French Toast with Strawberry Sauce

This weekend's brunch was French toast.  Growing up, it was never a favorite of mine.  I always thought it was too eggy, and, at the time, I was not a fan of eggs.  Since then I have come to appreciate good french toast.  It is a breakfast classic.  The subtle hint of cinnamon and vanilla compliment the sweetness of the powdered sugar or syrup.  I am particularly fond of french toast with a fruit compote.  There is relatively near my college that sells thick pieces of toast with a wild blueberry compote that is delicious.  I didn't have any blueberries, but I did have a bunch of farmers market strawberries that I needed to use up.  I turned this in to a lovely strawberry sauce to go over my french toast.

Pasta with Leeks and Garlic Bread

I bought leeks for my vegetable soup I cooked last week and completely forgot to include them, which meant I had two leeks sitting in the fridge that I didn't want to go to waste.  That is completely fine thought since I absolutely love leeks.  In my family leeks are most commonly use in potato leek soup.  The dish is a favorite of my families, but, I figured I had been making enough soups and stews for summer.  A light pasta dish was much more fitting for the season.  This also meant that I could make everyone's favorite garlic bread and cook the artichokes that I also had sitting in the fridge.  Together they made an excellent meal.

Hungarian Beef Stew (Goulash) and Spaetzle

At the beginning of the summer, I bought and froze a bunch of beef stew meat.  I didn't realize how many vegetarian meals I would be cooking and thought the meat would be eaten quickly.  However, despite cooking for vegetarians most days, any time I cook meat the food seems to vanish rather quickly.  When presented with stew meat my first inclination is always beef bourguignon, but, since I made that just a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try something new.  I have previously seen recipes for Goulash or Hungarian beef stew and decided to try.  Serving suggestions for the stew often included spaetzle so I decided to make that as well.  This can be a bit time consuming though.  You can just purchase spaetzle from the grocery store if you can find it or serve the stew with egg noodles instead.  But since the meat is in the slow cooker, I had time to prepare the spaetzle

French Vegetable Soup with Quinoa

The idea for this recipe came while trying to decide on a vegetarian dish that would use up some of my copious amounts of vegetable stock that I seem have.  I came across this recipe while browsing one of the food blogs I commonly read and it reminded me of a french chicken soup I had in a restaurant around here.  But, since I am cooking for lots of vegetarians this summer, I decided to stick to the vegetable version of this soup.  This soup can take lots of variation; you can use whatever vegetables you like or happen to have around.  You can also add chicken and chicken stock if you want a more meat friendly version of this soup.

Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna

Lasagna was not a dish commonly made while I was growing up.  It takes a bit of prep work so it isn't exactly ideal if you want dinner on the table in under an hour.  That being said, I made it on a weeknight and it was perfectly doable.  Lasagna is a good dish to have in your repertoire because it is generally well liked; it stores, transports, and reheats well; and it is easily modified to suit anyones tastes.  I made a vegetarian lasagna with spinach and mushrooms but you could easily interchange these for other vegetables or Italian sausage if you prefer a bit more meat.  You could even make a cheese sauce and leave out the tomato sauce.  The possibilities are endless when it comes to lasagna.

Slow Cooker Lentils

Lentils were not a staple in our house growing up though I do remember them being cooked on a few rare occasions.  They are, however, a great vegetarian option, and, since I am mainly feeding vegetarians this summer, they make a nice dinner.  This recipe also has the benefit of being made in a slow cooker, which is something I need on my busy Monday evenings.  This recipe serves at least 6 if not 8 to 10 so feel free to reduce the amounts if you don't want to make that much food. They are good served over rice or with a dollop of plain yogurt.

Buttermilk Pancakes

Pancakes are the quintessential weekend breakfast.  Back home, Sunday brunches were a common occurrence in our family.  I am now continuing the tradition here a college and cooking brunch once a week or so for my friends here.  This week was pancakes.  If you have buttermilk lying around you should definitely use that.  Two weeks ago, after I made the chocolate cake, I had lots of extra buttermilk and thus used that.  This week, however, not wanting to purchase butter milk expressly for this purpose, I just used regular milk.  If you mix a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice into a cup of milk, it will work instead.  This generally results in a thinner version of buttermilk so you probably want to add an extra 1/4 cup of flour to the batter if you want thick, fluffy pancakes.