Peaches and Cream Bread Pudding

We had a lot of leftover eggs from the ward Memorial Day breakfast so I was thinking about yummy foods that needed eggs. I have always loved bread pudding and it uses eggs. I noticed that the grocery stores have started getting fresh peaches so I searched online for recipes for bread pudding with fresh peaches. I looked at many recipes and mentally evaluated the expected final taste based on the ingredients. I found a recipe that looked like what I wanted. This foodnetwork recipe sounded really good to me except that seemed like it would make too much for the 9x13 pan I was using, so I scaled it down. Some of the recipes called for milk with the eggs and bread, while others used sweetened condensed milk, but this one called for half milk, half cream and more peach than other recipes. I decided that was the taste I was going for – more fresh peach and real cream.

Based on quantities of ingredients used in other recipes for a 9x13 pan, I scaled the ingredients as follows:

4 cups of bread cubes (diced bread slices)

1 1/3 lbs of fresh peaches pealed and cut into chunks

1 1/3 cup cream

1 1/3 cup milk

6 T butter

2/3 cup sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

For those new to cooking with fresh peaches, dip the peaches in boiling water for about 10-15 seconds and then cool. The skins are easily removed and the peaches can be cut into slices and then cut into chunks in the ½ to ¾ inch size range.

The peach processing instructions in the original recipe seemed too time consuming so I modified the procedure as follows:

Beat eggs in large mixing bowl

Add sugar, vanilla, cream and milk and combine with mixer.

Melt the butter and pour about a third of it in the bottom of the 9x13 baking dish. Coat the bottom of the dish going partway up the sides. I did this by tipping the dish and letting the melted butter run over the desired surface. Add bread chunks and peach chunks to the buttered baking dish. Pour in the egg/sugar/milk/cream mixture and make sure everything is evenly distributed. Drizzle the remaining melted butter over the top of the final mixture in the baking dish.

Bake uncovered at 350F for 45 min to an hour. Once the center is puffed up, it is done cooking, but going a little longer will help cook off some of the peach juice and make the pudding firmer. Once the pudding cools off it will become firm anyway. The recipe calls for a 20 minute cooling period, but you can eat sooner if you want it still hot.

The recipe called for an Amaretto sauce, but we already had some Carmel sauce left over from some pumpkin bred pudding Mom made before. Since that Carmel sauce was incredibly good, I just heated up the leftover Carmel sauce and poured it over the bread pudding. It was really good and the Carmel flavoring complimented the peach flavor very nicely.

This is what it looked like in my bowl with the Carmel sauce on it.

This is what the baked dish looked like after we had filled bowls.

I will definitely make this a few more times while fresh peaches are in season. A peach pie or two might also be in order.

Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend started Saturday morning with our stake 5K run. John, Becky, Mom and I all ran.

t was on a very nice trail by one of the church buildings.

Mom and I each received bronze medals for finishing 3^rd in our “age categories”.

Since we burned up so much energy running 3.1 miles, we needed waffles. We stopped and bought some beautiful strawberries from a guy that sells them at the side of the road every week. We then went home and made Belgian waffles and John and Becky came over.

On Memorial Day, we started with a ward breakfast that the high priests were in charge of. I drafted John to help out. After breakfast, Mom and Becky drove to Utah.

After Mom and Becky left, John and I decided to go back over to where we ran the 5k on Saturday because there were lots of geocaches along the trail. We put our bikes in the truck and drove back to where we did the 5k run. We then rode to Almaden Lake Park and back looking for geocaches. We only found 3 out of 12 but we had a nice bike ride

After we got home we made lemon basil shrimp. John went out to get a lemon and brought in a huge lemon that was as big or bigger than the one we had last week.

Along with the shrimp in cream sauce over bow tie pasta, we had beats and also had beats and root beer floats for our beverage. It was a great end to a great weekend.

Gyoza Re-Run

Once Mom was back in town, we decided to have Mark, John and Becky over for Gyoza. I am getting better at making gyoza. They still taste good and they are even starting to look good.

These two plates were not all of them. We had more than we needed, so some of them are now frozen raw in gallon zip log baggies, ready for another dinner.

When is a Lemon Too Big?

Yesterday, I made Lemon Basil Shrimp in cream sauce over bow tie pasta. In my recipe that I posted two years ago, I said to use two lemons or about 1/3 cup. I picked this lemon, but was pretty confident that I did not need a 2nd one.

When I juiced the fresh picked lemon, there was almost 1/2 cup of juice. I went ahead and used it all. The shrimp sauce was a little tart, but tasted quite delicious.

I Will Miss Our House in St. Louis

Two months ago, I had a trip to St. Louis scheduled for work. The founder of the company and I were scheduled to make a presentation on Tuesday, May 10 to my old boss and other management at my old company. We had a good meeting and I enjoyed seeing a lot of the people I have worked with in the past.

We recently have been negotiating with some buyers on our house and after many iterations of offers and counteroffers, we have a contract with tentative closing on June 10^th. Since I was going to be in St. Louis anyway, I arranged my schedule to have some extra time to take care of things at the house. One of the main things I needed to take care of was getting a septic inspection and make sure it was working properly. I also pulled some weeds and did a good mowing of the grass.

This is what the house looks like with all of the green trees and grass.

As I drove on Old Jamestown Road and into our subdivision, I thought about how beautiful this place is and why did we choose to leave. I then got out of the air conditioned car and stepped into a very humid 88 degrees. My first priority was to get the septic access cover dug out for the inspector the next morning. The warm humid air and physical exertion of digging caused my clothes to become drenched with perspiration. There were also zillions of mosquitoes buzzing me and I ended up with 40 to 50 bites. After the mosquito bites, I decided that I felt a lot better about moving to California.

I not only got to see several old friends from work, but I got to see some friends from church who said that they could help if we needed things done on our house in the next couple of weeks.

As I was getting ready to leave, I picked some asparagus form the garden to bring home to have with dinner. Instead of eating within 20 minutes of picking, this was eaten about 9 hours after it was picked. As in the past, it was still the best asparagus ever. I have never had asparagus better than the stuff picked from our garden in St. Louis.

I started thinking about things I will miss by moving away from St. Louis. I also thought about things I will not miss. I’m sure there are other things I could include if I thought about it longer.

I will miss our house with the great kitchen.

I will miss the lush green woods, but I will not miss the humidity and mosquitoes in the summer that go with the woods.

I will miss the spectacular thunder storms, but I will not miss shoveling and driving in the snow in the winter.

I will miss living far away from neighbors, but I will not miss living far from grocery and other stores.

I will miss having an 11 mile non stressful drive to work that only takes 20 minutes, but I will not miss having an 11 mile drive to church that also takes 20 minutes.

I will miss float trips on the Current River, but I will not miss living over 2000 miles from Eagle Lake.

Most of all, I will miss many friends in St. Louis, but I will definitely NOT miss the septic system.

Mark gets introduced to Stir Fry Udon and Gyoza

Last week I was talking to Mark and found out that he had never had gyoza. He had eaten the Chinese style dumplings (usually steamed) but had not had the Japanese style gyoza before. When we have gyoza, we usually have rice with them. Since Mark does not like rice, I was trying to think of other foods that go well with gyoza. In Japan and also in Japanese restaurants here in California, I have had some wonderful noodle soups (like ramen except a hundred times better with meat and vegetables in them). I did not have a recipe that I had confidence in so I asked Mark if he had eaten stir fried udon before. He said no, so I told him that I would make stir fry udon and gyoza for him. I love gyoza and I love stir fry udon, but I was not sure how well they would go together.

While Mom is in Utah, Mark and I decided to go to a movie. We saw "Source Code" Saturday afternoon. I highly recommend the movie. I enjoyed it. It is kind of a crime solving science fiction movie that has some chic flick elements in it.

After dinner I cooked the gyoza and stir fry. This is Mark getting ready to eat.

Usually, when we have stir fry udon, I keep eating and there is a lot less leftovers than there should have been. The same thing happens with gyoza. But with stir fry AND gyoza, there were actually leftovers of both. I look forward to the leftovers. We had Henry Weinhard's root beer with dinner. It was all good.

Joseph's Zone Conference

Joseph's mission president posted a blog on recent Zone Conferences.

The second photo posted has Joseph in it:

To expand the photo of Joseph and to see all of the photos, click here.

The fourth photo shows what happens to shoes in Micronesia. My favorite photo (after the one of Joseph) is the 10th photo, which is the "primary room".

It was good to see Joseph looking good.