Several us us here find ourselves cooking some of the day's meals for fewer people than we did in our past years. Even with 4 adults in our house, we all get our own breakfasts most days, so I'm often cooking something just for myself.
On top of cooking for fewer of us, I'm eating less than I used to. So making a hot breakfast like a single pancake or one piece of French toast has become more of a challenge, when that's the sort of breakfast I'm a hankerin' for.
Here's my solution for a single slice of bread and one egg "batch" of French toast -- a French toast omelet. I use 1 large egg, 1 slice of bread, just a splash of milk (I use soy milk, about 1 tablespoon), a sprinkling of sugar, and a few drops of vanilla extract.
I beat the batter together and slice the bread into 4 to 6 sticks. I soak the bread sticks on all sides,
then place them into a small heated and oiled skillet (the kind that is often referred to as an omelet pan).
I pour the remaining batter on top and between the sticks in the skillet, filling in all of the gaps between them, and making one large "pancake".
After browning on one side, I flip it over and cook until that side is done. The egg batter firms up during the cooking. The end result is a cross between French toast and a slightly sweet omelet.
I've made this for myself several times in recent weeks. It's delicious and just the right amount of food for me with no leftovers. Plus I get all of the protein in one egg with only one slice of bread.
What family-size recipes have you modified to make just one or two servings for a shrinking household and/or smaller appetites?
French toast reheats in the microwave quite well so when we have a few slices of "old" bread I make french toast out of them and we eat that for two days. We make breakfast wraps to freeze and pull one out for on the go. Pancakes reheat well also so I make a small batch and we'll warm those up for a couple of days. I boil 6 eggs and peel them and refrigerate them for a quick snack, a breakfast or to add to a salad. I've never made french toast sticks so maybe someday I'll give those a try.
ReplyDeleteAlice
Alice
Hi Alice,
Deletethose are all great ideas for preparing some breakfast items ahead for reheating one or two at a time, as needed. I freeze leftover pancakes. Leftover waffles still get gobbled up within a day or two in our house.
Thanks for sharing what you do, Alice.
Here are a couple of fun ideas for you that I like to occasionally make:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.budgetbytes.com/5-minute-microwave-french-toast-mug/
https://www.averiecooks.com/white-cheddar-and-dijon-baked-eggs/
I generally end up cooking the french toast a little longer than the recipe says. I don't have a toaster oven, but if you do, I think the baked eggs recipe would work really well in that and you wouldn't have to heat up the oven. I sometimes make it for an easy dinner if it's just my daughter and me.
Like Alice, we also reheat French toast and pancakes. We crisp up leftover waffles in the toaster. Funny story--I made sloppy joes for dinner tonight, thinking that it would be a good way to use up hamburger buns that my husband pulled from the freezer over the weekend, which were getting crumbly. I had dinner prepared and went to get the buns, and couldn't find them anywhere. I thought maybe I was losing my mind, but then I asked my husband about them. Turns out he thought they were too far gone to use and had gotten rid of them (which is VERY unlike him). I didn't have other buns around, so my husband ate his sloppy joe on toast and my daughter and I toasted a leftover waffle and ate it on that. It was pretty good, actually. We were making up names for our meal--sloppy waffles seems to be the one that stuck.
Hi Kris,
DeleteI love the sound of the French toast in a mug recipe, especially that it uses a whole egg for one serving. I'm always trying to get more protein in early in the day. I don't know how many slices of bread 1 cup of cubes or pieces works out to be, but I guess I could simply use 1 slice and have a egg-ier end result. In addition to eating more protein, I'm also not eating as many grains with each meal. Do you find the mug is very hard to clean out afterward? I've done scrambled eggs in mugs before, but they always need a lot of scrubbing afterward.
You've mentioned making egg cups before. My mother's 1950s cookbook has a recipe for eggs in ham cups that sounds similar. Anyway, that recipe on Averie Cooks looks delicious. Thanks for sharing.
I agree on how nice and crispy leftover waffles get in the toaster. Sometimes the leftover waffles are even better than fresh ones.
Yes, the egg on the mug can get sticky--grease it well!
DeleteEveryday is a challenge to cook a nice, decent meal as we once did when we were a family of four. I had a meal plan and knew what I was going to prepare for the week. Now we seem to live on a rotation of leftovers that don't all go together. We don't mind, it's easy, economical and freeing. We save even small bits of leftovers and take it out at mealtime. I noticed our appetites shrank, we don't look forward to meals like before when we were younger. We aren't motivated to cook big meals and freeze a portion, or eat the same meal for 5 days. I can now understand why seniors buy take outs often. One plate of food could last a few days. Not the healthiest to eat this way, but I see the day we might depend more on prepared foods. Maybe we're just tired of eating!?!
ReplyDeleteHave a good evening,
Laura
Laura, you described everything about me and my husband. I can't figure out what's wrong with me. I can't make and enjoy the meals I did when we had 3 kids living at home, I often make too much, I don't love putting half in the freezer only to be forgotten, our appetites have shrunk, eating the same thing 3 or 4 days in a row is boring but we do it. My problem is that prepared foods can be more unhealthy like high sodium, high carbs, etc.
DeleteAlice
Hi Laura,
DeleteI think it's been more challenging scaling down my cooking than scaling up as my family grew. Unless I plan very carefully, we have leftovers from every meal. So now, I try to leave one dinner open for a leftover dinner. That will be tonight, as we have leftovers from a get together with my son and daughter-in-law on Sunday (celebrating my birthday and my husband's birthday jointly). It works out well for me today, especially, as I had another dental appointment this morning, with more bad news. So I'm not in a mood to cook or be creative in the kitchen today.
As for eating less and less with getting older, I remember when my grandmother was in her 60s and early 70s, she had a boiled egg for lunch. When I'd stay with her, she'd make me a complete lunch, but she'd just eat an egg. By the time she was in her 70s, she didn't eat lunch at all, but would just eat breakfast and dinner. I suspect I'll follow suit and eat fewer meals per day sometime soon. I already eat a lot less than I used to at lunch time. On the bright side -- not eating as much means the grocery budget will go a lot farther, or we can splurge and buy more of our favorite fruits and veggies or cuts of meat. That's the upside to shrinking households or appetites.
Have a great rest of your day and evening, Laura.
Hi Alice,
DeleteI also wonder what's wrong with me or is this just going through the next phase of life. When our grandchildren were over, we cooked all day to prepare three meals a day. That was no problem, but without them we have no reason to prepare so much food. We'll enjoy our freedom from the kitchen. My husband said don't take away the small amount of meal prep from him or he'll slip into dementia faster, so I cook so infrequently, only when I want to try a new recipe.
Laura
Hi Lili,
DeleteI'm sorry that you have more difficulties with your dental. I dread going to the dentist and always am anxious not knowing what to expect. It's interesting how different we are, yet speak the same language.
We eat just two meals and a snack. I agree we are trading quantity for quality. I can understand your grandmother, having only a boiled egg for lunch.
Laura
Thanks, Laura. Things will get better soon.
DeleteI like the idea of eating better, just less.
I too make extra French toast when we make it. We reheat ours in the toaster.
ReplyDeleteHi Live and Learn,
DeleteThat's good to know that the leftover French toast reheats in the toaster well. I know our waffles always crisp up so nicely in the toaster. I think we actually prefer those leftover and toasted to freshly baked waffles.
About twice a week, DS and I eat buckwheat pancakes for breakfast. We make a double or triple batch, then put them in ziplock bags in the freezer, and then heat what we want in the toaster. Frozen baked goods mold fast, if you leave them out; but we have good luck with bread products we immediately toast (or cook -- like french toast from frozen bread -- no thawing, just put the frozen bread in the egg.) These kinds of practices are really handy in a small household, and/or one where different family members have different dietary needs or schedules. We also usually have corn muffins with dried cranberries in the freezer at all times, and these are such a treat, heated up in a parchment paper package as a bonus to breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
ReplyDeleteI haven't quite managed the art of toasting pancakes. My husband does that frequently, but when I do that, they're hard to get back out. My husband, of course, is not at all wary about poking something into the toaster to get a food out. I have now trained him to always unplug the toaster first, though.
DeleteYum, corn muffins with dried cranberries sound delicious!
We've done it in a pop-up toaster, but you need to be mindful of the size you make, if you're going to do it that way! (Congratulations on getting DH to unplug before "fishing"!) We have a toaster oven, again, and that's super-simple, as long as you watch the time/temp settings. I do NOT like my pancakes hard. When all we had was a pop-up, I actually usually made a little package with parchment paper (which we could reuse a number of times, because it stayed really clean with only bread products heating in it), and warmed the pancakes in the oven at 325. It didn't take too long, and it was a good pre-heat for if we were baking anything after. (We have electric right now, so I am more hesitant to crank the oven up than I was when I had natural gas. For the muffins, we have cast-iron mini-muffin tins; so a regular muffin recipe makes 18 mini-muffins. For two of us, we usually heat up 3 or 4, because one and a half or two is usually plenty; so one baking serves 4 or five meals. But we find it's better if you chop the cranberries if you are making mini's, so they spread around more. :) Sara
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