite recipes to “veg up” (as an elderly neighbor used to call it when he’d offer us vegetables from his garden) first thing.

Ingredients

• slug of oil
• leftover white or brown rice (take out rice works just fine!)
• 1-2 eggs
• kimchi

This isn’t hard, but it is delicious, and it’s easily adaptable to the amount of leftover rice you have.

1. Heat oil in a skillet over high heat. Add rice and fry, stiring constantly.
2. Crack egg(s) directly into the skillet. Stir for about 1 minute, until egg is distributed throughout the rice.
3. Add kimchi directly into the skillet for a few seconds, if you like it warm. I prefer to remove the fried rice to a bowl and top with kimchi. Packaged kimchi will typically say that 1 oz is a serving, but whatever. It’s 10 calories (though can contain a lot of sodium), so you’re probably fine to eat as much as you want.

 

 

As we close out 2019, we’re thinking about happy memories from the last year, includes places we visited. Here are some of our favorites:

Bananas: Crystal Springs Hot Springs in Honeyville, Utah

Above, Honey and Bananas and a visiting Flat Stanley enjoy a warm dip on a snowy day.

Lamb: Any swimming pool!

Mr. Prickles: Turner Falls, Oklahoma

Honey:

The members of this family have an uncanny ability to remember every meal they ever ate. We have a US atlas of ice cream shops and BBQ joints embedded in our brains. So it’s hard for us to choose our favorite meals of the year, but we’re trying.

Bananas: Baskin Robbins Birthday Cake

Lion: Any salad I have made myself.

Mr. Prickles: a medium rare New York steak from Ruby River Steakhouse in Riverdale, Utah.

Honey: Halal Golden Raisin Chicken Tagine at Marrakech Café in Wichita.

Regular readers of this blog know that we love eggs in this family. One thing that has made them a much bigger part of our life is our InstantPot. In fact, I use it for relatively little else but still consider it worth the money just for its efficiency in making perfect hard boiled eggs.

Here’s your how-to:

1. Place rack in bottom of InstantPot. Add 1 c. water and 15 eggs (or however many you want) in an even layer; do not stack eggs.
2. Program to “Pressure cook” for 5 minutes. 3 minutes after timer ends, release pressure.
3. Use togs to transfer eggs to a bowl of ice and chill for 5 minutes.
4. Peel using the jar method: place 1-2 eggs in a small glass jar, then screw on lid. Turn on side and swirl the jar a few times. Open, remove egg, and slip the shell off.

 

In this last week of 2019, we’re sharing our favorites from the year. Today, it’s our favorite games (of any kind) that we first played this year.

Bananas: Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle

Lamb: Breath of the Wild

Mr. Prickles: Call of Cthulhu, a RPG set in the mythos developed by HP Lovecraft

Honey: Telestrations, which is like telephone but with drawings. You don’t have to be a talented artist to play, and there are no winners or losers–just a lot of laughter. Thanks to our friends the K family for introducing it to us! It’s a great choice for parties (The party pack is for 12 people) and minimal reading is required.

For the last week of the year, we’re reflecting on our favorite things this year. Today: movies.

Bananas: Jumanji: The Next Level

Lamb: Charlie’s Angels

Mr. Prickles: Clue, but that’s my favorite movie every year that I watch it, and I watch it every year.

Honey: I am a mother, and watching a film means sitting down, which means I fall asleep. Thus, I only watched a few new movies this year–The Lovers with Tracy Letts and Deborah Winger and Mary, Queen of Scots because I was on an airplane and Aladdin because it was a child’s birthday choice. None of them really deserve a mention here, so I’ll go with an old favorite: The Muppet Christmas Carol, which is not the best Muppet movie (that is Muppets from Space) but is the best version of A Christmas Carol.

It’s Christmas Eve! To honor the last day of Advent, we’re loving each other by asking each other a question about something we know is important to the other person, then listening carefully to the answer, without interruption or correction.