Egg Over Oatmeal

Egg over oatmeal? I bet you're wondering what kind of recipe this is going to be... Well, to be honest, it's not really a "recipe" but more of a suggestion to add a new idea to your breakfast options. :) I actually don't remember where this idea came from, but I had heard about someone else making this and I thought it'd be fun to give it a shot! I've made this several times for a tasty and filling weekend breakfast over the past few months. I never take the time during the week to actually cook breakfast. This would really only take about 10 minutes more on a weekday morning, but that's 10 more minutes I could sleep... ;-)

Here's what you do:

1) Cook oatmeal on the stove.

I typically make regular, old fashioned oats according to the directions on the container. You could use steel cut oats as well. I suppose you could use instant oatmeal but I prefer cooking regular oats myself... Oh, and I tend to put in half milk and half water for the liquid when I cook oatmeal.

2) Cook an egg.

3) Put the egg on top of the oatmeal.

4) Eat and enjoy.

:)

As you probably noticed in the pictures, I put some ground pepper on my egg (and a teeny bit of salt too). I like to keep my egg pretty simple; I usually cook it over medium (so that it's slightly runny) on the stove and add s & p - that's about it. I like to have a little bit of egg and oatmeal in each bite I take. It's kinda fun to mix it all together...

I realize that when you do mix it together though it isn't the most aesthetically pleasing breakfast :), but it really does taste great. I promise! It's difficult for me to describe why this tastes good though. To many people, egg and oatmeal probably seems like a weird combination. I initially thought it might not taste all that great, but I was so very pleasantly surprised the first time I had it. The flavors really blend well together!!

This is generally a pretty healthy and filling breakfast too. You could probably add ketchup or salsa or any other condiments that you normally would like on eggs... So far I haven't done that though. I tend to stick to what I know (in general in life!), but maybe one of these days I'll change it up.

Give this fun, new breakfast a shot and let me know what you think! I really think you'll like it! :)

Overnight Egg Casserole

TGIF and welcome back to the Barbershop. :) Hope everyone had a great week! This week I shared with you a main dish recipe for healthy butternut squash mac n' cheese and a dessert recipe for black bottom banana cream pie...and now I think I'd like to share a breakfast recipe with you! Gotta cover all the bases. ;-)

As you know from my last post, my family was in town last weekend and I did some cooking for everyone, including brunch on Sunday morning. I had planned to have several items on the brunch menu, and I wanted one of the items to include eggs. So I searched around for an easy recipe that wouldn't take too much of my time (I wanted most of my time to be spent with the fam!), was fairly healthy, and of course, delicious! I settled upon this overnight egg casserole from Taste of Home. Luckily, it was a success!

Now, as I typically do, I adapted the recipe a bit and did not follow it exactly. As you can see by reading the recipe here, the recipe calls for ham. Well, I was already going to cook sausage with brunch, so I decided to make this dish meatless and therefore omitted the ham. Also, I did not add the chiles that are in the original recipe. I added a few new ingredients as well, as you'll see as you continue to read...

The original recipe says it makes nine servings, and although that would have been enough for us (there were six of us), I decided to increase the proportions just a bit for a few ingredients. This casserole is made in layers. I kept the bottom layer as is, by layering hash browns on the bottom of the pan. I used a 13 x 9 glass baking pan.

I sprinkled some pepper and herbs de provence on the potatoes for a little extra flavor! I added about 4 or 4.5 cups of potatoes here.

Next up comes the shredded cheese. I decided to use a combination of a mexican blend and Vermont sharp cheddar. About 1 cup total of shredded cheese (maybe slightly more than 1 cup) was sprinkled on top of the potatoes.

The next step is to combine the eggs and evaporated milk. Although the recipe calls for 6 eggs, I used 8. I still used the 12 oz. can of evaporated milk called for in the recipe though; I did not increase the amount of milk.

Now, a few ingredients I chose to add that weren't in the recipe were red pepper, green pepper, and onion! I wanted to add some healthy veggies AND some bright color. :) Mike chopped the veggies for me; thanks, Mike!! In total, we added about 1 cup of finely chopped red and green pepper and 1/2 of a yellow onion, finely chopped. These veggies got mixed in with the egg and milk mixture, as did some black pepper and more herbs de provence.

The only thing left to do was pour the egg mixture overtop the potatoes and let the whole thing sit overnight in the fridge! That's all, folks. Super simple.

The next morning I took the casserole out early so that it could sit for at least 30 minutes before baking. After baking it, uncovered, at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes, it was done! The recipe says to bake it for one hour or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean; my oven tends to cook faster, so for me, it was done after just 45 minutes.

How colorful! I love it.

I decided to add a little salsa to my helping - yummm! It gave the egg casserole just the right kick. ;-) 

Overall, this dish was great and I would definitely make it again. My only concern was that the bottom hash brown layer was a tad dry, but not everyone who ate it thought so. So maybe that was just my own preferences talking! Maybe next time, if I made it again with 8 eggs rather than 6, I'd also increase the amount of evaporated milk. 

A couple additional items on our brunch menu were other tasty Barbershop recipes, including healthy carrot muffins and Irish soda bread scones. I'm getting hungry for brunch again as I type this. Uh oh!

:)

Enjoy the weekend, friends!

Pizza for Breakfast!

Pizza for breakfast! And I'm not talking about a cold leftover slice of pizza from the night before either. I'm talking about actually making a breakfast pizza! I made breakfast pizza for my family when they were in town this past weekend, and let me tell you, it was a hit! It was such a fun, unique recipe to make...and to boot, it was delicious too. ;-)

Now, I found this recipe on another blog I may have mentioned before - Smitten Kitchen. This woman makes some incredibly unique recipes, and this is certainly one of them! You can read more details about her recipe that I semi-followed here.

I started with store-bought pizza dough (to save time, I did not make my own!). I got one regular dough and one whole wheat dough. Next, I sauteed some shallots and put those on the dough first. I decided to make the first pizza an all meat one and the second one I made half meat and half veggie.

 So, for the meat pizza, after the shallots I added sliced turkey sausage that I had already cooked (well, it was a pre-cooked frozen kind, so I essentially just heated it up before slicing it and adding to the pizza). 

Next up was the eggs! And yes, you actually crack raw eggs on this pizza! Crazy, I know. You can check out what that looks like below.

On top of the eggs I sprinkled some black pepper and then I added a couple types of cheeses - one was a shredded Italian blend and the other was parmesan. Then, you bake it! I baked this pizza at 375 degrees for approximately 12 minutes. Here it is baking in the oven...mmmm... :)

For the second pizza that was half meat and half veggie, I added sauteed shallots and sauteed mushrooms first, as you can see here.

I also added some spinach, turkey sausage to half, sliced roma tomatoes to half, and the cheeses again...and then it was time to crack the eggs over top! There was something really satisfying about the whole cracking raw eggs on top of a pizza. I can't quite describe it though. Maybe it was the lack of mixing in that usually occurs after cracking an eggs...usually I'm cracking eggs to add to a batter of some sort and the eggs just disappear right away when I mix them in. Who knows what it was that fascinated me? But, maybe you'll understand once you try this recipe yourself and have fun adding eggs to your pizza. ;-)

So, here is the second pizza ready for the oven... Oh, and I also added some herbs (can't really remember which, although rosemary was definitely on there!).

For some reason the eggs on the second pizza seemed to take longer to cook so I left the pizza in closer to 16 or 18 minutes (the first one only took about 12 minutes). With the first pizza, the egg yolks were very slightly runny - definitely cooked thoroughly after 12 minutes. When the second one was baking, I checked it after 12 minutes or so but the eggs weren't nearly done! They still jiggled quite a bit when I pulled out the pizza pan...so I just kept a close eye on them and let them cook until I definitely knew they were cooked thoroughly. Nobody wants to eat raw eggs (well, I don't anyway)! So, if you make this pizza yourself, you're going to half to eyeball it for the length of time you bake yours... ;-)

Here is the final second pizza. Again, sooooo good!

My dad used the terms "out of this world" and "outstanding" to describe this breakfast pizza, and other very positive adjectives were used by the fam as well! I will DEFINITELY be making this again. It's a super fun weekend brunch treat, I think! It's not the healthiest, per se, but it's fun and delicious, and we all deserve fun and delicious food every now and then. I was thinking more about this breakfast pizza too, and it's kind of like an omelette - but really not at all! Almost all of the ingredients I used are often used in an omelette...except for the pizza dough! So it's really more like a typical breakfast food than you think. :)

Try it and let me know what you think, friends! Enjoy!

Check out another great savory breakfast treat idea over at "At Home with Haley." Her Buerge Breakfast Ring looks delicious! :)