Homemade Sausage Egg McMuffins!

I have been thinking about and daydreaming about breakfast sandwiches basically since moving to Croatia. The main breakfast food in Croatia is anything you can buy at the bakery. That means dry wannabe muffins, greasy burek, or even a bakery slice of pizza. Yuck. I'm not a fan. I just can't get into the breakfast thing here at all. Plus, I wake up so early that I don't get hungry until I'm at work an hour and a half later. So, the best thing in the world for me would be if there were a food truck here in Zagreb that served amazing breakfast sandwiches and wraps (*note* I want to be the one to start and run that food truck here! Hello to any investors out there!). The next best thing would be the ability to get breakfast food at the only fast food joint in Zg, McDonald's (KFC doesn't count because there aren't any drive-thru's of it here). And can you believe they don't serve breakfast?!

Needless to say, I have had a huge craving for a Sausage Egg McMuffin and I've been working up the courage to make it. I just didn't think I would be able to make my own english muffins. It seemed impossible! I did a lot of research of other peoples' versions of english muffins and what not and I found a lot of them used ingredients I couldn't find here (like evaporated milk). I came up with my own recipes for it and let me tell you, I am so freaking proud of myself. They came out AMAZING! My own version of healthy, whole wheat english muffins, with all the nooks and crannies you hope for!

Take some time on the weekend to prepare this and you will have amazing (not to mention FREEZABLE!) breakfasts for every day of the week! And if you live in a country where you can buy English muffins...all the better! But I do suggest you try to make homemade ones at least once in your life because they came out so freaking delicious. Oh yum, I need to make them again like now.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm so happy to be celebrating my first Valentine's Day (in person!) with Tomislav today! It's also my first Valentine's Day in Croatia. Although it may not be as popular here as it is in the States, I've definitely been feeling the love at school. The students have all been so sweet and I've gotten so many beautiful (homemade!) Valentine's Cards!

Here are a few of them:

 My 3rd graders are so sweet! One of these cards was not from a student, but was actually inspired by this blogpost!

 <3

 This one is from a day we were making them in class last week. There was glitter glue all over the room!

 

 So creative!

 Makes me so happy :)

How awesome and unique is this card?! From my super creative sister and her husband <3

I hope you all have a wonderful day, whether you're celebrating Valentine's Day or not, I'm sending you all a lot of love! if you didn't get any Valentine's Cards and you're feeling lonely or blue, leave me a comment and I'll send you something ;)

Natural Penicillin ie: Homemade Chicken Soup!

I've been trying to kick this cold for a week now and I finally decided I had to follow my Mom's advice and make homemade chicken soup, which I had never made before. Now, I've been cooking for just about 2 years now and I absolutely love to cook but for some reason, I always felt like soup was beyond my reach. I was wrong. Since I was feeling so unwell, I had to use ingredients I had on hand but I have to admit, it came out really delicious!

Here is what I put in my chicken soup (again, this is what I had on hand, I would have added a bay leaf and black peppercorns if I had had them):

1 Whole Chicken
Carrots
Parsnips
Celery root (No celery stalks here like we have in the States! This made me nervous but turned out great!)
Garlic (T-Slav and I both LOVE garlic so I put A LOT in, probably about 15 cloves)
Cabbage
Parsley
Onion
Salt

Basically, all you have to do is put everything in a pot and cook it up until the chicken falls off the bone. It made me feel instantly better. I cooked up Pipe Rigate noodles to go with the soup which was a great choice because some of the broth gets in the middle of the pasta and is extra delicious.

Next time you're feeling under the weather, cook up a huge pot of soup. Believe me, it will make you feel better! And homemade is just a trillion times better than any canned or bagged powder version. Dobar tek! :)