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Long time, no see! The holidays always leave me feeling like I have to play catch-up with everything for weeks afterward, and, unfortunately, finding new meals to make tends to take a back seat!

Anyway, over Christmas break we took the girls to a local Las Vegas restaurant called Anime Ramen, and being the teen and pre-teens that they are, they absolutely loved it. The food was good, too, and we decided that once things calmed down we were going to try playing with some homemade Japanese food ourselves. So last week we ordered soba noodles on Amazon and I got to work.

This recipe for Soba with Sesame Sauce originally came from AllRecipes, but I’ve adapted it a bit below.

The original recipe called for raw broccoli, but not everyone likes it raw, so I blanched it first: put it in a pot of boiling water for just a couple of minutes and then dunk it in ice water to stop the cooking. It gets rid of the rawness without losing all of the crunch. You can also use a bag of frozen broccoli, boiled for just a few minutes. I scooped the broccoli out with a spider so I could use the same boiling water for the noodles.

I also added chicken breast to make it a bit more substantial for dinner. Make sure you cook it all the way through since it’s not going back into the heat (unlike a stir-fry, for example). If you want to make this vegetarian, just leave out the chicken.

We were a little wary about eating it at room temperature (it felt like it should be piping hot!) but it was good, and this will be perfect for summer!

Soba with Sesame Sauce
serves 5

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1/3 cup toasted sesame seeds
1 package (9.5 oz) dried soba noodles
3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons white sugar
4 tablespoons soy sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons dark sesame oil
8 green onions, chopped
3 cups broccoli florets, blanched

Cut chicken breasts in one-inch strips and saute in 1 tablespoon of olive oil until cooked through. Set aside.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the noodles and cook them for 4 minutes, or until just tender. Drain and rinse with cold water, and drain them again.

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil, green onions, and chicken. Add the noodles, and the toasted sesame seeds. Toss well and stir in the broccoli. Let the dish sit for 30 minutes at room temperature before serving.

One of my planned dinners for last week was Breakfast for Dinner, which is one of the girls’ favorites. Though I like it well enough, I hate babysitting the bacon, the eggs, and the griddle of hash browns. By accident I came upon a recipe for a crockpot egg bake and was thrilled to find that I had everything on hand because I was going to use them all for our regular meal.

But I have a confession: I’m not a fan of baked eggs. I’ll eat quiche or frittata but I prefer the quicker and less-drying methods of scrambled or over-easy.

I decided to give it a shot, and thankfully it was early enough in the day that I had plenty of time to get it going in the crockpot.

I ended up combining several different recipes, and all of them called for an overnight baking. Since ours was going to be for dinner, I started at around 10:30 AM, and it was perfect by about 6:00 PM on low. It turned out well enough that I’m going to use it overnight next week for Christmas breakfast.

I did have to fiddle with it a bit since I really wanted to make sure it turned out right. The basic recipe I went with is below, and my notes are under that:

Crockpot Breakfast Bake
makes 8 generous servings

12 eggs
1 cup of milk
1 tsp ground mustard
1/2 tsp garlic powder
Salt and pepper

1 28 oz bag Potatoes O’Brien
1 cup chopped onion
1 lb bacon, cooked and chopped
1-1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Mix eggs with the milk, ground mustard and garlic powder and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.

Spray your crockpot with nonstick cooking spray. Pour 1/3 of the bag of potatoes into the bottom. Layer 1/3 of the onion, 1/3 of the cooked bacon, and 1/3 of the cheese. Repeat these layers two more times.

Pour the eggs over top and cook on low for 6-8 hours.

~ I used the Ore Ida Potatoes O’Brien, with the potato chunks and not the shredded hash browns.

~ I baked my bacon in the oven instead of on the stove top. Cram the strips of bacon on a foil-lined baking sheet (make sure it has a lip so grease doesn’t go everywhere). Place the bacon in a cold oven, and start heating to 400 degrees and continue baking. Keep an eye on it and when it’s done, remove from the oven and place the bacon on paper towels to drain.

~ After about four hours I started to get a bit nervous because the center of the bake was still really watery. I got a big spoon and gently started lifting the liquid out and redistributing it around the top of the rest of the eggs. This created a crater in the middle, but I think that helped it cook that much more evenly.

~ It was also at this point that I realized the steam accumulating on the lid was falling back down onto the eggs, which were trying to bake. I draped a clean kitchen towel over the top of the crockpot, and nestled the lid on top of the towel. Any steam that accumulated on the lid now hit the towel instead of the food.

~ I used my beloved Slow Cooker Liners with this, just spray the liner with the nonstick spray.

~ I served these with a side of popovers — they were just as big of a hit.

~ I’m not a huge Cholula fan, but these were absolutely delicious with some on top.

~ My fall-back in case this wasn’t that great was to wrap it up in tortillas and make breakfast burritos out of it. We all liked it just fine on its own, so we did the breakfast burritos the next morning with the leftovers. They were delicious and by far the easiest I’ve ever made!

To get the memory of our last gingerbread experience out of my head, the girls and I decided to make our favorite gingersnap cookies this afternoon.

These gingersnaps have a permanent place in my Christmas cookie giveaways for the neighbors, and they’re always the first to go when I have the leftovers sitting on the counter for my family.

The girls have fun rolling the dough in the sugar before putting them on the pan, and as you can imagine the house smells amazing while they bake. While the outside of these cookies gets nice and crunchy, once you take them out of the oven they deflate a bit and create an amazing chewy cookie.

Careful, these are very addicting!

The Best Gingersnap Cookies Ever

3/4 C shortening
1 C sugar
1/4 C unsulphured dark molasses
1 egg
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 C all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350°.

Cream the shortening and sugar together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat until well mixed, then add the molasses and mix well.

Add the ginger, cinnamon, baking soda and salt and mix well, then add the flour and mix until well combined.

Using a scoop, scoop out dough and form into balls, about 1 inch around. Roll the balls of dough in sugar and then place on a baking sheet. Give them room, they will spread out while baking.

Bake in the preheated oven for 9 minutes.