Spinach Omelette on a Hero Roll

Trying to make my eggs for breakfast a little healthier. There's a bag of fresh spinach in the fridge, so I took out a handful, cut the stems, washed, dried and cut up the leaves and added it to the pan while I was whisking the eggs. I went with two eggs instead of three. Small steps, you know.

Not a lot of extra prep time and I'm happy with the results.

No bagels in the house, but there were hero rolls, which we had bought for hot dogs. (You can actually fit two regular hot dogs on one roll, if you're planning on having two dogs any way.) So I cut the omelette up and spread it out a little.

I wanted to add some mozzarella, but we seemed to be down to the last string cheese, and I don't want to steal the kids' snacks.

Finally, I added a little salsa. The bread would've been dry, so it was either add some salsa or butter the roll. Salsa was the better choice.

No pics. It wasn't "photo-worthy". It wasn't ugly, either. But it was good and worth the extra time.

Baking Breakfast on the Grill

Sunday morning I decided to cook my breakfast outdoors. It was a last-minute idea, so I had to raid the fridge for ingredients.

Years ago, I had a recipe that I used with the kids on Mothers Day morning, which was basically a couple slices of bread, the top slice with a hole cut out, and an egg was dropped in. Then it was put into the oven to bake for a while. Unfortunately, I have to find that recipe because I don't remember the temperature or the amount of time and I'm not experimenting.

Anyway, it was too hot to use the oven, and I was too lazy to empty it of all the trays and pans (and restock them later). So I went to the grill and used my trusty cast-iron pan.

Ingredients: one oversized bagel with almost no hole to speak of,
one egg,
butter,
shredded cheddar cheese,
jalapenos (one of my go to items, keep a jar in the fridge for the summer)

What I didn't add, but should have:
bacon -- none in the house, and I would've had to clean up
salsa -- didn't think of it, and I couldn't use very much anyway.
ham -- there was a slice in the fridge, but I didn't notice it
salt -- this I just forget. When the ham or bacon, it isn't necessary. I added it later, but it wasn't the same.

Procedure
Preheat the grill. When it's hot turn off the middle burner.
Put the pan on the middle burner. Add a little butter.
Carefully, cut a cone-shaped hole in the middle of the top of the bagel into the center. After that you can make it a cup-shaped hole.
If you can see out the bottom of the bagel, stuff some bread into the hole and press it down.
(If the bagel had any appreciable hole whatsoever, you can't do this. Get a nice-sized roll, or use two slices of bread.)

Put the bagel in the pan. Drop some butter into the top of the bagel.
Slice up a couple pieces of jalapenos and drop it in.
Crack an egg and plop it in. It's up to you whether you want to scramble it first, or just drop it in, or to crack the yolk afterward.
Cover with shredded cheese.

I let it bake on the center burner with the other two on high for 10-15 minutes.
Just to be sure, at the end, I put the center burner on low for about 3 minutes, to make sure the egg was cooked.

Results
I enjoyed this, but it could've used salt.
Also, I should have gotten out a little earlier so I wouldn't have had the sun right on my back as I was cooking. If I do this again, get an earlier start.

Live and learn. But that's the point of this blog.

Breadless Breakfast Burrito

Okay, let me start with terminology. You may think it's incorrect, but it isn't to me. That's why it's "terminology" and not "vocabulary".

Basically, any time you crack an egg into a frying pan, it's a "fried" egg. I don't care what you do with it afterward, I'm calling it fried, even if it manages to become "sunny-side-up", too.

If you crack it (or them) into a bowl and scramble them, then they are "scrambled", regardless of whether or not you keep scrambling them once they are in the pan so that they look like the scrambled eggs at the breakfast buffets (but, hopefully, yours taste better). So, yes, much of what I call "scrambled eggs" are "omelettes" to others, whether or not they have something in them.

Also, when I put something into an omelet, I tend to start cooking that in the pan first. When everything is ready, I pour the eggs in last (unless I'm adding cheese, because that's almost always last). This is in contrast to buffet that have cooks that make a blank egg and then just throw everything in the middle and fold it up. I hate that, but what are you going to do.

Well, I did that this morning.

Rather than make a breakfast burrito, I made eggs in the shape of a tortilla, and in another pan cooked up half a hamburger patty (crumbled) with a little salsa. I was careful not to get too much juice. Then I peeled some Monterey Jack cheese. Yeah, I used a potato peeler because the grater breaks up the block. I guess because it's too soft.

After flipping the egg, which was easier than I expected in the bigger pan, I flipped it onto a plate, added the contents, topped with a little more salsa and cheese, and then rolled the egg almost (but not quite) like a burrito.

Lessons Learned: First, sometimes you just have to dirty (and wash) a second pan, as much as I'm loathe to do that.
Second, next time try a bigger pan. The omelette was too thick for use as a tortilla.
Third, this was a really silly idea because the egg was too frickin' hot to roll and wrap!