Breakfast Casserole!

This month's Pot Luck at work had the theme of breakfast food, and I decided that I'd make my favorite breakfast casserole.  I've been making it since I was a fledgling cook back in the 90s, and it's always a hit with whomever gets to indulge!  I totally forgot to start it until after 9 last night, and Rick was wondering what I was doing because I had already made us dinner (quesadillas!).  It's really easy and minus the time that it has to cook, it's pretty quick to make.  You can also make it the night before and pop it in the oven.  

I had several requests for the recipe, and if anyone from work is stopping by, I want to say a quick hello!  I hope that you enjoy the blog!  

Here's the recipe

Breakfast Casserole

Ingredients 

1 pound bulk breakfast sausage

2 tablespoons all purpose flout

1 1/2 cups milk (you can use low-fat)

1/2 of a frozen shredded hash brown potatoes bag

3 green onions, chopped

1 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese

Directions

Preheat oven to 350F. Spray a 8x8x2-inch glass baking dish with cooking spray. 

Cook sausage in a large skillet over medium-high heat until brown, breaking into small pieces with back of spoon. Mix in flour, then milk. Cook until mixture thickens and comes to boil, stirring occasionally, about 5 minutes.

Arrange potatoes in prepared dish. Layer with 1/2 of green onions, 1/2 of cup cheese, rest of green onions, sausage mixture and remaining cheese (you can add more cheese if you'd like).  Bake casserole for 45 minutes.  

Enjoy!

 

Another Kelly Creation

I have to say that I have one of the most thoughtful friends in the whole world!  This morning, I took NCLEX, and yesterday, my friend Kelly was awesome enough not only to help distract me by taking me shoe shopping and going to dinner with me last night, but she also called me yesterday to invite me over for breakfast!  After I worked out, I showered and headed over there.  She made wonderful Quiche Lorraine Tartlets and delicious, creamy grits!  The recipe came from PamperedChef.com  It really made my day to start out with such a thoughtful gesture!

Kelly told me that she added cheddar cheese to the recipe.  The recipe calls for Pampered Chef products, but a regular mini-muffin pan can easily be used.  While I'm sure it would also be easy to create the wells for the tartlets, I do think that the mini-tart shaper would be a cool thing to have!

Here's the recipe that she used! (I've made some changes to it so that those of us without the Pampered Chef goodies can enjoy it, too)

Quiche Lorraine Tartlets

Ingredients

1   pkg (15 oz) refrigerated pie crusts (2 crusts), softened according to package directions

2 eggs

1/2 cup half and half

1/8 teaspoon salt

4 slices of bacon, cooked and finely chopped

1/2 medium red bell pepper, finely chopped

2 tablespoons finely chopped green onion

1/2 cup swiss cheese, shredded

1/4 cheddar cheese, shredded

12 grape tomatoes, sliced in half crosswise

Directions

Preheat oven to 400°F. Unroll one pie crust onto lightly floured surface. Spacing closely together, cut 12 disks from crust.  The disks should be 2 1/2-3 inches wide.  Press disks into wells of a mini-muffin pan, ruffling edges. Repeat with remaining crust. 

Whisk eggs, half and half and salt in a medium bowl.  In another bowl, combine cheeses, red pepper, green onions, and bacon to batter and mix well. 

Pour egg mixture evenly into tart shells; sprinkle evenly with cheese mixture. Cut tomatoes in half crosswise. Press one tomato half, cut side up, into center of each tartlet. Sprinkle with black pepper. Bake 14-16 minutes or until egg mixture is set and crusts are golden brown. Remove tartlets to serving platter and sprinkle with additional chopped chives, if desired.

Saturdays in the South

As I'm sure you've been able to surmise, Saturdays in the South always involve college sports.  This time of year, it's college football., and in a month of so, it will be college basketball time.  This evening, Rick's Carolina (not to be confused with mine which is the REAL Carolina--UNC) will be taking on Tennessee in what he calls "Big Boy Football."  It looks like even Halloween is going to take a backseat to the game tonight which is fine with me.  I'm in an interesting place in my life when I don't have children and I've had enough Halloween fun over the years to feel no regret in sitting this one out.  Due to the lower percentage of children in my neighborhood, we are going to be hanging out here to watch the game.  I picked up a bag of candy just in case some trick-or-treaters come by, but Rick is hoping that we don't have many to interrupt the game.  Of course, that would mean that we get to enjoy all those little fun-sized bags of M&Ms!


We are FINALLY going to be making the pork tenderloin recipe from the Vera Bradley cookbook that I picked up while in North Carolina this evening for the game.  I opted not to marinate it for the whole 24 hours, but hopefully, 10 hour will be plenty of time.  I'll definitely be blogging about it tomorrow.


This morning, we were debating what to do for breakfast. I was trying to talk Rick into making me breakfast in bed, but unfortunately, I was unsuccessful.  On the fortunate side, however, I was too tired to make the pork chops that he brought over last night so we decided to fry them up, put them on biscuits, and have a pork-filled day!  Being from the South, frying is a part of life.  I'm not a huge fryer, but over the past year or so, I've become more comfortable with it.  Pork is another stable in any good Southerners diet (albeit a bad one).  My home state of North Carolina is known for its fabulous barbecue, and I was converted to the vinegar-based style during college.  I'll have to post my crock pot "barbecue" recipe here at some point.


So here is the goodness (and badness for the waist line) that we called breakfast this morning.  Rick put the whole pork chop on his, but I halved mine and ate the other half on the side (pictured in a wee-bit blurry picture below).



Saturday Morning Pork Chop Biscuits

Ingredients
2 Frozen Grands Biscuits
2 pork chops
1 egg
2 tablespoons milk
3/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup panko
flour
Vegetable oil


Directions
Preheat oven to 375F.  Once oven is preheated, place biscuits on a ungreased baking sheet.  Cook for 16-22 minutes.


Heat oil (about 1/4 inch deep) in a heavy skillet.  

In a bowl, whisk together egg and milk.  In another bowl, mix together bread crumbs.  Place on a plate to coat pork chops.  Place flour on the plate to dredge pork chops. Dredge a pork chop in the flour and shake off the excess.  Dip the pork chop in the egg-milk mixture, and the coat with bread crumbs and panko.  Repeat with the other pork chop.


When the oil is heated, place the pork chops in the oil.  Cook for around 4-5 minutes per side for a total cooking time of around 10 minutes. Use a knife to cut the chop to check for doneness.  Cooking time will vary based on thickness of the pork chops.  Place the pork chops on a plate covered with paper towels to drain.  Once drained, place the pork chop in the biscuit.  

Rick likes to put  a little mustard on his.  Enjoy!!!

Breakfast for dinner

This week, Rick hasn't been able to come over since he has had to do work at home in preparation for next week. I remember him having to do this last year, but it still makes me a little lonely without anyone to cook for besides myself. Tonight, I really needed to go to the grocery store, but with the darkening skies approaching, it would be a much better idea for me to whip up something for myself that didn't require that I leave the house.

My freezer had a couple of lonely frozen meals, but I save those for weekdays when I don't have leftovers to enjoy the next day. I also didn't feel like thawing out the half pound of shrimp either. The one thing that caught my eye was the bag of frozen Grands Biscuits. My stepmother introduced me to these wonderful, frozen delights several years ago when I was visiting North Carolina. At first glance, it doesn't seem possible that these small frozen disks will become a delicious fluffy biscuit, but trust me when I say that such a miracle does happen! I tossed around the idea of using the little bit of sausage that I have left (before it goes bad) to do a sausage biscuit, but then it hit me...biscuit and gravy!!!!

Making gravy is really pretty easy. While the biscuit was baking in the oven, I browned enough sausage to make a patty and broke it up along the way. Once the sausage was cooked, I reduced the heat and added 1% milk to the pan (enough to cover it) and two splashes of heavy cream. I also added about 1 tablespoon of all-purpose flour and little bit of fresh ground pepper and salt. I used the heavy cream because I know what a pain it can be to get the gravy to thicken when using reduced fat milk (which is what I usually do). I let the mixture come to a boil and thicken before serving over the halved biscuit. I know Rick was jealous when I told him about my dinner. :)

Here is the recipe. I left it a little open with the ingredients so that it can be adjusted for more than one person. Enjoy!!!


Biscuits and Gravy
Ingredients
1 frozen Grands Biscuit per person
1 sausage patty per person
Milk
All Purpose Flour
Fresh Ground Pepper
Salt

Directions
Preheat oven to 375F per direction on the Grands Biscuit bag. Once the oven has preheated, cook biscuit(s) until they are golden on top (probably around 15 minutes).

While the biscuit(s) is/are cooking (when you have about 5 minutes of cook time left on the biscuits), brown sausage over medium high heat. After it has cooked thoroughly, add enough milk to cover the sausage, around 1 tablespoon of flour, and salt and pepper to taste. Reduce heat and simmer to let the mixture thicken.

When the biscuit(s) are done, take them out and half them. Cover biscuit with gravy. Divide gravy mixture evenly between biscuits if doing more than one.