Good Morning!

Cooking for breakfast is a rarity usually reserved for days off with my husband or weekend mornings with my daughter. My husband likes to bring breakfast to work to save money and to avoid eating junk, it's a good plan especially because he typically packs yogurt and fruit which requires no effort. If I have extra time and extra veggies (or eggs from my neighbor's yard) I will make a breakfast dish to last a few days. Frittata is a great dish to use up leftover vegetables or small amounts of cheese. This is the last one I made:

Frittata!

I used a small amount of cooked spinach, crumbled bacon, cherry tomatoes, cooked white potatoes, onion, mushroom, 8 eggs, cheddar and grated parmesan.

Preheat the oven to 375, spray a 9x9 pan and set up a water bath. Season the eggs with salt and pepper and beat them well, set aside. Sauté seasoned potato slices in a bit of oil or butter to get them a little brown. Layer them along the bottom of your baking dish. The potatoes make a nice frittata base and also make it easy to get out of the pan. Next, you will layer the cooked veggies and bacon.  In the same pan sauté the raw veggies, until softened and golden. Layer them along with cheese on top of the vegetables and pour the eggs gently. shake the pan a bit so that the egg works its way in between the layers. Bake in a water bath at 375 for 45 min to an hour until egg is cooked through and top is browned. Once it's cooled you can cut it into individual serving sizes and pack it up in the fridge. It should make 4-6 servings but my husband works hard and needs a bigger breakfast so it was 3 servings.

Next up:

Loaded Waffle Tater Tots

Sometimes you need a little help from frozen food. In this case, we usually have some kind of frozen potato item (fries, tots, hash browns) for emergency snack or whatever. I treated Julia to this last weekend and it was really good. We are big fans of putting everything in the waffle iron, this was a first for tots.

First, heat the iron to 'screaming hot' while you defrost some tater tots in the microwave. Next, chop a little onion, cooked bacon, scallion, jalapeno, and cheeses. Combine everything in a bowl by trying to mash it with a fork as best you can.

Spray the waffle iron with vegetable spray and mound a good amount on the iron. Push the top down really hard so that it gets in all the grooves. It will take at least twice as long as regular waffles do. check every few minutes, you want them really crispy and the cheese to be all melty. Yum!

Finally, a cold weather, weekday favorite:

Slow Cooker Steele Cut Oats

We love Steele cut oats but they take a long time to cook in the morning. If you have a slow cooker, problem solved! It's really quick to set up before bed and you have warm oats waiting for you when you get up. The most important thing you need to do first is find a bowl that fits inside of your crock with enough room to add water around it. I have a ceramic bowl that allows a few inches of water to sit underneath and that's perfect. 

The basic recipe is 1 cup Steele cut oats, 4 cups of water and a dash of salt. The rest is up to you! I like to add 2 peeled, cut up apples, vanilla, cinnamon and 1/2 cup brown sugar. 

Combine, set to 8 hours, low heat, cover and walk away. When you wake up they will be done...not pretty, but done. 

This picture was taken after my husband scooped his out at 5am. I stirred it together, added a handful of golden raisins, toasted walnuts and packed it up for his breakfasts to-go. 

I tried doing this with berries and raisins added in the beginning and I wouldn't recommend it. They get all bloated and ugly, it's better to add at the end.