Yesterday we have our last all-church breakfast before going to our fall schedule. We had perhaps 60-70 people, and it went very well. I used a recipe from my cookbook, “Simplified Southwestern Casserole.” I added some fresh chopped poblano peppers and some frozen corn kernels. It was a huge hit! The cheese and veggies can be prepped ahead of time and spread out in the pans, thus leaving only the mixing of the cornmeal mixture for the last minute. You can see in the picture that I used the disposable half-size pans to bake the casseroles. Each one of them holds 1 1/2 times the recipe, so I made six times the recipe for four panfuls. We have one pan left over, but that missing section represents the depredations we made this morning for our own breakfast. I will probably freeze the rest in individual serving-size baggies.
As we head into the fall and (we all fervently hope) a somewhat-normal season, you might be well advised to keep this casserole in mind, as well as all the other recipes and ideas I have for feeding large groups.
Note: My cookbook is also available on Amazon.
Great breakfasts around here this week! Remember the principle that you frontload your day, eating a hearty breakfast and then a lighter lunch and an even lighter dinner, with no evening snacking. This morning I threw together a rather complicated crustless quiche that used up most of a container of spinach that I had foolishly bought last week and the rest of an opened log of goat cheese. I will point out that soft goat cheese is richer and tangier than regular cream cheese—as well as being more expensive, of course. But I buy mine at Costco, and although it comes in a two-pack I think the unopened log will stay good for a while. So I found a recipe this morning for “
I have struggled and struggled with this recipe, as the muffins tasted really good but didn’t rise very well. It seemed to me as if the issue must be with the leavening. If you have acidic ingredients such as buttermilk, as my original recipe did, then you’re supposed to use baking soda instead of baking powder, but the recipe called for baking powder. So I’ve tried a number of different leavening amounts and combinations, but I never was quite satisfied with the results. After one especially disastrous experiment I got a 
I would highly recommend these muffins, and you could leave off the topping if you want them to have less sugar. The amount in the muffins themselves isn’t too bad. You do have to measure a fair number of spices and grate apples. I kept trying to talk myself out of putting in the apples when I made this recipe for the first time, as I didn’t want to bother, but I decided I’d better go ahead and include them and I was glad I did. The combination of the pumpkin and the apple is really good, and the apples are probably counted as part of the liquid in the recipe. So it’s kind of a pain, but worth it. These probably aren’t muffins that you’d whip up for a regular weekday breakfast, but they’re very nice for a special occasion.
I say on the sidebar to this blog that I’m concentrating on “company” food, not on what I made for dinner Tuesday night. It’s not really cheating for me to include this recipe, since I have made it for an overnight guest–once. These waffles have been a Saturday breakfast staple at our house for almost 20 years, as I can remember making them when Gideon was a baby. (I probably got started making them because we were given a waffle iron as a wedding present. Thanks, Steve and Evelyn! That waffle iron lasted a long, long time.) Over those same 20 years I’ve made various changes of my own, so I now feel comfortable posting the recipe. The original is from a cookbook I’ve mentioned before, 
Many years ago I ran into a granola recipe in the old Gourmet magazine (now gone, alas) called “Sherry’s Granola.” I have followed its basic concept for many years, tweaking it and generalizing it until I can call it my own. Granola is a great kitchen-sink item, and as you’ll see below it’s more of a procedure than a recipe.
The first of what I hope will be a weekly series of posts on my excursions into feeding people, usually at our home but sometimes somewhere else. (I’ll hope to develop my abilities as a photographer along the way.)