Quick and Easy Bread Pudding for One

I have seen so many recipes for bread pudding, and one day I figured I'd make some for myself. I'd seen Paula Deen make it a bunch of times on her TV show, but I didn't want to make a big pan of it, since I only had a few slices of bread. I really wanted French toast, but didn't feel like standing over the stove to make it, so I improvised. I figured French toast and bread pudding have basically the same ingredients, so this is what I came up with. I later tried a more traditional recipe, but I liked my version better.

Most recipes include a recipe for a sweet sauce to top it, but I don't see the need. Use what you have. If you want a syrup, just use it sparingly!

Optional Toppings:
Maple syrup
Hershey's chocolate syrup
Ice cream topping
Fresh or canned fruit

Why make it more complicated? It's the easiest thing to make, you just toss a bunch of stuff together anyway! It makes enough for one huge portion or two smaller portions. But it's easier to make the full recipe than to divide an egg in half.

Quick and Easy Bread Pudding for One (or Two!)

Ingredients:
3 slices bread
2 or 3 Tbsp melted butter
1 egg
1/3 to 1/2 cup milk
2-4 Tbsp sugar or brown sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla

Optional Add-ins:
cinnamon or cocoa
fresh or dried fruit
chocolate chips
nuts

Instructions:

Cut or tear bread into pieces, and put into a pie pan. Add melted butter and stir well, to coat bread evenly. If you want to add cinnamon or other spices, mix it into the bread at this point until evenly coated. Mix the egg, sugar, milk and vanilla in a bowl. Add half this mixture to the bread and stir to coat. If you like it drier, more like French toast, only use half the liquid. If you like it more eggy, custard-like, add all the liquid. You can add any add-ins now, if you want. Bake.

Note on baking:
Most bread puddings call for a 350 degree oven, but I usually use 400. Bake time is somewhere around 45 minutes, but since it's a smaller portion than most recipes, start checking it at about 30 mins. I like mine drier, so I cook it longer.

Bread Pudding is so easy, and it's forgiving. Add things you like, use more or less liquid, try different breads or types of sugar or flavoring. If you have a favorite French toast recipe, try that. Paula Deen makes a bread pudding with pumpkin, which looks yummy!

When I get up in the morning, I throw it all together and toss in the oven and when I'm dressed and ready, so is the pudding! Or you can prepare the night before and keep in the fridge and bake in the morning.

Have fun trying new things and enjoy!

Delusions of God - Update 1

I shared a post on my Facebook page, and this is the conversation that followed. I think she's still posting...  The timeline is off because the conversation continued as I was cutting and pasting.

Yes, the conversation did continue on...

Denise Cook I just realized something you said, Jan. And, well, I don't want to be mean about it, but you obviously don't know as much about your religion as you think you do. You said, "Karma is a bitch." You should realize Christianity is opposed to Karma. ( http://www.christophermcummings.com/2009/04/karma-and-christianity.html ). Karma is a Hindu principle, not Christian.

8 hours ago

Jan  Well now you are just being a smart ass!

3 hours ago

So if I point out a flaw in your theory, I'm being a smart-ass? And I just thought I was being smart.

Stop The Madness!

I was sitting my apartment being smothered by my neighbor's cigarette smoke, which is so thick in the air that I'm literally coughing and choking, my throat is sore, and my eyes burn from it. Not only does it permeate my apartment (she says she quit, but yet here it is), but it's made worse because they are menthols. I am literally nauseous from breathing the polluted air.

It made me wonder how many people die from cigarette related illnesses each year, so I started researching.

According to the CDC, each year, an estimated 443,000 people die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke, and another 8.6 million live with a serious illness caused by smoking. (http://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/aag/osh.htm).

Each year approximately 16,000 are killed in alcohol related crashes (http://dui.lifetips.com/cat/61352/drunk-driving-facts-stats/index.html).

In one year, 31,593 people died from gun violence and 66,769 people survived gun injuries (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC))(http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/gunviolence/).

Smoking and cigarettes kill almost 10 times as many people as drunk driving and gun violence combined! And that doesn't even account for the millions who suffer from smoking-related illnesses!

We fight against drunk driving, and we fight against gun violence, which is good, we need to fight until no one dies from those things.  But statistically, we are all more likely to die from diseases caused by smoking, even if we are not smokers ourselves.

How many of you realized this?  That you are more likely to die from smoke-related disease?  Honestly, I find it sickening.  I was actually shocked by the numbers, but these statistics are all from reputable sources.

We have to fight harder as Americans to have clean air and to put an end to cigarettes and smoking.  I realize that won't be a popular stance with many people, but if it's illegal to drink and drive, and illegal to shoot someone with a gun, why isn't it illegal for them to kill with cigarettes?

My neighbor told me many times (which is a big part of why I ended our friendship) that her right to smoke should override my right to breathe clean air. She claimed to have quit, but I can smell it, so I know she didn't. This is the same neighbor who is on oxygen for COPD, but yet smokes with her oxygen tube on. She's actually caught herself of fire, TWICE! She first caught the oxygen tube on fire and burned the inside of her nose, the second time, she caught her head on fire and is permanently scarred on the top of her head (second or third degree).

The reason cigarettes are still legal is all about money. Cigarette companies make billions of dollars a year and they pay lobbyists to pay politicians to keep them legal. We've all known for decades that smoking causes cancer, and we need to be smarter and we need to fight harder to keep our air and our lungs clean. I'm sick, literally and figuratively, and I'm tired of having breathing and lung problems caused by other people's smoke. Why should people like me have to suffer at someone else's hand? It isn't right, it isn't fair, and we need to find a way to end it.

Before You Vote

I originally posted this elsewhere, but it inspired me to start this new blog, so I'm reposting.

America is supposed to be a free country.  Freedom is what our country was founded upon.  I am very troubled by people, especially politicians, whose agenda is to take away the freedoms many have worked so hard to attain.  I also have a big issue with the so-called "moral" people, specifically religious zealots who claim to be good and pure and who claim to do "god's work," while denying others' freedoms.

As we all know, there is an election coming up in a few months, and we have a very big decision to make about who we choose to run our country.  I am not especially pleased at what Obama has done in his three-and-a-half years as President.  I think he might have done more to get us out of the gigantic hole that George W. got us into.  But I am truly fearful of what will happen if Romney is elected.

Romney has stated he will repeal Roe v. Wade, which means abortion will be illegal in this country.  ALL ABORTION.  While many people, especially Catholics, might think this is a good thing, it isn't.  Making abortion illegal does not change the nature of humans.  People still have sex, and sometimes unplanned pregnancy will occur.  It's always been this way.  Throughout history, women have gotten pregnant out of wedlock, or in a marriage but unable to care for a child.  Whether it be through marriage, promiscuity, rape or incest, unplanned pregnancy happens.  It is a fact of human nature.  How many of us alive today are a product of unplanned pregnancy?  Or an older sibling is?  I was certainly unplanned.  How many of us do not know someone who was the result of an unplanned pregnancy?  And for you religious people, Jesus was unplanned. 

The thing is, abortions will happen.  If abortion is proclaimed illegal, women will die in an attempt to obtain one.  In the past, desperate women would go to so-called back room "doctors" to get illegal abortions.  I remember seeing a documentary where a woman was heartbroken over the death of her sister, because the sister had died during an illegal abortion.  I can still see the photograph in my mind, as clear as if it were yesterday, of a woman, nude, in an unnatural position, on her face and knees, where she had been in position for the abortion, something went wrong, and she died and was later discovered in that position.  I just looked it up.  The woman's name was Gerri Santoro, and I'll include a link to the page with her photograph.  I won't post the photo itself, because it is quite disturbing.  If abortion becomes illegal, deaths like Ms. Santoro's will happen again.  But next time, it might not be a stranger in a motel room.  It might be your sister or your daughter.  Before taking the drastic step to end legal abortions, you absolutely MUST consider what will happen to desperate women all across America.


Page with iconic photo of Gerri Santoro:

http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/05/03/gerri-santoros-abortion/


Taking away the right of a woman to choose what happens to her own body is ludicrous.  If men carried pregnancies, there would never be a question of abortion, because men write most of the laws in this country.  As a woman, it angers me to think some small-minded people wish to take away my right to do anything!  Of course we need laws in this country, but laws should move a society forward, toward understanding and tolerance, rather than moving people apart for their differences. 

Romney also states he will repeal the law that forces insurance companies to pay for birth control.  So he wants to take away a woman's right to birth control, then if she gets pregnant, she'll be forced to give birth to a child she didn't want in the first place?  What's next?  Take away women's right to vote?  We've just lost 92 years of progress in one fell swoop!  Women already make eighty cents to the one dollar that a man makes, for the same job.  And we have to fight harder to achieve it (no matter how smart we are), and we often have to put up with men who belittle us, slap us on the fanny, make us get the coffee, etc. 

Did you know that most insurance companies will pay for Viagra for a man  (or my favorite, the Pos-T-Vac:  See previous post about that one), so that he can get an erection, but they fight not to provide birth control for women?  How absurd is that?  Make sure you get your woman knocked up, y'all!

Repeal Roe v. Wade and take away the birth control requirement:  Create illegal abortions, maimed or murdered women, unwanted children, abused children, in a world that is already so overpopulated, it's about to burst at the seams!

If you are Catholic or otherwise religious, and are opposed to abortion or birth control, don't have an abortion or use birth control, but please don't try to force your personal views on every other woman in America.  Please don't try to force us to follow your religious teachings.  We have our own minds and morals and we must be allowed to choose our own correct paths.  Think how you would feel to be forced to do something against your will.  It's akin to the rape of our freedoms.  Please don't take away the freedoms we've worked so hard to achieve.  Please.

I realize, in all likelihood, I will not have changed many minds, but I hope, above all else, that I've given you something to seriously think about before you mark your ballot. 

Please be good to each other and please embrace our differences.  What a boring world it would be without all the colors in the box of Crayolas!