A post from Kelli–

A few weeks ago, before Dad passed away, I heard about a tagless garage sale that a group was going to sponsor in the next town over.  The parents of the middle school students had gotten together and decided to put on a tagless garage sale and vendor show as a fundraiser for the student’s trip to Washington D.C and I was thrilled to contribute.  They had tons of vendors with clothing, jewelry, and all kinds of goodies.  But me?  I was going for the tagless garage sale.

I found a few clothing items and some other odds and ends, but this was one of my favorite finds!

Looks like a regular old cookbook right?  Well this cookbook was created and such by yours truly!  Me!

After high school, I went to Upper Iowa.  After 5 1/2 years, I ended up graduating with a degree in Secondary Education and able to teach social studies and business, as well as Management and Marketing degrees.  I did a marketing internship with mom and ended up doing my Management Internship at the daycare center I worked at.  As part of a fundraiser, we made a cookbook and I was responsible for getting the recipes together and submitted.

Here you can see my name–Kelli Kramer–if you look really close!

I also shared some of mom’s recipes–We love these hot dog meatballs!  Here’s the link for them—

It’s always fun going through and seeing what kinds of recipes people have added in.  As great as Pinterest is, sometimes there’s nothing better than a paper cookbook and some old church recipes.  I especially like flipping through them and seeing who submitted them.  I’ve made friends with a few ladies at the nursing home and like to try their recipes and report back to them.

It looks like I even “borrowed” one of Kalissa’s recipes here–Cheesecake!  Who doesn’t love cheesecake?  Actually Jason doesn’t….which may be his most unredeeming quality…You can see the link better here—

I found mom’s Smores Brownies too–See?? Continue reading →

A post from Kelli–

As you know, my pregnancy was difficult at times.  I puked quite regularly throughout my entire pregnancy, lost 20 pounds at one point (gained part of it back, but never reached my pre-pregnancy weight) and was super tired.  Often people asked what I craved.  Most of the time, I craved not eating.  People often told me that was bad for the nausea, but on the bad days I just couldn’t eat.  There were a few spurts where I’d crave strange things–Laffy Taffy (but not banana flavor), chicken fries and mashed potatoes with gravy from Pizza Ranch (I might have gotten in a little argument with the delivery guy once), ham and pickle roll ups to the point where I carried the ingredients with me everywhere, and Rocky Road ice cream but only the Walmart brand.  I’d crave most of it for a day or two, maybe a week and then be done.

The real cravings hit for me after I had Georgia.  I had her at 10:22 at night and so in our little town, nothing was open by the time that we were ready to be moved to our room.  Jason ran to Kwik Star to see what had been sitting in the warmer for hours and came back with some cheese stuffed bread sticks.  Ever since then, I’ve found myself going out of my way to get gas at Kwik Star, knowing that I will likely be able to grab myself a pack.

The other thing I have craved is French Toast–To the point where mom, dad, Kalissa, and especially Jason make fun of me regularly.  It was the first thing that I ate at the hospital for breakfast and I really think that my body had been feeling so crappy and I hadn’t been able to eat for so long that the French Toast just hit the spot.

Ever since I was discharged, I’ve always had a batch of French Toast in the refrigerator to warm up whenever I want some!

Again, Betty Crocker came to my rescue–

I swear, there is a recipe for almost everything in here–especially if you like jellied loaves of meat and things!  Ha!

The bread section though is the best!  They have french toast, pancakes, baking powder biscuits–All Kramer/Hanken house favorites!  I always joke that it’s easy to find the right page because I’ve spilled on it so much that that page is stiffer than the rest.

It’s super easy to make!  I whip up a batch every few days and keep the leftovers in a bag in the fridge.  A minute in the microwave, butter and syrup and I’m a happy, happy girl!

I don’t have a griddle, but I do have a skillet that I received as a wedding gift.  One thing that is nice is that I’m able to make a batch easily while making supper or doing dishes.  They take a little while too cook on each side, but when they are done–They are the BEST!!!

A funny side note–When we were little, we always went to church as a family on Sunday mornings.  There were a few times when dad wouldn’t quite make it to church so we would go without him, but when we came home, he would have made french toast for breakfast with sugar syrup.  I remember a few times asking my mom to make french toast for supper, but she always said that was a thing that dad made and since she was making supper, we weren’t going to have french toast.  As a kid, I just thought she didn’t know how to make it, but couldn’t quite figure it out because if that was one of the only things dad made and there was a recipe for it, why couldn’t she figure it out?  As an adult, I asked her about this and she told me that if she would have made us french toast, it wouldn’t be as special when dad made it.  It’s little things like that that remind me if I can be half the parent either of my parents were, Georgia is going to be the luckiest little girl in the world!