Breakfast Time!

 I hope that you like breakfast!  It is our favorite meal…  I’m one of those guys that will put an egg on or with just about anything.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that every breakfast has to include eggs.

What follows is a selection of my recent breakfasts at our house.

OK, this one is pretty basic…but I like simple and basic.  In this case I heated up a slab of Laurie’s fantastic meatloaf, melted cheddar cheese on it and then added my easy over egg. 

On another morning, I had a little deli style ham lying around so I did a simple scramble…adding feta cheese to the mix.  Note the pan grilled hot dog bun as my accompaniment.  Waste not, want not!

Spam, in its original form is just too overpowering for me…too much fat and too much salt.  But Spam now offers Spam ‘Lite’.  It contains 37% fewer calories, 50% less fat and 25% less sodium than the original Spam.  For me at least, Spam Lite is a winner…maybe once every 5 weeks.

So…I started this breakfast with a toasted buttered bun, halves face up.  Then I added 2 slices of fried Spam Lite to each section of the bun.

Then of course, to push the limits of dietary wisdom, I ladled Hormel Chili (no beans) over the buns and the Spam.

They say that eggs are good for you so to complete my meal, I placed a couple of over-easy fried eggs on top of my creation. (Note my generous application of Tabasco) I was a happy camper!

We love good sausage gravy.  Most sausage gravy that we’ve found lack much sausage…or uses some bland sausage that lack any seasoning.  We do have a local restaurant that produces the best sausage gravy in the area, bar none to date.  It's so good, we have purchased a quart to take home at times...

Then Laurie found a recipe for sausage gravy that we could make at home… We like spice…a little heat…so our version incorporates Jimmy Dean’s Hot Pork Sausage.  As you can see, we made a vat of sausage gravy!

Then what?  The first time we had our homemade sausage gravy, we just spooned it over some biscuits.  Of course I added Tabasco to mine after the photo was taken…

The second time I had ‘our’ sausage gravy, I did it up even better than before by heating it in the frying pan and adding a couple of over-easy eggs!  Yum!  In this case I used a leftover hamburger bun for the base.  Biscuits are better but the bun was what I had handy.

FYI, here is the recipe we use for sausage gravy.  Thanks to the Pioneer Woman!  Other than the spicy Jimmy Dean sausage, our only other major variation from the original recipe was that we used half and half milk.  It does tend to make the gravy thicker.  We keep half and half milk in the house because it has a really long shelf life as compared to regular milk.

Note the Pioneer Woman’s caution at the bottom of the recipe.  If you aren’t making your own biscuits, do not use Pillsbury’s canned biscuits.  Instead use Pillsbury’s Grands…from the frozen food case.

Leftovers don't survive for long at our house.  Laurie doesn't care for them but I view them as an opportunity.  I toasted and buttered a couple of small slices of bread from a baguette.  Then I fried some leftover pork from a roast, also heating up the carrots and a couple little pieces of turnip in the frying pan.  At 2 easy-over eggs and I had a satisfying start to my day.  

For my last breakfast in this post, we had eaten at Aubrey’s, a local chain here in East Tennessee.  Laurie had ordered the panko crusted Alaskan Pollock with their fried potatoes for dinner a couple of nights earlier.  She couldn’t finish all of it so I took the opportunity to reheat the Pollock in a frying pan along with a couple of their left over thick fried potatoes plus a couple of mine… Then add a couple of eggs, (and of course Tabasco after taking the picture), and I was set until dinner time!

FYI…I have a complaint for the Heinz Company!  They have apparently stopped making Heinz Ketchup with Tabasco… L I’ve had to go on-line and order a six-pack of Brooks spicy ketchup.

Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for coming by for breakfast!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave