Home made croutons

So tonight me and hubbie were supposed to swing by my folks place so that my mum could do some acupuncture on the hub's back. He tweaked it at work last week and its been nagging him ever since. Not good especially when he's got his first mountain bike race of the season less than 4 days away. Well turns out the mum had a pretty rough day at work and canceled on us which left us with some unplanned downtime. So what did we do? We made croutons. Yay hubbie was so thrilled (insert sarcasm here). But he's such a good sport when it comes to my projects and he always does it without complaining. Although there was some complaining about his back, but thats fine.

So here's what we did. Took a loaf of bread that my ma in law made for us a few days ago and cut it up into crouton sized pieces. Dont' mind the glass of Merlot, it has nothing to do with the croutons.. well maybe it helped hatch the idea.

Next we rummaged thru our meager spice cabinet and pulled out olive oil, oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Basically the only crouton appropriate spices we have and definitely staples in everybody elses cabinets. No I don't think star anise will taste good on crouts, but for some reason we gots plenty of that.

Next we threw all of the above in a pan and sauteed the little pieces of bread. Smelled amazing. Only took about 5 minutes for the crouts to brown up. I think we used a bit too much olive oil, but now we know for next time. Plus we pretty much just winged this, I'm sure if we had followed some proper measurements it would have been perfecto.

Then after the crouts cooled we laid them out over a paper towel to absorb some of the oil and harden a bit and wal lah.. homemade croutons. Not too mention a great way to use up your old leftover bread. Boy I can't wait for my next salad!