Recipe #28: Baked Oatmeal and Recipe #29: Hash Brown Casserole

Several weeks ago, Matt and I were talking and the subject of Easter Sunday came up.  I mentioned that I have always wanted to have an Easter brunch but people generally have plans after church. So we decided to have an Easter Breakfast. We invited over some friends and made it a potluck.

Our table for our waiting breakfast buffet… silly me forgot to take a picture with all of the food on it.

Coffee and Juice bar…

I contributed two dishes to the potluck.

First was a Baked Oatmeal.

I have been interested in this dish for awhile. I’m a little picky about oatmeal texture and the idea of baking it seemed so…well, weird. Basically, you mix rolled oats, strawberries, brown sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and orange zest. Put it into a baking dish and then pour a mixture of milk, eggs, vanilla, and butter on top of it. Give it a shake to make sure it goes all the way down. Then top with Bananas and bake at 375 for 35-40 minutes. I should note the original recipe called for chocolate chips or chunks to be in there as well, but I have VERY strong feelings on fruit and chocolate (as in, they should not mix), particularly orange and chocolate. And it was my dish so I left it out. So there. 🙂

Now this was actually REALLY good! Much better than the gummy oatmeal you get from restaurants and University cafeterias (Blech!). I’m not really sure how to describe it, it was moist but still had texture to it.  The strongest flavors were the orange and cinnamon, which certainly made for a lovely breakfast. The recipe suggests making this the night before (minus the bananas which would brown) and just throwing it in the oven the next morning. If I could find a way to make and freeze individual portions of it, I would completely do that for breakfast before work each morning.

The second recipe I made that day was a Hash Brown Casserole

We dug into it pretty quickly, I was luck to get this picture!!

The casserole is a mixture of shredded potatoes (fresh not frozen), onions, spices, cheese, eggs, a Bechamel sauce, etc… It would be too much to cover the whole making on it in this post, because it is a little involved.  (And I’m tired and don’t feel like it right now…bad blogger, bad.) So click the link to the recipe and check it out. It was seriously delicious!! Think macaroni and cheese but with potatoes and not pasta. SO Good!!!

Besides my dishes, we also had sausage, eggs, cinnamon rolls, a really yummy quiche, waffles, and bagels. All in all, a fantastic spread!

We had a wonderful time hanging out and then all carpooled to church. It was such a wonderful way to start out the most important day of our year.

PS: Because we all left straight for church service and many people had to leave for lunch immediately after service, several items were left at my house with the understanding I would return them at our Bible Study on Tuesday… I never said the state in which I would return them.