Vanilla Cinnamon Pear | Easy Ways to Spruce Up French Toast

Otto hates yummy food, especially french toast, and never food parties with his breakfast. He is an incredibly serious person who is also so so so very shy. We are all super boring and quiet at our house and our favorite pastime is to sit around staring at each other for hours with our hair in our eyes, while making frowny faces and whispering about rocks.

Lies! Anyways, here are some easy additions you can make to your favorite french toast recipe to really make that toast sing:

- cook in butter, no substitutes!
- sprinkle ground cinnamon or nutmeg or ginger or really any spice cake spice into the mix
- add a splash of vanilla extract, almond extract, or really any delicious extract into the mix
- dice up some fruit and sprinkle on top, then cook it right into the toast when you flip
- for a prettier version, cook the fruit up separately and ladle on top

There you have it. Simple food, made well, using really great ingredients. So delicious.

In recent news: I can't wait til Thanksgiving! This week is dragging already because IT ISN'T THURSDAY YET like every second until it is Thursday and then I will be happy. Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is on Wednesday night and I think that will officially kick off the holiday for me. We are making a Thanksgiving cake this year that I'm hoping is gloriously good looking. An ombre affair that I'm hoping is worth taking pictures of and sharing here.

What's your favorite Thanksgiving dish? Mine, by a mile, is green bean casserole. French's onions and me, we are life partners ♥

What's your favorite holiday movie? Mine, by a mile, is Love Actually. TNT needs to GET ON IT and start putting that shiz on heavy rotation already, yo!

xo, happy NOT THURSDAY YET.

I Blew A Turkey Loaf

Haha, could not resist that title! Head out of the gutter, perves, this isn't Skinemax! Or whatever weird sex channel would show something like... you know what, forget it, I'm gonna stop. But for reals, tonight I blew the sh*t out of what should have been a beautiful turkey meatloaf. My first meatloaf, ever, actually.

May ye olde turkey loaffe RIP. She were a gnarly, nasty mess. She be buried in ye olde dumpsterre astern of me house.

What happened?

Well, you see, I have a problem. I can NOT leave a recipe alone to save my life. What did I do to this one? I decided I'd hide pumpkin puree, ground flax, an egg, and a cup of broccoli sprouts in the mix. Oh, and I didn't even look at misread the instructions that said to put a cup of tomato sauce on TOP of the loaf before cooking, so I stirred it INTO the mixture. What I ended up with was a hot mess that looked like the brains of some half sprout/half man lovechild (look for that sex tape on the same channel that carries the me-blowing-a-turkey-loaf footage). Well, just see for yourself...

Did you throw up a little bit?

Oh, and the original recipe called for a 45-50 minute cook time. I held onto hope for this bad boy til we hit the 2 hour mark and it was still gelatinous. That's when I pronounced it DOA. Said the last rites. Got myself a coffee cup full of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Luckily (an hour earlier when it was supposed to be done cooking) I'd also made mashed potatoes, gravy, and a freaking amazing lil green bean casserole as sides. So we did Boston Market side item meal-style dinner. Which my vegetarian husband was all set to have anyway. 

If you're curious, I was trying to make Jessica Seinfeld's Italian Meatloaf that already cleverly conceals celery and carrot puree. I've tried quite a few recipes from this book and they always turn out fabu, so I'm positive my unique psychosis of adding weird extras to recipes is the singular reason this was a huge recipe FAIL.

So you wanna come over for dinner? haha

-Lindsey