Autumn Mountain Trip and Im in Charge of Cooking!

[jrticer]

Hey guys! In two weeks my family and I are going to the Smokey Mountains. We've rented a beautiful cabin with a gorgeous mountain view.

There will be about 8 people, that I get to cook breakfast for every morning. A couple of the people I do not know and a couple are picky eaters. I am cooking breakfast every morning. I don't necissarly want to make a casserole with everything already in it, incase someone doesn't like one of the components.
But I need ideas of yummy and fall-like breakfast foods. Im wanting to make things now and freeze them, like pumpkin bread, or coffee cake. But I don't have much freezing experience.
We are also going to have thanksgiving dinner while we are there. Yes. Thanksgiving a month early.
I make a great squash casserole, could that be made now and frozen?? Would I bake it first or just freeze it raw??
Any other ideas to make my cooking task easier would be great!!! Luckily I dont have to do the turkey!
THANKS!!!!

 

[kitchenelf]

For breakfast ideas I come up with:

French Toast Casserole (I would have to look one up)
Big pan of nice soft-scrambled eggs (cream, some type of cheese, s & p)
Roasted potatoes and onions in the oven (I have also done these successfully in the microwave - cut up potatoes, mince onions, Nature's Seasoning fairly heavy and start cooking on high)

Yes, you can freeze your banana bread/pumpkin bread now

You can make your casseroles, bake, and freeze - then thaw first to re-heat. That's the way I do it anyway.

 

[kitchenelf]

I have made this most every year for Christmas morning for the past 7 years.

Roller Coaster Breakfast (like a big piece of French Toast)

6 eggs
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup whole milk
2 TBS melted butter
powdered sugar

Heat oven to 450°

You can only use an aluminum pan for this recipe as it needs to be placed in the freezer – while other dishes can be placed in the freezer they won’t get as cold as aluminum. Butter pan and place in freezer as soon as you get up

Beat eggs in a bowl and add flour in 1/4-cup amounts mixing well after each addition. Add all other ingredients except for powdered sugar. Remove pan from freezer and pour in batter.

Bake at 450° F. for 18 minutes then reduce oven to 350° F. for 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and shake on powdered sugar. You can also serve this with butter and syrup. I also like to make my own “syrup” by heating brown sugar and butter together. Just keep adjusting until you get it sweet enough. Heat to thicken a bit. It will never get THICK but it is VERY good.

This will come out of the oven all wavy, hence the “roller coaster” name. You can also watch it through a glass oven door do it’s “thing” too.

 

[Katie H]

Last fall I developed a bread recipe that would be great for you to make. You could bake a couple of loaves of it and either serve it sliced and toasted or use it to make French toast. It has big chunks of chopped nuts - I used walnuts - and dried cranberries. You could use the nuts of your choice, but we like walnuts. It's a nice hearty bread and extremely easy to make.

CRANBERRY-WALNUT TOASTING BREAD​

(1 large loaf)​

​

3 cups unbleached bread flour
1 cup rolled oats (old-fashioned)
2 Tbsp. butter
1½ tsp. salt
3 Tbsp. honey
2 tsp. instant yeast OR 1 packet
active dry yeast*
1¼ cups lukewarm milk
¾ cup dried sweet cranberries
½ cup toasted walnuts, coarsely
chopped
3 Tbsp. all-purpose flour, for
dusting cranberries and
walnuts

*If you use active dry yeast,
dissolve it in the warm milk be-
fore combining with the remain-
ing ingredients

Bread Machine Method: Place all of the ingredients (except the fruit) into the pan of bread machine, program for DOUGH cycle and press START. About 10 minutes before the end of the second kneading cycle, check dough and adjust its consistency as necessary with additional flour or water; finished dough should be soft and supple. Put cranberries and walnuts in a small bowl with all-purpose flour. Toss to coat well. Put into a fine-mesh strainer and shake off all excess flour, then add them about 3 minutes before the end of the final kneading cycle.

Transfer dough to a lightly oiled surface and shape it into a log. Place the log in a lightly greased 9- x 5-inch loaf pan, cover pan with lightly greased plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise for 45 minutes to 1 hour, till it’s crested 1 to 2 inches over the rim of the pan.

Bake at 350º for 35 to 40 minutes, until an instant-read thermometer inserted into the center registers 190º. If the bread appears to be browning too quickly, tent it with aluminum foil for the final 10 minutes of baking.

 

[amber]

Breakfast buritos would be good. Let people add whatever they like to their buritos. Cook some veggies (peppers, onions, mushrooms, etc), have some scrambled eggs on hand, cheese, salsa.

Definately keep some muffins, breads, cereal, maybe fresh fruit, juice, coffee, on hand the entire time your there in case others dont like a big breakfast.

Apple pancakes ( or any fruit) would be great. Crepe's are easy to make too.

 

[Hades]

Depends ofcourse a bit on what exactly you're planning to do up in the mountains.
If you plan on doing some physical activities during the day, then a hearty breakfast might be in place. In my mountainbiking days we often had spanish ommelette in the morning. Or a good pasta dish like spaghetti carbonara.
For a basic spanish ommelette:
take sliced ( 5mm or so) potato's and put them in a single layer in a pan with plenty of medium-hot OO. Fry the potato's untill almost ready, then add plenty of chopped oignons and fry a little longer untill the potato's are about ready (not mushy). Pour the potato's-oignons in a coleander to drain most of the oil.
In a seperate bowl, give plenty of eggs a good whisk with plenty of seasoning (salt, pepper and cayenne pepper). Return the pan to the fire with a small drop of fresh OO and return the potato's-oignons to the pan. Let them fry a little on fairly high heat untill the potato's start to crust. Add the whisked eggs (the potato's should be just about covered with eggs) and fry untill the eggs are set. use a lid or tinfoil to help the top of the ommelette set before the bottom burns).
Served with buttered brown bread this is truely a breakfast for champions.

Edited to add: this is a fairly basic version. Some added cheese (inside the ommelette or served seperately) doesn't hurt at all. Niether does a diced paprika (bell pepper?). Should you come across some mushrooms up there, then you can add those too ofcourse (if you're absolutely positive they're edible!!!!!!)

 

[thymeless]

Two odd things I love for breakfast:

soup

fried rice

If it's a cool trip, soup in the AM is quite pleasant. If you're doing a turkey, turkey soup would be just fine with me in the AM.

Fried rice is actually pretty breakfasty when you think about it. It's just a hash of ham, eggs, onions, maybe some shrimp with rice instead of potatoes. You can prep all of the ingredients the night before and stir fry it quickly in the morning.

On the morning you leave a breakfast that's easy to clean up is a good choice. Heat a big pot of bolling water. Have some omelet fixins ready such as cheese, ham, peppers and so on. Use a zipper lock baggie for each person. Write their name on it with a sharpie or somethign. Add eggs and extras of choice to the bag. Squish out the air and seal. Throw it in the pot. Time to cook varies by how much is in the bag.

As the plastic never gets above boiling temp, the concern over plasticizers transferring from the plastic is minimized. Plus, this isn't the plastic wrap that is prone to that problem.

No cooking mess to clean up. I like this meal for camping as I have a big pot of hot water to clean up the stove when breakfast is over.

thymeless

 

[Barb L.]

I have made this most every year for Christmas morning for the past 7 years.

Roller Coaster Breakfast (like a big piece of French Toast)

6 eggs
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup whole milk
2 TBS melted butter
powdered sugar

Heat oven to 450°

You can only use an aluminum pan for this recipe as it needs to be placed in the freezer – while other dishes can be placed in the freezer they won’t get as cold as aluminum. Butter pan and place in freezer as soon as you get up

Beat eggs in a bowl and add flour in 1/4-cup amounts mixing well after each addition. Add all other ingredients except for powdered sugar. Remove pan from freezer and pour in batter.

Bake at 450° F. for 18 minutes then reduce oven to 350° F. for 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and shake on powdered sugar. You can also serve this with butter and syrup. I also like to make my own “syrup” by heating brown sugar and butter together. Just keep adjusting until you get it sweet enough. Heat to thicken a bit. It will never get THICK but it is VERY good.

This will come out of the oven all wavy, hence the “roller coaster” name. You can also watch it through a glass oven door do it’s “thing” too.

Sounds very good - how many does it serve ? Thanks