I have a lot of fun surprising people with monetary, practical, completely silly, or edible gifts. I enjoy spending time and putting love into something, and taking someone totally by surprise when I give it to them. You may mention a need for an item and it gets stored in my brain’s filing system as “things to watch out for while shopping or cleaning out closet for Goodwill”.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not boasting about all of the wonderfulness that I possess and how lucky you should be to consider yourself my friend, but more so about the wonderfulness that is giving. See a need, fill a need. Whether you subscribe to good karma, the Golden Rule, or paying it forward the act of giving almost never leaves both parties unhappy. And it’s simple mathematics; You’re hungry and I love to cook. Or you need groceries and gas, I can either hand over $20 for my own personal happiness for the week, or give it to you and we both get a little happiness for ourselves.
I really do get a lot of enjoyment out of giving. Unfortunately, in my nephew’s case, I need to back it down a notch. When I come to visit and I happen to be carrying a bag (which is almost always) he suspects that there is a gift waiting for him inside. I’m still on the fence as to whether or not this is a good thing. Since I only see him, maybe twice a month, it is a good thing. But on the other hand, it’s almost to the point where if I show up without something, what I would get is “Auntie Naaeee, where’s my present?” Bah…that’s what family members (non-parents) are for! Spoiling!
On the topics of giving, food, and general sneakiness…I have a friend. Yes, I do. 90% of my friends’ meals come from every fast food joint in the area, and the other 10% would be PB&J at home…but that’s only when there are 2 slices of bread in her cupboards. Now, I never eat breakfast, even though our mothers and women’s health magazines tell us that is the most important meal of the day. I don’t eat it because of two reasons: I’m rarely ever hungry in the morning and two, if I put something in my tummy other than coffee before the sun has been up for a few hours, I get sick to my stomach. Maybe it’s the coffee…
Back to the story, I decided to make a breakfast meal for my friend. Or it could have been the other way around; I received in my daily email from allrecipes.com, a recipe for Ham breakfast braid.
This is a breakfast deserving of a real plate! Paper plates be damned!
Wanting to try it out, I chose my friend as a guinea pig. Whichever one works best for the story, I prefer to call it divine confection. This recipe, like most are after the fact, is super easy and the ingredients are incredibly basic. Allrecipes.com did not provide a step by step photo montage though, and if you learn visually, like myself, you can check out this chickadees blog instead.
Bakingwithbeth also follows a smaller serving size than Allrecipe, but I didn’t realize that until after the oven had preheated and I was beating the eggs…but what is good cooking without mistakes? And yummy mistakes and “ooo lemmie try it this way” ideas?
I had the needed ingredients; Eggs, cream cheese, milk (I used canned milk and it was just fine), shredded cheese, and 2 tubes of crescent roll dough. (I just realized that frosting is really the only food that sounds decent coming from of a “tube”.)
An example of how to take unappetizing photos. This was the beginning formation of the dough, later I added additional dough to cover the complete top surface.
You really only need enough dough to make a base for the eggs to sit in and some more to cover them up a bit. I noticed that, while a lot of photos show an equal baked dough/egg ratio on the top, there were a lot of photos that made the whole thing like a human torso with its skin flayed and its innards showing.
Place 2 eyes and a menacing mouth on this and viola! you have the cutest Halloween breakfast mummy!
Nomnom. I chose the modest path and went complete coverage, using all but 4 crescent triangles of dough; I made the base, piled on the goodness and then covered it with “braids” of dough. I forgot to brush the top with butter, but if you forget too, it does not make it less yummy!
This is what a baked braid looks like. Don't do drugs kids.
Another mistake that I made was beating the eggs with the milk and cream cheese, all at once and without an actual blender or beater of any kind. I used a spoon. I am only admitting this because it just shows how hard it is to screw up this recipe. My concoction left the eggs and milk whipped, of course, but with the occasional bit of cream cheese. I would like to try it again with an adequate beater, but I am not dismissing the enjoyment of taking a bite and hitting a pocket of SURPRISE - CREAM CHEESE!
The cream cheese melted during both the frying and baking process, so if you make the same mistake I did, no worries.
Additional touches to the mid-morning nap inducing breakfast included these bad boys (sliced) and a sprinkling of tarragon.
1 comment:
I am a glad recipient of your generosity and thoughtfulness. Whether it's a random text ("Didn't you need a brownie pan?") or a surprise gift of shoes that fit me perfectly (my husband of 12 years has never bought me clothing or shoes!), your kindness always touches me long after the fact.
Recently, I had an opportunity to give. A friend mentioned that she was in desperate need for groceries because of cut hours and mounting medical bills. She had canned and boxed goods due to another friends gift, but lamented the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables.
I took note. And took action. I scoured the farmer's market and Meijer for the best deals and put together a big paper grocery bag of potatoes, tomatoes, butternut squash, apples, lettuce, mushrooms, carrots, etc.
I think I spent about $5.00 for that bag of groceries, but her happy tears and overwhelmed gratitude more than repaid my monetary expenditure.
I agree that good karma will come back to you.
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