Favorite Breakfast Dishes

I love hearty breakfasts with lots of meat--bacon, sausage, ham, etc--and eggs and something else fluffy, like pancakes or french toast or even potatoes. But making all these things separately, and eating a helping of each, makes for a lot of food, a lot of kitchen mess, and an overly-full stomach. This is why I like to mix things together.

This morning, I found a can of corned beef hash on my shelf. I don't remember buying it, but I'm sure it was me, I love anything with corn beef, and hash is always good. It makes me feel like a Who down in Whoville eating Who Hash :)

(from: http://www.meijer.com/s/mary-kitchen-corned-beef-hash-1-can-25-oz/_/R-126915)

Already, this provided me with a savory meat (the corned beef) and something fluffy (the potato chunks); all I needed was the eggs. Luckily, my roommate keeps the fridge regularly stocked with basic stuff, the kinds of things I always forget to buy, like milk, butter, and eggs. I grabbed three of the eggs and began to whisk them up in a small bowl with a few splashes of milk. Meanwhile, the greased skillet I had placed on the burner was heating up nicely.

Once the skillet was ready, I poured on the eggs and started scrapping them around till all the liquid turned to jiggly fluff. Before the eggs could burn, I emptied the can of corned beef hash into the pan and mixed it all up. Now I just had to let it get a little crispy.

After letting the corned beef hash sit for a minute, then flipping it, then letting it sit again, then flipping it again, everything was starting to turn golden brown, or at least it would have if the corned beef wasn't already naturally a reddish shade of pink. Regardless of color, I could tell it was ready, so I turned off the burner and served myself a bowlful.

Before I dug in, I added a few decent shakes of garlic salt, a very good decision in retrospect. The garlic and egg toned down the loud, sharp flavor of the corned beef, creating a nice balance of tastes on my tongue. Overall, it was easy, hearty, and lovely, just what I want from a good breakfast. And the only things I got dirty were one skillet, a bowl, a fork, and a spatula. Not bad at all.

Another good breakfast combo like this one is called Farmer's Breakfast. This one may be more appealing to the masses since not everyone enjoys the strong taste of corned beef, but I still recommend either one because I think they're both good. Anyway, Farmer's Breakfast goes a little something like this:

1. Scramble some eggs
2. Brown some sausage
3. Fry some bacon
4. Dice some potatoes
5. Stir them all together in a skillet till well mixed
6. Serve with pepper to taste

It's a little more work and a lot more dishes (which kind of defeats the purpose of finding an easy breakfast combo that doesn't make a mess of your kitchen), but it's totally worth the trouble. And if you can find a partner to make and eat it with you--my boyfriend loooooves this stuff--you've also found somebody to help you with the clean up (hopefully).


Moral of the story: corned beef hash with eggs and garlic salt is super quick and easy, while Farmer's Breakfast is possibly even more yummy, but definitely more work. Either way, they're both way above mediocre.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup?

Yes, the title of this post does end in a question mark, that is not a type-o. I did that because this turned out to be one of my failed attempts at cooking something new. Well, sort of failed. I guess this would be a case where the adjective "mediocre" is entirely appropriate.

Knowing that we were going to be snowed in by the impending second coming of snowpocalypse, my roommate and I (I guess she's like my unofficial partner in this blog now?) went to Walmart and bought all the necessary ingredients for the only dish that really makes sense in those kinds of conditions: soup, specifically broccoli cheddar soup. 

As the snowflakes began to accumulate, I started by chopping some onions. Even though we lit a Christmas candle (appropriate for the weather, we thought) to stave off the eye-watering sting of the onions, I found myself frequently running over to the door of our apartment to shove my face out into the frigid, snowy air just to give my burning eyeballs a break. Eventually, half of a large yellow onion was sufficiently diced and thrown into the deep pot on the stove to saute in some butter. 

It was then my job to add 3 cups of water and 3 chicken bullion cubes to the pot and wait for it to boil while my roommate shredded the carrots. On her most recent trip home, she had borrowed this electric shredding thing from her mom. The words "Salad Shooter" were printed across the side of the little contraption, and when you put a couple carrots in the top, it whirred and buzzed and then shot out thin shreds of carrot, the perfect size for salads, or, as in our case, broccoli cheddar soup. After putting three medium sized carrots through the salad shooter, she moved on to cutting up the broccoli. As anyone who knows me knows, I do NOT like broccoli, so the fact that I am even entertaining the idea of eating something with broccoli in the name is kind of astounding. But my roommate assured me, as she cut the broccoli into slightly smaller (but still ridiculously gross-looking) chunks, that the nasty green menace would shrink down in the soup a little and that with all the cheese and noodles we were about to add, I wouldn't even notice them. 

When the water broke out into a boil, I tossed in the veggies and then waited for a second boil before adding in the 2 cups of egg noodles. The pot looked like a jumble of orange and green; had potatoes been an ingredient, this soup would have felt very Irish. During the 5-6 minutes that all this then boiled for a third time, I cubed the giant, 1 lb log of Velveeta cheese that we bought. The processed cheese stuck to my hands, the knife, and the cutting board as I tried to slice and pry it into smaller pieces. It grossed us out a little to think about the fact that we didn't need to refrigerate this stuff, it was fine all on its own. And yet, the cheesiness was probably my favorite part of the finished product. 

Once the egg noodles were nice and tender, we threw in 3 cups of milk, all the freshly cubed cheese, and some garlic powder to taste. As soon as the cheese was melted and mixed thoroughly throughout the soup, we were ready to dig in. Warm and filling as any soup should be, it was also chewy, crunchy, and cheesy at the same time. The combination of broccoli, carrots, and noodles provided the texture, while the cheese was the creamy glue that tried to hold it all together and it turned out to be the most dominate flavor by far. My roommate was kind of right about the broccoli, I didn't notice it hardly at all, but this could have been because I spent a lot of my dinner time meticulously picking through the chunks and separating out the ugly green trees. Needless to say, my roommate declined when I offered all my broccoli bites. 

The odd thing, though, was that there was this weird, mysterious white substance that built up and clung to everything in our bowls. It almost looked like tiny little cheese curds, but we were pretty sure it wasn't coming from the cheese because when we had had this soup made for us by my roommate's mom in the past, she always used Velveeta and this stuff had never come up for her. Perhaps it was the brand of egg noodles we used? We really had no idea. But that, combined with the somewhat watery consistency of the liquid parts of the soup, made us nostalgic for how Mrs. Angeli used to make, and that's just ultimately gave this dish a mediocre rating in my book. 

Of course, I forgot to take pictures while we were cooking and eating this time around, but I do have a picture of our leftovers:

It tastes better than it looks, but not as good as it sounds. Thus, mediocre. But if anybody wants to try and do it better, here's the short version of the recipe we followed:

Broccoli Cheddar Soup:

1 onion (diced)                                    2-3 Tbl. butter

3 c. water                                            3 tsp. chicken bullion cubes/granules

1 pkg. frozen broccoli                         2-3 shredded carrots

1 ½ -2 c. very fine egg noodles           3 c. milk

1 lb. Velveeta cheese (cubed)             Garlic powder

Sauté onion in butter.  Add water and instant chicken cubes/granules.  Bring to a boil. When boiling add the shredded carrots and the broccoli.  Again, when boiling add egg noodles.  Boil 5-6 minutes.  Add milk, cheese and garlic powder to taste.  Heat until cheese is melted and well stirred into soup.

Enjoy!