Breakfast Worth Falling For

Hi there! It's been awhile. Last weekend I didn't make or post anything since I was out of town, and couldn't even convince the husband to take on a crock pot meal of his own since he was out of town as well. So this past weekend, I was back at it and made two crock pot meals to compensate. First up: an overnight breakfast casserole.

Generally, I'm not a big breakfast person, primarily because I don't really like eggs all that much. I've tried, really, really tried to like them, but I just can't eat them without cheese, breakfast meat, and preferably a biscuit. So basically, I usually like them when I can't taste them all that much. My man, on the other hand, LOVES breakfast. A lot. Like almost as much as Ron Swanson loves breakfast.

 I decided to make this casserole because:

1. I knew he'd like it.
2. With the list of ingredients to balance out the egg, I knew I'd like it.
3. I knew I'd want a big breakfast (something more than cereal and yogurt) after my 17 mile run on Saturday.

 Now, before I get in to the recipe, let me back it up a little bit to Wednesday. Wednesday evening was lovely - perfect weather for the 8 mile run I was slated to do. Since I've been running longer distances with a group, and since someone I work with convinced me that I would most certainly be attacked if I wore headphones while running alone, I have stopped listening to music while I run. That being said, 8 miles is kind of a lot to run alone without any tunes. Spending this much time alone, continuously moving can often be a nice thing, and reminds me of my swimming days, when I'd spend hours everyday with my head underwater, staring at a black line (at least running outside has a lot more to offer visually). Just shy of 4 miles into my run, I was thinking about my upcoming 17 miler and daydreaming of what I'd have for breakfast afterward when BAM! All of a sudden I found myself face to face with the sidewalk. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but I tripped and fell, scraping and bruising my knee, and somehow managing to bruise my chest by kneeing myself as I fell (it's ok if you're laughing trying to picture this, I'm laughing thinking about it). Have I mentioned I'm the clumsiest person I know? Not only was I already thinking about Saturday's breakfast on Wednesday evening, but after falling while thinking about it, I decided it better be GOOD when I actually got around to eating it.

After a weekend away, I was looking forward to a pretty relaxing weekend at home, so 10:30 pm on Friday night was the perfect time to get cooking on this dish. Luckily it was a pretty quick preparation so I was able to get back to my wild night of partying couch.

Ingredients:

• 1lb turkey breakfast sausage (or pork breakfast sausage, your preference)
• 1-20oz bag of hashbrowns (refrigerated, not frozen)
• 10 eggs
• 1/4 c of milk
• 1 tbsp ground mustard
• Salt & pepper
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Directions:

1. Brown the sausage in a skillet
2. While the sausage is browning, whisk the eggs and milk in a bowl; add the ground mustard and a dash each of salt and pepper
3. Place a layer of hashbrowns in the crock pot, just enough to cover the bottom
4. Cover with about half of the browned sausage
5. Cover the sausage with 1 cup of the cheese; repeat layers of hashbrowns, sausage and cheese

 

6. Pour egg mixture over the layers
7. Cover the crock pot and cook on low overnight, about 7-8 hours
8. Wake up and enjoy!


I've recently noticed that our crock pot seems to cook faster than what most recipes recommend for cook times, so keep that in mind if you make this one, especially regarding the eggs. It may be best to make this when you're either going to bed late or waking up early so you can keep more of an eye on it. When I woke up after about 7 hours of cooking, the edges were already starting to brown, so at that point I decided to switch it from low to "keep warm". I knew the hubs wouldn't be awake until after 8, so I didn't want to risk the eggs overcooking (and they didn't), and it was still perfect when I got home at 10:30. Of course, he added ketchup mixed with a little Sriracha, and I just ate it plain. You can see that he was so excited to try it before I got home that this is the only post-cooking picture I managed...

I also popped some Pillsbury Homestyle biscuits in the oven before digging in to this breakfast (if ever I can find a way to include a biscuit with my breakfast, I most certainly will). They bake for 13-17 minutes, so be sure to start them a little before you plan to eat.

Check back soon for our Sunday Jambalaya dinner recipe!

Beer & Chicken...and Beer & Chicken

Happy Monday everyone!

If you're not personally a fan of Mondays, have no fear, it's almost Tuesday. I don't mind Monday this week because it puts me one day closer to the start of my long weekend in New Hampshire with a bunch of my college girlfriends. I'm looking forward to hikes, wine, bonfires and fall weather. In typical fashion, fall weather made a sneaky and likely fleeting appearance here in Richmond. Sneaky because this past weekend's weather was pretty unexpected following four 90+ degree days during the work week, and fleeting because, well, it's Richmond and that's just how it goes. Let's be clear - if you live in Richmond you know two things:

• Richmonders love to talk about the wacky weather (though after years of the same thing, is it really that wacky?)
• "Fall weather" means the high temperature was a delightful 72 degrees

It was as if the heat and humidity heard it was pumpkin spice latte and pumpkin beer season and got out of town. I'm fine with that, but since it's still technically summer and still pretty warm outside, I haven't been able to bring myself to have any pumpkin beers as of yet. There will be plenty of time for that and I'm still trying to squeeze in enjoying some of my favorite summer-seasonal beverages, namely Oberon. If you're not familiar with Oberon, it's a summer beer from Bell's brewery in Michigan. Each year, it's so highly anticipated that the release day in late March is known as Oberon Day.

So at this point, you're probably wondering why I'm writing about beer when I'm supposed to be writing about what I made for dinner. Well, I've seen a lot of recipes for beer can chicken and recently made beer marinated, oven-baked chicken, so I knew it was a good combination. I figured this could be pretty easily adapted to a crock-pot meal, thus what we made for dinner on Sunday.

Interestingly enough, we also just happened to have beer and chicken for lunch on Sunday, but in much different form. Since the Ravens game wasn't on tv here (apparently CBS thought the San Diego/Philadelphia game would generate more interest...and they were probably right), we decided to venture out to our nearest Buffalo Wild Wings so we could see both the Ravens and Redskins games. When at BWW, you have to get wings, so get wings we did. I always favor boneless, even though I realize they're really just like chicken nuggets in wing sauce, but delicious nonetheless. And of course they had beer specials, so we enjoyed a beverage with our wings. But my favorite part of the day? We were able to sit outside on the patio while watching the games. Football and eating outside are easily two of my favorite things. Add in gorgeous weather and I'm a happy camper.

Anyway, as I mentioned, our dinner was our second beer and chicken meal of the day, but was different enough that it didn't really matter. Here's how it went:

Ingredients:

• 2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 bottle or can of your favorite beer (we used Oberon for its slight orangey-wheat flavor)
• McCormick's Montreal Chicken seasoning (yep, we cheated and used this instead of adding a bunch of different spices separately)
• Dried thyme
• 1-2 sprigs fresh rosemary (we used about 5 and it was a bit overpowering, so I'd recommend just a couple for flavor)

Directions:

1. Place the chicken in the crock-pot. With the spices we used, there's no need to season separately with salt & pepper.
2. Generously sprinkle on Montreal Chicken and thyme. (As you can see, I was a bit heavy handed with the spices.)
3. Pour the beer around the chicken - try to avoid pouring it directly on the chicken so the spices don't come off. It helps to pour it slowly so it doesn't get too foamy.
4. Place fresh rosemary on top of the chicken. 
5. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours. 

Mmm...cheese

Super simple and delicious - just the way I like it. To go with the chicken, we made this cheddar cheese grits casserole. I accidentally picked up mild cheddar cheese at the store instead of sharp, but luckily we had some sharp cheddar in the fridge already, so what we used ended up being about half and half. I also tried to make it a little healthier by using skim milk and reduced fat cheese.

Check out all those spices

I had never made grits before, but it turned out really well and it definitely helped that it was nice and cheesy. In fact, I don't think I've ever even eaten grits without cheese. I looove cheese. It ranks right up there with bread and chocolate as one of my three favorite food groups (yes, those are food groups). One of my favorite things about this meal was that the husband enjoyed it without ANY hot sauce, so you know that means it was good on its own!

Shredded Pork Tacos

In my first post I mentioned that our goal was to make a crock-pot meal every Sunday. I guess I should have included an asterisk by Sunday since the first meal we made was on Monday. Now, you might think that's not a very good start to what I'm trying to accomplish, but I still count that as meeting our goal for the week. You see, we did still have a crock-pot made meal while football was on, which is the important thing in my opinion. Week 1 (of the NFL season and of my blog) just happened to be an exception because our weekend went as follows:

•  Thursday
• Ravens game (this would have been a great start to the weekend had the results been more favorable)
• Saturday:
• I ran 15 miles as part of my marathon training program (my first marathon on November 16th is only getting closer...)
• We celebrated two good friends tying the knot at one heck of a fun wedding
• Sunday
• We spent the day recovering from the previous day's events...
• Monday
• Redskins game (unfortunately the results were again less than favorable...)

Since neither of our teams happened to play on Sunday, we decided to shift the crock-pot plan to Monday. The husband works from home on Mondays, which worked out really nicely for our meal plan, and he actually gets the credit for putting this one together.

Tacos are one of our favorite things to eat and have become a weeknight staple in our house. I'd say we probably have tacos about once a week on average (maybe once every two weeks, but in any case, we eat them pretty frequently). Now, that's a lot of tacos, so we like to mix it up a little bit with the type of tacos we make (of course, I don't like to mix it up too much). Regardless of what we put in them, any tacos we make have to have one thing in common - they need to be easy! I love this recipe because it's delicious and I really don't think it could be much easier. This is something you could easily throw in the crock-pot in the morning before work or if you have time to make a quick trip home on your lunch break.


Ingredients
For the crock-pot:

• 2 cans of Rotel tomatoes & green chilies
• 1 packet of low-sodium taco seasoning (the amount you use is up to you - we ended up using about 2/3 of the packet for the whole meal)
• 1 3-4 lb pork tenderloin

For the side:

• 1 bag of Uncle Ben's 90 second microwavable Spanish rice (I may try making my own Spanish rice at some point, but until then, this works well. Did I mention it's really easy?)

For the tacos:
Feel free to add whatever toppings you like. We used:

• Soft flour tortillas
• 1 avocado
• 1/4 of a yellow onion (sauteed or not)
• 1/4 of a bell pepper (sauteed or not)
• 1 jalapeno
• Jack's Special Garden Fresh salsa
• Lite sour cream
• Shredded cheddar cheese
• Cholula hot sauce

Directions:

1. Pour one can of Rotel into the bottom of the crock-pot
2. Add the pork tenderloin to the crock-pot, trimming the fat off first if necessary
3. Sprinkle about 1/2 the taco seasoning over pork tenderloin
4. Flip the meat and sprinkle the remaining taco seasoning
5. Cover meat with the second can of Rotel
6. Cover and cook on high for 5 hours (or you could cook on low for about 8 or 9 hours)
7. Once cooked, shred the pork with two forks
8. Warm the tortillas on the stove over low heat, about a minute on each side
9. Put the pork in the tortillas and fix as you please

After about 4 hours on high

After 5 hours on high and shredding...yummm

Remember when I said he adds hot sauce or Sriracha to everything? Well as you can see, he added lots of hot sauce. His preference is Cholula for tacos, but as he just mentioned, "I have plenty of different hot sauces for different things". And you can clearly see that my meal was a bit more simple. In general, I'm not really a fan of condiments. I like ketchup just fine on a cheeseburger or hot dog, but mustard, relish, sour cream or hot sauce of any kind? No thank you.

His

Hers

 The pork was super flavorful after soaking in the Rotel and taco seasoning all afternoon and since there's only 2 of us, we had plenty of leftovers. I think we may use the leftover shredded pork to make a snack of pork nachos for Thursday's football game, or to try a different take on pulled pork sandwiches (I'm leaning towards the latter).

As far as football goes, the season isn't exactly off to a great start in our opinions, but at least the food was good!

Note: We've also made equally delicious carnitas tacos with this same recipe, just substituting a 2-3 pound London broil for the pork tenderloin.

Crock-pots & Football

Omnivore (om·ni·vore)

• An organism that eats both plants and animals
• A person who eats all kinds of foods; "all-eater"
• My husband

I grew up as what some would call a "picky eater". My family joked, rather accurately, that all I wanted to eat as a kid was iceberg lettuce, white rice, and plain bagels. While my tastes have grown and I've started to try a much wider range of food in the past few years, I still find myself preferring simple food. My husband, on the other hand, loves everything when it comes to food. Everything, that is, except olives and tofu. He even tried fried tofu and still didn't like it, which is saying a lot. One thing I've learned while living in the South is that you can fry just about anything (however, I still don't understand how you can fry Pepsi; if anyone can explain that one to me, please let me know). I guess fried tofu still leaves something to be desired, though I can't say for certain as I don't intend to try it...

Needless to say, we have pretty varied tastes, but in our two years of living together we've done a pretty good job of finding recipes and making dinners that we both enjoy. Almost every dinner consists of him adding hot sauce or Sriracha (to everything), but that's just a matter of personal preference. We certainly don't agree about our favorite foods, but one thing we always agree on is our love of football. 

We root adamantly for different teams (me for the Ravens and him for the Redskins), but  it's worked out well since they're in different conferences. It also works out well because the Ravens won the Superbowl last year (!) so I win that contest (at least for now). We tend to spend our Sundays watching football for the large majority of the day to root for our teams and our fantasy teams (I have 1, he has 2) and last year we really struggled with planning Sunday night dinners. We'd wait until the second games we're over (about 7:30) and head out in search of dinner. I usually ended up cranky from lack of quick access to food, and more often than not, we settled for ordering pizza (while delicious, not exactly nutritious). So this year, we decided to make a change. This football season, the goal is to make a Crock-pot meal every Sunday. 

Our Crock-pot has been used rather sparingly in the past few years, so I'm looking forward to trying and sharing a variety of new recipes. I'm by no means an excellent cook, and I'm sure I'll make some mistakes along the way, but who doesn't? That will all be part of the fun.
P.S. - If you don't make mistakes, please don't tell me.

Stay tuned for our first recipe for shredded pork tacos!

 As a side note, have you ever looked at a word for too long and noticed that it starts to look strange? Sometimes that happens with the simplest of words if I see it enough times, but right now the word "omnivore" is playing tricks on me because I've been staring at it for quite a while...