Breakfast Club

I belong to a breakfast club at my former school. That sounds so fancy, doesn't it? It's actually made up of a group of teachers who come to work very early each morning. To reward themselves, my friend, Sharon, started the "breakfast club". Each Friday, a different person brings breakfast for all of us. Even though I've retired - second year - they still allow me to come. (Listening to some of their conversations reminds me why retirement is a good thing.)

It's my turn for breakfast tomorrow. But I'm keeping Cate today, so I won't be home tonight to fix this fruit. It was a special request last week. Another friend - a former member of the breakfast club who switched schools - first fixed it. I stole her recipe.

Speaking of recipes, how many of you have one of these? Shoot, how many of you even know what it is?

Did you guess/know it was a recipe box?

Some of the recipes in here are over 30 years old - and I have never used them. (Cleaning it out is on my to-do list.) The reason I threw that picture in was to tell you I don't have this recipe written down anywhere. Every time I want to fix it, I just Google it. I don't get the exact recipe I need, but then I improvise. I know some of you must do the same thing.

Basically, the recipe is this: take all the above ingredients, dump them in the crockpot, and cook for a long time. But to make this post more interesting longer, I'll tell you a little more.

How many of you use a hand can opener? (I really like this one by Farberware - little unsolicited commercial.) I started using this when hubby installed the electric can opener too far under the shelf. I just cannot get the can lined up so it will work.

I love this Rival - again, unsolicited - crock pot. The pot lifts out to carry it to breakfast.

The cherry pie filling gives it enough sweetness. Some recipes call for brown sugar, but after the first time, I decided that made it too sweet. I also use all the light cans of fruit that I can find. (I've used light pie filling as well, but I couldn't find it this week.)

Drain the fruits. (I save my juice and add it to tea. Do you save the juice?)

I cut the apricots since they only come like this. They would be hard to cut with a plastic fork. (We're not fancy enough for real silverware.)

The pot is filling up. I forgot to mention that I use chunky applesauce, just because I love it.

Did you notice that my kitchen colors match my love for Va Tech football? Yep, orange and maroon in the kitchen, too.

Side note: isn't that the cutest spoon rest? I even found a green one for my best friend, whose favorite color is green. That's some vintage goodness.

I also cut up the sliced peaches.
Another side note: did you notice the salt and pepper shakers? I bought those years ago - many years ago  - for my parents. When they downsized, they insisted I take them back.

Here's the cup of juicy goodness that will sweeten my tea.

According to the recipes online, this will serve 20. Doesn't it look yummy? Surprisingly, I fixed this one Christmas morning for my kids and they didn't care for it. But everyone else I've served it to has liked it as much as I do.

Back to breakfast - want to know what else we're having for breakfast? I had planned to fix coffee cake. But then I found these.

They're mini pancakes, already flavored with syrup. Notice the second package also has chocolate chips. I've never tried these, but I'll let you know how they taste.

Last are these sausage rolls from  Sister Schubert. One of my friends says it's not breakfast without meat. She sure changed my usual menu of hot doughnuts from Krispy Kreme!

As you have probably figured out, I'm not much of a cook, but I can still fix a mean breakfast for starving teachers!