My New Favorite Breakfast Sandwich

Sometimes I amaze myself.  I sauntered into the kitchen, knew it was oatmeal time for Cool Guy, just didn't feel like having that myself, and created something new from what I had around, and am I ever glad I did.

I'm sure I'm not the first person on earth to make this breakfast sandwich, but I've never seen it before (my wide-ranging experience -- not), and I am super thrilled with it.  I think I'm calling it something like Avocado Hamwich.  For now, it's just My New Favorite.

I'm even going to go out on a limb and say that it's healthy.  Yes, I know avocados are loaded with fat, but it's the good kind of fat, the kind that doesn't clog your arteries, and also makes you feel good and full all morning long.  And they taste soooo good and have lots of other good nutrients in them.  Not only that, avocados allow your body to more easily absorb other vitamins, like beta carotein.  If you're curious, or just want to justify the avocado fat to yourself, you can learn all about avocado nutrients here.  And please don't skip the little bit of butter.  (Yes, I know that it's saturated fat, but just tiny smear of butter is what we're talking about.)  It really makes it.  Really.

I would definitely cut this rich breakfast with some fruit.  I think the perfect match would be an orange, but it's not orange season, so I had some fresh pineapple with mine.

Avocado and Ham Breakfast Sandwich


Half an avocado, peeled and mashed
little bit of butter
diced ham
1 whole wheat English muffin, toasted

1. Spread a little butter on the muffin while warm.
2. Spread with avocado
3. Top with ham.

Yum.

Tweaks

I'm interrupting my 5S series for a bit about tweaks to breakfast.  I've done two lately, and they've been huge successes, so I'm sharing them to inspire you to devise tweaks of your own.

Tweak #1: Mary Poppins says a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, but around here, all it takes is a spoonful of pork, preferably in the bacon or sausage category.  Here's the story.  I had some leftover cooked  sausage in the fridge and wondered what in the heck to do with it.  Sure, I could put it in an omelet, but I don't do omelets.  Lots of other ways to use it, but I ran across an idea from A Real American Breakfast.  This is one of those fantasy cookbooks, where only in my fantasies would I be cooking like this.  After all, I have lots of other things to do, and there are still only 24 hours per day.  However, I was glancing through and saw that they stuffed cooked sausage in the center of baked apples.  Up to this point, boys have refused baked apples.  I've tried stuffing them with brown sugar, raisins, pecans, cinnamon, all of the above, and no dice.  "What the hey," I thought, "can't hurt to try."  Let me tell you, those apples disappeared in nano-seconds.  Wish I'd made more.  Brown sugar won't do it, but sausage does.

This is super easy to make; all you need is to be awake an hour before eating.

1. Have some cooked, crumbled sausage left over.  You don't need much.
2. Peel the apple, just a circle off the top of it.  This helps keep it from splitting open.
3. Take a melon baller if you have one, and use that to scoop out the core.  This makes it so easy.  Be sure to leave the bottom intact.
4. Stuff a little sausage in the middle, up to the top of the apple.
5. Now place apple or apples in a pan with just a little water in the bottom, and bake at 350 covered for 30 minutes.  Then remove the cover and bake another 15 to brown things up.

That's it.  The only real work is coring the apples, which will take you about 5 minutes.  After that, the oven does the work, while you make coffee, and work your crossword puzzle.  And it is so worth it.

Tweak #2: The Mmmelvis.  This is named after the Elvis bagel plus our common first inital.  And you say "Mmmm" after eating it.  Get it?  Here, I was just make the ol' Elvis bagel and on a whim decided to add a few chocolate chips to the mix.  What a hit!  One caveat: you may not want your bagel toasted.  When I tried that, the peanut butter, and banana, and chips all kindof slid off the thing into a puddly mess.  Cool Guy was not amused.  So Mmmelvis is better eaten non-toasted for those who prefer not to get messy hands.

Tweaking is fun, and breakfast is so forgiving, that you should really try it sometime.  And if, as when I tried adding rhubarb to the oatmeal, it turns out a disaster according to the peanut gallery, there's always cold cereal to fall back on.  And life goes on.

Variations on a Theme

It has been awhile since I have posted.  Never fear, I am still making breakfast; it is just that I'm not having time to write about it.  Encyclopedia's 6th grade class had their yard sale last weekend to fund their class trip, and I have gotten involved with a music ministry during Lent, that has required much more practice than I am used to doing.  Life ebbs and flows.

Earlier this week, I made "customizable" breakfast burritos.  I once tried a really bang-up breakfast burrito recipe that I loved and the boys hated.  Why?  Everything was all mixed together.  But they were open to the idea of breakfast burritos, "but please, mom, don't put in the stuff I don't like."  Simple enough.

Actually, it is easier to make it all at once in one skillet all mixed up, but if it doesn't get eaten, then it's a waste of time.  So here's what I did.

1. First I fried up 1/2 pound of breakfast sausage, crumbling it up in the skillet.  I removed it to a paper towel-lined plate.
2. Then I threw in the same skillet a diced up baked potato.  I baked an extra potato the night before.  I then removed that to a bowl.
3. Then I added a little butter to the skillet, and scrambled some eggs.
4. While the various things were cooking, I shredded some cheese, diced an avocado, poured out some salsa.
5. Finally, I placed a flour tortilla on each plate, and told the boys to customize their own burritos.  Encyclopedia chose sausage, egg, potato, and cheese.  Cool Guy had sausage, egg, and avocado.  I had it all.  We were all happy and well-fed.

As a bonus, I made another burrito, wrapped in foil and sent it to school in Cool Guy's lunch for the day.  He loved it.

So the theme is Tex Mex, and Variation #1 was the burritos.  Everything got saved and two days later, we had Variation #2, which was quesadillas.  Here's how I did that.

1. Set out the filling ingredients, and asked the boys how they wanted theirs.
2. Put a flour tortilla on the griddle and place chosen toppings on one half of the tortilla.  Fold over the empty side to make a half-moon shape.  Kindof press the top down so it will stay in place.
3. Cook it on one side for a minute or two until the cheese gets a little melty (technical term), so that it will all stick together while you flip.
4. Flip it carefully.  A spatula helps.
5. Cook it on the other side for about a minute and then remove to a plate. 
6. Cut into wedges and top with things like salsa or sour cream.

Cool Guy had cheese and avocado.  Encyclopedia had sausage and cheese.  I had everything.

The burritos took longer, mainly because I was cooking the fillings for the first time.  The quesadillas, only needing to warm everything up, took less time.  You would probably need to budget about 30 minutes for the burritos, and about 5 minutes for the quesadillas.  That's per quesadilla, if you only cook one at a time.

Are they healthy?  More or less.  We used whole wheat tortillas, and lower fat sausage.  We got in some whole grains, protein, dairy, even some good veggies in the avocado and salsa.  There are certainly worse breakfasts out there.

Are they tasty?  Absolutely.  Is it kid friendly?  Are you kiddiing?  It's Customizable!  Mine loved it.  Should you make this?  If you want something not too difficult, something different, something that will take you through the morning, then yes, yes you should.  Seriously, give these a try.

Celebrate Hot Breakfast Month!

In my usual fashion, I'm a day late and a dollar short.  Or more exact, half a dollar short, since the month is only half over.  Yes, February is National Hot Breakfast Month, and we have two weeks left to celebrate.  How better than the classic American bacon and eggs breakfast?

This is the breakfast that comes to mind whenever I think breakfast.  This is the one, the epitome of fill-you-up, get ready for the back 40 kind of breakfast that I love.  It's not hard at all, not too time-consuming, just takes some kitchen juggling.

1. Cook the bacon.  Keep it warm.

2. Meanwhile, make the toast.  As soon as it comes out of the toaster, spread it with some butter.

3. In the leftover bacon grease, fry the eggs, any style.  We had hard eggs this morning.

4. Meanwhile, pour the juice, set out jam, peel the oranges, set the table, pour the coffee, etc., etc.

Just a lot of juggling, but with efficient movements, you can have everything hot and ready in very short order.

Weekend, weekday, whatever, just try the classic in honor of this month!

A BIRTHDAY ADDENDUM

Today happens to be Cool Guy's 10th birthday.  Happy Day, CG!  He is his Mother's son.  For his special birthday dinner tonight, he requested biscuits and gravy, and yes, I'm going to try my hand again at real biscuits.  Below is a shot of his birthday cake, the first that I didn't make for him myself.  But since he wanted a Nerf Gun birthday party, and I know my limitations, I found a local genuis to make this cake for me.

Warning: Not a Healthy Breakfast

If you are interested only in healthy breakfasts, read no further today.  This morning's feast is one I have been making since I was 10, and its two ingredients cannot be called healthy.

Anyone reading this blog for any length of time will wonder why I've posted this warning now.  After all, biscuits and gravy is not a healthy dish either.  I've decided to take a moment and define my slippery definition of "relatively healthy," which I use so often.  Here is what I strive for:

• Real food - meaning as close to its original form as possible.  Butter, therefore, is healthier in my book than margarine.
• Non-processed foods - similar to above.  If I don't know what the ingredients are, I don't want to have them.
• Whole grains - even if that means in a coffee cake
• Using fruits and vegetables
• Containing protein and/or fiber
• No disgusting amounts of sugar and/or fat

My general, though very low-reaching, yardstick is to ask myself if it is healthier than a PopTart.  Most of the time, I can say "yes."  And then there are times, like today, that I honestly don't know.  Today's breakfast fails on all the above categories, save the protein one.

Sometimes you've just got to let your hair down, throw caution to the wind and make Crescent Rolls with Devilled Ham.  There I said it.  It has canned crescent rolls made with white flour and God know what all preservatives, and canned devilled ham.  Don't even WANT to know the fat content of that.  And it is so good, so easy, and loved by all.

My friend Pam introduced me to this treat when I spent the night with her once.  I remember being so excited about this fabulous breakfast, that I raved about it at home, and my parents, God bless them, actually listened to me and bought what I needed to make it.  After that, it was a regular weekend feature at our house. 

Even after I got married, whenever Burt and I would come home to visit, this was what we were served for breakfast.  This would be an Easter morning treat, a special Sunday breakfast.

I don't CARE that it lacks anything good for me, it's MY SPECIAL BREAKFAST.  And now, I'm going to share it with you so that your arteries can harden right along with mine. 

Just kidding.  Another part of my healthy philosophy is that if I get it right 75% of the time, I'm ahead of the game.  I'll never bat 1000, and I don't want to. 

Crescent Rolls with Devilled Ham
makes 8

• 1 can of crescent rolls
• 1 4oz. can devilled ham

1. Preheat your oven to 375.

2. Separate the crescent rolls into 8 triangles.

3. Spread each triangle with devilled ham.  If you don't want it too thick, you don't have to use the whole can, but I do.

4. Roll up the crescent rolls starting at the large end of the triangle.

5. Bake for about 13 minutes.

Un-Biscuits and Gravy

I stink at making biscuits.  They are too short, too crumbly, too hard.  Maybe I don't use the right flour, maybe I don't use a good biscuit cutter, maybe I haven't yet found the right recipe.  Whatever it is, they are usually not a cherished item at the breakfast table. 

This morning, I wanted to make biscuits and gravy but didn't want to make biscuits.  So I did as I grew up doing, took a slice of bread and tore it in pieces to pour the gravy over.  It worked fine, as always.  The gravy was fine too, but the torn up bread made me think of an even better gravy I had growing up.

The first weekend of every September, my dad would get up earlier than the rest of us and go dove hunting in the milo field directly behind our house.  By the time I was up, there would be fried dove on the table with gravy.  We'd take those bread slices, tear them up, and ladle THAT gravy over.  Best in the world.  Oh, and the dove was good too.  I think I remember being cautioned to keep an eye out for bird shot, but I don't remember ever finding any.

I don't know how to fire a shotgun, and Burt doesn't hunt, and we don't live next to a grain field, so I haven't had this very special breakfast in years and years.  So I make do with sausage gravy.  Sigh.

I've considered frying chicken for breakfast to come close to that meal from my past, but I also know that some ideas are probably never going to come to pass, and this is one of them. 

I will extend an invitation to anyone who wants to bring me some dove (cleaned, please).  I will fry it up and make you some fantastic gravy to have over your torn-up bread.  And you can stay for breakfast.

Sausage Gravy
biscuits (or bread torn up into little pieces - that's how we ate it growing up)
sausage, about half a pound
flour
milk

1. Make sure your sausage is not low fat.  You need the fat for the gravy.  If you don't have at least a Tablespoon of fat, just add some bacon grease.

2. Fry the sausage, breaking it up into small pieces.  When it is done, remove it to a plate lined with paper towel to absorb the grease.

3. In the grease left, and with the heat on low, add a little flour.  Stir it in, and add more until you have enough to make it kindof stiff.  This is all by feel and gets easier with practice.

 
4. .After you have gotten your flour stirred into the grease, add some milk, slowly.  keep stirring in more milk until the consistency is what you like.

5. Stir the sausage back into the gravy and put it all in a serving bowl.

A Bagel Story

We had bagels this morning, but not just any bagels.  No, these bagels come with a story, which I hope you will be patient with as I indulge in a little nostalgia.

In the mid-1980's, I was a pledge at a social sorority at Oklahoma State University.  Every Monday evening, while the members of the sorority had their chapter meeting, the pledges of all the houses participated in an institution known as "Coke Date."  All the pledges  in my house - and we were dressed in church clothes - lined up shortest to tallest, meaning that I was first in line.  Then the pledges from a fraternity (it rotated week by week) would be lined up the same way, shortest to tallest, at our front door.  We paired off, me with the first (shortest) boy in line, and so on.  I have no idea what happened if there were more girls than boys or vice versa.  That problem fell to the tall ones.  Then we would walk, two by two, on a Coke Date, to keep ourselves occupied while our elders took care of the important business of the house.

Many, many times, our Coke Date was a trip to a bagel place on the main drag in Stillwater.  At that time, bagels were not common fare in Oklahoma.  I cannot remember ever having one until the Coke Dates.  Monday at this bagel place was 2 for 1 night, a promotion ploy I imagine that was concocted with the Coke Dates in mind.  Anyway, we would line up, and proceed conveyer-line style through the place, getting a foil-wrapped bagel shoved at us, and then on to the Dr. Pepper station.  (Yes, it's called Coke Date, but Dr. Pepper reigned.)

Monday night, therefore, would find us, in a strict, formulaic ritual, partnered with a total stranger of the opposite sex, who paired well according to height,  munching our bagels, sipping our DP's, and being with Everyone at this bagel joint, having a memorable time of it.  It was fun, and I met some very nice, short, young men during that time, but it also seems so quaint, even foreign to me now.  Really, what a bizarre thing it was!

The bagels, though, were fantastic.  Remember, I had never had one before.  These were just your basic white (who at that time had even heard of an Everything Bagel?), with cream cheese and very thin slices of ham sandwiched in the middle.  They were wrapped in foil and kept warm, and the combination of the chewy bread, the melty, messy cheese, and the salty ham was just unforgettable.  And I've never forgotten, though I don't think I can remember one boy who provided me with these beauties.

When I make bagels for breakfast, I like to replicate my college treat and remember that very exciting, world-expanding, eye-opening period of my life.

Stillwater Bagels

1. For each bagel, spread both halves with cream cheese.  I like to use Neufchatel, as it's lower in fat.  And nowadays, I use whole wheat bagels.

2. Place 3 or so slices of thin, deli ham on one half and top with the other half.

3. Wrap in foil, and put in a 300 degree oven for about 10 minutes.

4. Have lots of napkins handy, unwrap, and enjoy!

You could get the bagels assembled the night before, wrap them and refrigerate, although assembly is very quick the morning of.  But if you're pressed for time, it works fine.  Then it's only a 10-minute breakfast.

Hopple Popple

I read about hopple popple on Roadfood.com and realized that I sort of have been making it all along.  And I'm not even German!  After a little more investigating on the web, it seems that there are many variations of this dish.  The constants are eggs, potatoes, onion, some kind of meat, and some cheese.  What makes hopple popple different from just a basic meat-and-potato scramble is that the eggs are in the background.  Yes, they're there in every forkful, but you'd be hard-pressed to decide whether it's a meat dish, a potato dish, or an egg dish.  They all play equally starring roles.

Meat can be anything: bacon, sausage, ham, and even pepperoni or salami.  Eggs can be prepared scrambled, or made like a puffy omelette.  I go for simplicity: scrambled.

Last night we had potatoes with our ham loaf, finally finishing the last of our ham.  I made sure to cook a couple of extra potatoes for this morning, and I had some smoked turkey sausage in the fridge.  I prefer pork, but when the sausage is mixed with a bunch of other stuff, turkey does fine.  Turkey or pork, the smoked links are absolutely fabulous in this dish.

Being MLK day, there is no school, so the boys slept in late.  While waiting for them to begin their Day of Sloth, I went ahead and got as much ready for hopple popple as possible, so that it would only be minutes of cooking time, and we'd actually have our breakfast in the a.m.

I find it helpful, when I have time and think of it, to get as much chopped, sliced, and diced ahead of time and waiting in little bowls next to the stove.  Then all I have to do is dump and cook.  Also, it allows the cold food, like the potatoes and sausage to warm up a little and not need quite so much time.

Now, my boys like everything in this dish, except the onions, which I chop up very fine so they won't see them, but there is something about mixing it all up together that seems to go against their collective grains.  But this morning, after the NTY bite, they both had nice helpings.  I thought it was one of the BEST BREAKFASTS EVER!  Not just scrambled eggs, not just fried potatoes, not just sausage, but more than even the sum total.

Here, then, is my Scots-Irish, French, Cherokee (see, no German!) version of hopple popple.

Hopple Popple
to feed 4 with leftovers

• 1 half of a long link of smoked turkey sausage, like Hillshire Farms, cut in half lengthways and then thinly sliced
• 2 small potatoes, cooked (boiled or baked) and peeled
• half of a small onion, diced very small
• 4 eggs, beaten with a little milk
• shredded cheese

1. Cook the sausage or other meat in a skillet until it is a little crispy.

2. Add some bacon grease (or butter or oil) if you need a little more grease.
3. Add the potatoes and onions and cook until the potatoes are getting some brown.

4. Add the eggs and be sure that the heat is on low.

5. Scramble it all together until the eggs are how you like them.
6. Top with cheese and mix that in.

Dig the Pig

I always said I'd make a great vegetarian if it weren't for pork.  Barbeque pulled pork, pork tenderloin, ham, bacon, sausage - I'd miss it too much.

I try, as much as is realistic, to buy my pork at the farmer's market, where they raise "happy pigs," my term, but it doesn't always happen.  Last weekend, recovering from the Eternal Cold, which has now developed into a full-blown sinus infection, I just didn't have the strength to muster the trip.  Cool Guy and I went to the local grocery store, and he asked for Stick Sausage.  That's our term for sausage in links instead of patties.  Well, you don't have to ask me twice!

Today, a snow day, but nevertheless one with very little sleep on my part (thank you, racking cough), I thought it would be the perfect time to just slide those babies in the skillet and basically let breakfast take care of itself.

Yes, they're fatty.  Yes, they're salty.  Yes, they're processed food, and I don't know what some of the ingredients are, but they are tasty, and they are just what fills the bill on a day like today - a "Mom's not at her best" kind of day.

We had ours with oranges and toast.  Easy Peasy.