Breakfast Pizza

There is this amazing bakery in San Diego that I LOVE, Bread & Cie.  Along with super delicious bread and pastries, they have a cafe where you can get sandwiches, soup, breakfast, etc.  I always get the breakfast pizza, always.  I crave it.  But it’s so hard because they stop selling it around noon, and it’s really hard to get up and at ’em before noon on the weekends for us.  I honestly have no idea why it took me so long to try and recreate this, but I finally did, and with stellar results!

This is almost an exact copy, except my version has pizza sauce on it, only because I just used a premade frozen cheese pizza from costco.  it would be very easy to make with homemade dough, too.

What you need:

• A cheese pizza, or prepared dough brushed with olive oil and mozzarella cheese
• 2 – 3 eggs
• Scallions, chopped up
• Garlic, minced or sliced
• Bacon, I used about 2 pieces for one pizza
• Grated parmesan cheese
• Salt & pepper

What you need to do:

1. Pre-cook the bacon.  I prefer cooking mine in the oven, but it doesn’t really matter.  To bake the bacon, put bacon on a cookie sheet, or in a pyrex, and bake at 400 for about 12 – 14 minutes (if you are cooking it for real, cook it for 20 mins).
2. Lower oven to recommended temp for your premade pizza (or 450 for homemade).
3. Chop up bacon, scallions, garlic, etc.
4. Crack your eggs directly on the pizza.
5. Top with all other toppings.
   

   Ready to bake

6. Bake the pizza.  Start checking on the pizza after 15 or 20 mins.  Bake until the eggs look fully cooked.

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Cast Iron Omelette

So maybe this is a quiche type thing, or a frittata?  I dunno, I just know that I love breakfast for dinner.  And after visiting a local place for brunch and having one of the most delicious “omelets” ever, which was baked in a mini cast iron skillet, I HAD TO TRY IT.

This is insanely easy — I didn’t look up any recipes, just kind of did what I thought would work best. This is also really great because it’s kind of kitchen sink, throw in whatever you want/ have/ need to use and still have a delicious meal.  For example, I had a leftover baked potato that I cut up and threw in.  You really should have eggs, cheese and some veggies at all times in your kitchen, so just do what feels right.  Other things to try: sausage, tomatoes, onion, pesto, other kinds of cheeses, olives, ham, zucchini or squash, peppers, etc.

First I started pre-cooking some delicious, delicious bacon in the cast iron skillet (here is the skillet that I have and highly recommend, btw).  Oh, and preheat the oven to 425!

Frying the bacon

As you can see I used five pieces, but there are incredibly thick.  If you have normal cut bacon, maybe bump it up to 7.  But as I said earlier, you can just throw whatever you want in!  The great part about the bacon though, is that now you have delicious fatty grease to saute veggies in AND it’s a spectacular way to season and coat your skillet so that you can actually get the omelette out of the pan later and eat it.

While the bacon is a-cookin’, it would be a grand idea to clean and chop your delicious veggies.  I used broccoli, scallions and some spinach.  I only used half the broccoli, but all the spinach (about an oz) and all of the scallions, chopped.

Veggies!

I also whipped my eggs with shredded mozzarella cheese, salt, pepper, and milk while waiting for the bacon.  I used 8 eggs, about a cup of milk (maybe less?  I just poured some in, it was not more than a cup for sure), generous amounts of pepper and about half as much salt.  If I had to guess, I’d say a teaspoon or more of pepper.

Scrambling eggs

Finally the bacon was done, I took it out and wrapped in a paper towel to absorb some of the grease.  Then I threw in the scallions and maybe 8-10 minced cloves of garlic to saute for a few minutes on medium.  While it was sauteing, I went ahead and chopped up the bacon.

Sauteing garlic and scallions in bacon grease

Before I added the other veggies, I made sure to coat the sides of the skillet with the bacon grease.  I did this buy just taking a wooden spatula full of scallions/ garlic/ grease and running it all over the inside of the skillet a few times.  Then after the garlic turned a bit dark, I added the other veggies to cook for about 5 mins (or until the spinach starts to wilt, if you use it).

pre-cooking all veggies in bacon grease

Next I poured the eggs in.  Stir the contents around a few times, to make sure everything is evenly distributed.  Then I added more mozzarella on top!

Ready to bake

I let the whole thing cook on high for 7 – 8 minutes, until the eggs were more or less set.  Then I stuck that sucker in the oven.  As for the baking time, I had intended for it to bake for 15 – 20 mins… which after being extended in intervals of 5 mins eventually added up to about half an hour.  Bear in mind, I had an extremely DEEP skillet very, very full.  Not only was I starving by the time it was cooked throughout, but I had also sustained a very painful oven burn…. WAH.

All done!

I think it was worth it, though…

Like a breakfast pie

It was seriously delicious, you guys.  Also filling… we only ate about half and remember that one half of “we” is a giant (not me).  I served it with simple toast.  I wanted to make cheddar drop biscuits, but the lazy took over instead.  When I had the version that inspired me at Cafe 21, it was complemented by the most delicious potato pancake I have ever had in my life.  A good, easy substitute are the frozen ones at Trader Joe’s… plus, you already have the oven on, anyway.  Enjoy!

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Bacon-cakes: a photo essay

I love bacon and I love pancakes on the rare occasion that I am craving them.  I was inspired by a picture someone sent me of someone making pancakes with bacon in them.  The rest is self-explanatory.

First speciman

pretty simple, really...

happy face?

butter face

OMNOMNOMNOM

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Smoothies!

Ok so I am a really picky eater and basically only like eating about 5 kinds of fruits…UNLESS…they are in smoothies.  So we got a blender and I looked up some recipes, just to get an idea of what people do.  Most recipes called for milk or yogurt, but when you do this with fresh fruit, you still need to add ice, or it’s just not cold enough.  But then the ice waters it down, which is a huge bummer.

But THEN I had the best idea ever:  frozen milk cubes.  You get the milk, and the ice, haaaaay!  I told BF and he thought I was crazy so I said back up, genuis at work and made some milk cubes.

I’m not going to lie, they look a little bit weird.  And they feel kinda gross too, but it is the secret amazing ingredient to the best smoothie ever – trust me.  The one problem is, I broke the hell out of our standard hard plastic ice cube tray trying to get the milk cubes out.  They aren’t rigid like ice cubes, so I highly recommend a rubber bendable ice cube tray (I actually bought a baby food/ breast milk one, EW).

You will be amazed what the milk cubes adds to the smoothie.  They seriously make the smoothies super awesome and creamy like the fancy, expensive (and full of added sugar) ones at Jamba Juice.

My favorite, so far, is strawberry banana.  But we have also tried strawberry, nanner, blueberry and just strawberry, blueberry.  I have some frozen kiwis waiting for use, too!  If your fruit is getting too ripe, just freeze it.  Henry’s had strawberries for 98 cents a pound so I bought 3 with full intention of freezing them.

Also, strawberries are great because they are really low in sugar.  As long as you add some strawberries with another fruit with higher carb content, like blueberries or nanners, I’d estimate a glass of smoothie (1/3 of a blender full) is about 25-30 grams of carbs (equal to a cup of pasta).  This is pretty low considering the amount of vitamins, you are getting, and probably about 2-3 full servings of fruit.  Plus, the same size smoothie at a store can contain as much as 100 grams of carbs.

EDIT:

Sooo, we buy fruit at the Costco a lot, and obviously, two people can’t consume 47 lbs of strawberries in 5 days, so I end up freezing a lot of fruit for smoothies.  In my experience berries freeze very well (strawberries, blueberries, etc), as do kiwis.  Bananas on the other hand, not so good.

ANYWAY, the reason for the edit is if you have frozen fruit, you do not need frozen milk.  If you try to blend frozen fruit without 4-8 ounces of regular liquid milk, you might be needing a new blender…not that I’d know from experience, or anything.

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Bacon Cinnamon Rolls

Oh sweet heavens, this was uh-maze-zing!  You might think it sounds gross, but you, my friend, are mistaken.  Sweet and Savory, FOR THE WIN.  I have been wanting to make these for months, and I am so glad I finally did.

I originally got the idea from the Bacon Today blog: http://bacontoday.com/bacon-cinnamon-rolls-o/

So it was pretty simple.  Bought bacon, the pop out cinnamon rolls.  My cohort and I decided it would be best to cook the bacon just a little bit in the skillet first to make sure it would be nice and crispy.

just cook the bacon a little bit first

Then we discovered that the cinnamon rolls were already pre-rolled…so basically they looked like a pilsbury biscuit

I decided to just go for it and wrap some bacon around one of the rolls, before the sous chef came up with the great idea to just cut the the rolls ourselves.  This was easy and done with kitchen shears.

Here you can see the one I wrapped in bacon, the first successful cinnamon roll, and the cut and uncut versions.  After getting all the rolls assembled, we popped them into the oven, according to the directions for the rolls.  I believe it was 425 for about 15 minutes.

ready for the oven!

Once they were out of the oven, you just add the icing and you are good to go!

If you don’t think this is the best cinnamon roll ever, I will fight you.  That’s no lie.

finished product!

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Brunch!!

Brunch is such a good way to use your leftovers. 🙂 That’s exactly what I did this morning. We had so much meatloaf left!

Omelette:

• 2 eggs per omelette (I used 6 total)
• Mushrooms
• Tomatoes
• Shallots
• Scallions
• Small cubes of the meatloaf
• Soy sauce
• Red pepper flakes
• Salt & pepper
• Milk

Before folding the omelette, I sprinkled parmesan cheese flakes.

I served this with leftover green beans, leftover slices of meatloaf, leftover mashed sweet potatoes and freshly baked blueberry muffis (from the box). Tim brewed some coffee and I had a glass of orange juice with heavy pulp (I don’t drink coffee). SUCH A GOOD BRUNCH, omg. We should’ve had bloody mary’s! Oh well!

Sorry for the quality–took it on my BB.

$ breakdown:

• $2 for a dozen eggs

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