Melt-in-your-mouth Chocolate Pecan Waffles make a breakfast memorable

Pecans—love ’em and hate ’em. Love ’em right now because of the promise of many this fall. The past two years, our pecan crop (from our dozen trees) has been terrible. This year we are full of hope—mainly because everything else that grows on our property is doing so well. Lots of catkins (those stringy green/brown droppings that are part of the pecan’s growth cycle) have fallen everywhere around us. After reading lots of material on the Internet, I’m still unsure whether a ton of dropped catkins means pecans will be abundant of a particular tree, but I’m counting on a great harvest this fall to replenish our supply.

The downside is that when those trees shed in the spring, my eyes almost itch themselves out of their sockets. (That's the “hate ’em” part.) Usually my allergy to pecan sheddings puts me out of my contacts for weeks on end. I just stumbled onto some great over-the-counter anti-itch drops that have made a huge difference in this regard, but sometimes the physical price (itchy, weepy eyes) seems pretty high to pay to have those divine nutmeats just outside every door to our home in the fall. No true Texan would ever think such thoughts, but I understand why Hubby (sympathizing with my misery) sometimes entertains the idea of chopping them all down and replacing them with other fruit-producing trees.

So the nuts contained within this recipe still had to be storebought (for now), but these Chocolate Pecan Waffles reminded me of how lucky we were to once have bag on top of bag full of shelled pecans in our freezer.

Chocolate Pecan Waffles, which I made during Hubby’s recent birthday celebration, are just about the best waffles you’ll ever put in your mouth. Hubby thought this was a sufficient gift for him and that he needn’t receive another thing to have the best birthday on record.

The recipe hails from an old PTA cookbook that my mother was given shortly after she married and moved to Garland in 1941. Her down-the-block neighbor, Mrs. Bradfield, originated the recipe. Mrs. Bradfield was a mentor to my mother after she arrived in a new city. Mrs. B also was a great friend to me and always bought anything I had to sell (magazine subscriptions, band candy, etc.) as a school fund-raiser. Later on, Hubby and I purchased the old Bradfield home and kept it as rental property until we sold it some years later. I knew that this dish that brought us such a treat once had been prepared in that very kitchen that was our own for a time.

Later on, Chocolate Pecan Waffles was one of the featured recipes in my Way Back in the Country Garden cookbook—a great way to honor a former neighbor and to share a dessert that we were nuts, er pecans, over.

Chocolate Pecan Waffles

1 cup butter, melted

2 squares semi-sweet chocolate

1/2 cup milk (I use skim)

2 eggs, beaten (or 1/2 cup egg substitute)

1 cup sugar (I use sugar substitute)

1 3/4 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup chopped (or broken) pecans

In medium pan melt butter and chocolate squares. Remove from burner and cool. Add milk and beaten eggs. Add sugar, flour, baking powder. Fold in pecans. Pour mixture onto prepared, hot waffle griddle. Makes 4 servings.

A reward for enduring an annual physical—Fresh Peach Muffins

How glad I am that our peach supply didn’t poop out before we had enough of those reddish-golden orbs to give themselves up for this recipe! (No chance of that, as I mentioned two days ago. We still have three peach trees with fruit waiting to ripen.)

But what is produced here just may be the most decadent breakfast muffin ever—Fresh Peach Muffins with a Pecan-Crumb Topping. Inside are chunky peachy morsels. Outside on the top is a deep layer of pecan-dotted crumbs that you wade into for quite some time, actually, before you bite into the muffin’s interior.

The recipe, procured online from www.footnetwork.com, is an Emeril specialty. Need I say more? Into my search engine I entered the words “peach breakfast muffins”; the name of famous chef Emeril Lagasse appeared alongside these delights. Did I look any further? Of course not. If Emeril has furnished it, it must be divine. Plus it makes oodles—2 dozen muffins, enough left over to freeze some for my July 4 weekend dining.

Yesterday was my Hubby’s “Welcome to Medicare” physical exam. He had to fast, of course, so blood work could be done. As he emerged ravenous after all that hoopla at the doctor’s office, I had held out these Fresh Peach Muffins as his reward. As he dined on all that decadence, he certainly felt rewarded!

Fresh Peach Muffins with Pecan-Crumb Topping

2 cups finely chopped fresh peaches

1 1/4 cups sugar, divided (I use sugar substitute)

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

2 eggs (1/2 cup egg substitute)

1 1/2 cups milk (I use skim)

4 cups all-purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt (or salt substitute)

1/4 cup brown sugar (or 1/8 cup brown-sugar substitute)

1/4 cup ground pecans

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

4 tablespoons cold butter

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease 24 muffin cups. Place the peaches in a bowl and cover them with 1/2 cup of the sugar. Mix thoroughly. Allow the peaches to sit for 1 hour. Using an electric mixer cream the butter and remaining 3/4 cup of sugar until smooth and pale in color—about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until fluffy, about 2 minutes. In a mixing bowl combine 3 1/2 cups flour, baking powder, and salt. Remove the bowl from the mixer; alternately fold in the milk and flour mixture. Be careful not to over mix. Fold in the peaches. Spoon 1/4 cup filling into each prepared muffin cup. In a small bowl combine the remaining flour, brown sugar, pecans, and cinnamon. Mix well. Add the butter. Using your hands mix until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs (or use a pastry cutter). Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of the crumb mixture over each muffin cup. If you have some left over (I did), evenly disperse it among the muffin tops. Bake muffins for about 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Makes 24 muffins.

Simple, warm, healthy . . . this breakfast compote contains the "nearly perfect" fruit

Precious little will get Hubby to deviate from his weekday-morning breakfast fare. Without a doubt he always serves himself a bowl of warm oatmeal topped with fresh blueberries and a few scoops of nonfat plain yogurt. No problem with that selection—perfectly healthy on all accounts.

Yesterday when I tried to lure him away with a special concoction, I have to admit that at first, he seemed a little skeptical. He WANTED his oatmeal with berries and yogurt.

When I rounded the corner carrying the clear parfait glasses filled with the mouth-watering compote you see photographed here, however, he practically jumped for joy. All morning traditions were forgotten as he admired this breakfast offering.

Into the glasses had gone a wondrous mixture of chopped apples and oranges with cinnamon stirred in and warmed in the microwave. On top of that went a couple of tablespoons of yogurt crowned with a smattering of walnuts. (Ah, walnuts! They're the talk of the town. In Prevention magazine, health blogs, everywhere . . . walnuts are tub-thumped for their health properties.) Hubby was charmed.

The idea for this Quick Apple-Orange Fruit Compote sprang from the pages of our nightly reading—a book called Food Remedies. Late evenings find us in our living room noting to each other various nuggets of wisdom from this book, published by Prevention. (How's that for a pre-bedtime preoccupation?) One gem that caught my eye was a comment about citrus. The book stated that if one ate at least seven navel oranges a day, his or her cholesterol level would drop by at least 20 points! What a captivating idea, but what a lot of oranges!

The orange, however, is billed as nearly the perfect fruit. Not only is it high in vitamin C and fiber, it also is packed with antioxidants--help for the heart. The limonene found in oranges can help block certain cancers. Don't shy away from the pulp however, the health experts say. One dietitian writing for our Food Remedies book says she adds oranges wedges to salads, on top of stir-fry dishes, and just about everything.

Such is the health trivia that occupies the evenings of Hubby and me. A romantic duo, aren’t we? But if swapping health factoids and acting on them can add a few extra days to our lives, that's a few more days we may have to enjoy each other’s company on earth.

Quick Apple-Orange Compote

1 Granny Smith apple, cored and chopped

1 navel orange, peeled and chopped

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup fat-free vanilla yogurt

2 tablespoons broken pecan or walnut pieces

In a medium microwave bowl, combine the apple, orange, and cinnamon. Cover with plastic wrap and microwave on high for 4 minutes or until the fruit is hot and soft. Divide among 2 bowls or parfait glasses; spoon and divide the yogurt evenly over each. Sprinkle with the nuts; serve warm. Makes 2 servings.

“Say-what?” Pudding for breakfast? This one turned out to be a very good idea.

This was another one of those “say-what?” recipes. Who heard of a breakfast pudding—plus one that contained pineapple, bananas, and raisins? Pudding was supposed to be something with chocolate or butterscotch or vanilla in the name. What commended this unusual dish, and why should I make it?

The answer to that last one is that brown rice is BIG, BIG, BIG right now. Its health benefits are legion. Just one cup of brown rice is said to provide us with 88 percent of our daily value for manganese, a trace mineral that helps our nervous system and in the production of good cholesterol. Women who eat whole grains are said to gain less weight. And of course the fiber factor of brown rice is high. Many health benefits are thought to be stripped from the rice when it is being changed from brown to white. One cup of brown rice a day is recommended.

Therefore anything that gives that brown rice serving some variety and makes it seem more of a treat is ideal. This is what happened when the additional ingredients are added to the brown-rice pan in the preparation process. Although the recipe called for crushed pineapple, it would be even more dynamite if you had a fresh pineapple on hand and wanted to cut up some slices to make 8-ounces of crushed (saving the juice, of course). I found that the more banana that I added, the sweeter the pudding tasted. Also for color, along with regular raisins I added some cranberry raisins—again, magnifying the sweet taste.

Long story short, I became a believer in this brown-rice pudding with add-ins that make it tasty and healthy. And it was good for breakfast as well as for lunch and dinner or as a dessert.

Tropical Breakfast Risotto

1 1/2 cups water

1/2 cup pineapple juice

1 cup brown rice, dry

1/2 cup evaporated skin milk (not to be confused with sweetened condensed milk)

1 (8-ounce) can pineapple, crushed, drained

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup coconut, shredded

1/4 cup almonds, sliced

1 banana, diced

cinnamon

In a sauce pan combine water, pineapple juice, and rice. Cook over high heat to boiling. Cover and reduce heat to low heat; continue cooking with the lid on until most of the water is absorbed and rice is tender—15-20 minutes. Add evaporated skim milk and heat on high. Stir occasionally. When mixture becomes creamy and the milk is absorbed, reduce heat to medium-high and add crushed pineapple. Heat pineapple; then add raisins, coconut, almonds, and banana and stir. Transfer mixture to a serving bowl. Sprinkle cinnamon over top. Serve warm or cold. Makes 6 (1/2-cup) servings.

This Cinnamon Apple Bread Pudding--an excellent bribe, an excellent breakfast dish

OK, so I'll call it what it was: pure bribery. The day stretched out before me as so many pre-Christmas days do—IMPOSSIBLE. The time had arrived to address the cards plus wrap all the Christmas gifts that needed to go in the mail. Problem was, no one person could accomplish all that in a single day. Help was needed and needed quickly.

Unsuspecting Hubby just thought I was trying out a new breakfast recipe, as I often do on weekend mornings. True that, but I also had an ulterior motive. Feed him well; get Hubby in my owe pronto; then maybe he'd help me with one of the above mentioned tasks.

Cinnamon Apple Bread Pudding, borrowed from an old issue of Family Circle magazine and tucked away in my winter recipes file, made the best breakfast dish on the planet. Slices of plump, healthy Rome Beauty apples tucked in between slices of cinnamon raisin bread and baked with a caramel sauce poured over was a beauty—and a motivator.

Hubby fell for the ruse. After a breakfast dish of steaming Cinnamon Apple Bread Pudding just pulled from the oven, he probably would have jumped on the roof and danced while wearing a Santa hat if I'd asked him to do so. Filled to satisfaction from dining on the excellent dish (which also would make a perfect Christmas-morning breakfast dish or an item for Christmas company), he sat down at the dining table and cheerfully worked on the Christmas cards all day.

Because of his help, I may not be ahead of the game, but I'm currently not behind, which is more than I could have said of myself in previous Christmas months. Thanks, Cinnamon Apple Bread Pudding.

Cinnamon Apple Bread Pudding

3 Rome Beauty apples, peeled, cored, sliced thin

1 tablespoon flour

1 loaf (16 ounces) cinnamon-swirl bread

6 eggs (or 2 cups egg substitute)

1 3/4 cups milk (I use skim)

1/2 cup bottled sugar-free caramel sauce, plus more to drizzle

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar (or sugar substitute)

1/4 teaspoon salt (or salt substitute)

Coat a 2 1/2-quart shallow baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. In a small bowl toss apple slices with flour. Cut loaf of bread in half diagonally (to form triangle-shaped slices). Layer half the bread and half the apple slices, overlapping, in bottom of prepared dish. In a medium-sized bowl whisk together eggs, milk, 1/2 cup caramel sauce, 1/3 cup sugar, and salt. Pour half over bread and apples in dish. Repeat layering; use all remaining bread and apples. Pour second half of egg mixture over layers. Cover dish with plastic wrap; press lightly. Refrigerate to soak 30 minutes to 1 hour. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Unwrap dish; sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons sugar. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes; cover with foil and bake 15 more minutes or until center measures 160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. Drizzle top with additional caramel sauce; let cool on rack 15 minutes. Serve warm with cool whip (we use sugar free), if desired.