Veggie, Tomato, Onion Breakfast Burrito

Let's face, breakfast time is the best time to experiment!

I have all day to clean up the mess I made. Seriously, I enjoy breakfast, and I'm generally making these for one because everyone else is already out, or doesn't want to be my guinea pig.

I've been making a lot of wraps lately, cutting down on the bread and toast (although not so much on the bagels -- I like my fresh bagels!).

This was my latest experiment.

Ingredients: Last night's leftover veggies, 2 eggs, some grape tomatoes and a slice of red onion, cut up real good.

Prep: reheat the veggies in the microwave for about 20-30 seconds. There isn't much there. You can also take out some frozen vegetables and cost them according to the instructions. I wanted something a little chunky, not just peas, carrots and corn. (Not that there's anything wrong with those, but that's not what I was in the mood for.)

Scramble a couple of eggs. While they're cooking, cut up a few grape tomatoes and the slice of onion.

Put the veggies on the tortilla. Add the egg. Top with tomato and onion. Season it, if desired. (Salt and pepper to taste, as they say.)

And you'll see the following results:

No pictures of the wrap, because I'm still working on my perfect tortilla roll!

Made My First Quiche

Not that difficult, really. I was surprised it was so simple. I saw a recipe online, so I copied it down. I have a few "friends" who have been posting things that are supposed to be healthy and simple. The "simple" is what sells me.

Just six eggs, some cream, broccoli, and cheddar cheese. Naturally, the shopping was the biggest problem. There was literally one box of frozen broccoli, despite the store carrying two national brands and their own store brand -- and it wasn't even cut right.

Cheddar cheese turned out to be on sale, so they were out of it. I got an off-name brand. About the only thing they had was the heavy cream. (They had eggs, too, but those were in the house.

I thought it turned out okay, and son liked it, but it wasn't very filling, and I needed something to go with it. (My wife was a little less impressed, probably because she knew that we needed something to go with it, and partly because she could do it better, I'm sure.)

Basically, it would've made a good weekend lunch, but it was missing something for dinner.

By the way, I did cook some bread to go with it. That will be the next update.

photo is coming -- I have to upload a few pics.

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.

Comfort Food: the Double-Decker Fried Egg Sandwich with Cheese

It doesn't take a genius to make comfort food. The genius comes in knowing when you need to make it. And knowing how to improve upon it.

One of the first things I learned how to cook was a scrambled egg (although it often came out somewhere between scrambled and a mini-omelet). Unfortunately, I didn't always have the patience (or, frankly, the ability) to properly scramble an egg. So I had a lot of fried eggs.

Fried eggs are just plopped into the flying pan after the butter has melted.
You don't have to flip a fried egg, and it isn't uncommon for certain eight-year-olds to break the yolk making attempts to flip fried eggs and then whining and crying about it.

My mother used to tilt the pan and spoon some of the grease onto the top of the egg to cook it. That was difficult for me because the pan was hot, even with the pot holder, so I just covered it with a pot lid, and it would cook just fine.

The moment of brilliance comes when you realize that if you're making toast, and you decide to make a sandwich out of it, it doesn't matter if the yolk breaks. In fact, you want it to break. That actually gave me the courage to practice flipping my eggs.

So how do you improve on the simplicity of one egg, one frying pan and two pieces of toast, which bring back childhood memories?

Well, yeah, a bagel or a roll or something. Sure.

But how about two eggs?

One egg isn't very filling, but two eggs is too much for most rolls or bagels. Not that I mind having stuff hanging over the sides, but I don't like burning my fingers while I'm eating breakfast.

And then the brilliance struck.
This was recent. I would never have had the patience for this as a kid.

A double-decker fried egg sandwich.
Make two eggs, but make them one at a time. The first egg won't have time to get cold, and you'll be putting a second hot egg right on top of it.

Can you improve that?
How about a slice of cheese in between. (I use the slices from the bricks at Costco.)

There wasn't any ham in the fridge this morning, but I did have a little package of mini Canadian bacon. I heated it up for a few minutes in the pan to top it off.

And a slice of tomato that was almost as wide as the bagel.

Sorry, no pictures. It was a little sloppy when put together.
And by the time I thought to take a picture, there was a big ol' bite taking out of it.

Comforting.

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.

Two Egg Omelettes on a Bagel, No Hyphen

I didn't have a two-egg omelette on a bagel. I had two omelettes on a bagel.

Yes, I eat a lot of bagels, especially when I bought one dozen fresh and they didn't get eaten last weekend, so I had to freeze them. Sue me.

Anyway, not in the mood for cheese, which usually works well, because it covers the hole, but I was in the mood for salsa (like Frank, from "Everybody Loves Raymond"), which could make a mess.

Here's how I handled it. Toasted a bagel. Scrambled one egg. Buttered the bagel. Put the one cooked egg on the hot bagel to keep warm. Poured a second egg into the pan. Spooned the salsa on the first egg. Finished cooking the second. Put in on top of the salsa. Voila! Salsa sandwich with the egg as bread. Well, not exactly. That was inside a toasted bagel.

Nice. And it didn't squirt salsa all over, either.

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!

Lunch and Snack for Wednesday, July 7, 2010

I was out at breakfast time and resisted the temptation to get cheap, stinky fast food or even expensive, a little better for a little longer waiting time food.

But I did a little shopping and picked up some whole wheat tortillas, monterey jack cheese (thought about getting pepper jack, but passed -- this time), packaged canadian bacon and some ground beef. I had eggs at home. Mixed it all up with some salsa and ... Well, had I put in six eggs instead of two, my proportions might've been okay. I like beef, and overdid it just a little. But I had two wraps that were heftier than any breakfast burrito I've had before.

Lesson learned: Don't overdo it, especially when it's supposed to be a meal for one, and it isn't something you want left over.

Snack in the afternoon was microwave mac-n-cheese using leftover penne from yesterday, american cheeses (the brick from Costco, not the icky wrapped singles from Kraft) and some milk. It was a light snack, so I resisted the urge to add more. Plus I remembered the burritos. Didn't overdo it.

Meals for Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Mushroom omelette, BBQ chicken pizza bagel, Chicken pasta salad.

Breakfast was an omelette with mushrooms. The mushrooms were part of the gravy for the roast beef for a past last weekend. I heated them in a pan with a little olive oil, cut them up a little (probably should've done that first, but then there would've been something else to wash), poured in a scrambled egg on top it.

Lesson Learned: Check the house for bread before starting this. There were bagels in the freezer, but I wanted one for lunch. The choices were burger and hot dog buns or taking a walk to the bakery for a decent roll. I had already started cooking and it was already 85 degrees outside and climbing. When the egg and flipped and done, I cut it into three long slices with the spatula and nestled it on a hot dog bun. Egg was good, but overall a little bit of letdown. Also, it could've used some cheese, but I thought of that too late.

Lunch was a bagel pizza. Thanks to the heat, the bagel thawed on the counter in about 15 minutes. (By the way, the bagels were bought fresh, not frozen. We freeze the extras.) Sliced it open and squeezed some Famous Dave's BBQ Sauce on both halves, spreading it with a knife, and toasted the bagel for a minute or two. Back to the fridge for the leftover grilled chicken from last night and a couple of string cheeses, shredding both. After removing the bagels from the toaster oven, I lined the rack with foil, put the bagels back and added the chicken, topped with cheese (and a little more BBQ sauce, why not?). Set the toaster oven to bake at 350 and let it heat up for about 5-6 minutes. Not bad. I could've added some mushrooms, but I didn't know how the gravy and the BBQ sauce would interact.

I'd try this again, fiddling with the ingredients.
By the way, I like fresh mozzerella for sandwiches, but I've learned that it's too watery for stuff like this.

Dinner preparation started early. I boiled half a box of mini-penne just so there would be some pasta in the fridge in case anyone wanted to make microwave mac-n-cheese. Then I glanced at the back of the box and saw the pasta salad. Since I knew we were having the leftover chicken for dinner (did I mention the heat outside? I wasn't going to the grill again), I changed what I would've had, which was grilled chicken salad (lettuce, tomato, chick peas and chicken, with Caesar dressing) to pasta salad. Heated up some generic (but small) frozen veggies. When we were ready to eat (in the A/C'ed living room with a tape-delay of the game on), I threw some pasta in the bowl with sliced chicken and a couple of scoops of veggies. I added in some olive oil and a splash of milk. (The box called for heavy cream. I made do.) Thirty seconds nuking later, I was having dinner.

Verdict: A little on the dry side. I like sauce. Maybe it needed more oil. Maybe it needed the cream. But it's something that could be improved upon rather than thrown out.