The Quick-Easy-Knife-and-Fork Breakfast Sandwich

Breakfast. The most important meal of the day. Arguably, the most delicious meal of day. Versatile. Crave-able. Wonderful. 

Today I felt like going out to a fancy breakfast place, but two problems were in front of me. No, three. 

1. My husband is gone at work. I like eating breakfast with my husband. 

2. We're on a strict budget so even if my husband were home we wouldn't go to fancy breakfast.

And

3. I'm on a time schedule because our friends are getting married today and I have to get a goin. 

Shout out to Darin and Shrea. Can't wait to dance the night away in celebration of your new wonderful life together!!! 

Back to it. 

One of the things I like most about breakfast are the flavors. You can do spicy, savory, sweet. Whatever your heart's desire! I tend to lean toward the savory and spicy flavors. 

So today I made a "breakfast sandwich". Start to finish, ingredients out of the fridge into my stomach, it took 20 minutes-I'm a fast eater, but prep and cook time were even faster. 

So fast in fact, that I only have the beautiful end product pictures (not to mention I didn't know I was going to blog it till...now). 

Tada! 

Velvety, perfect poached eggs. 

Pepper jack cheese. 

Mini bagels-eat more feel less guilty ;) 

Veggie sausages (I know, it's what I had in the freezer. They were still delicious) 

It wasn't enough I said. I needed pesto. 

And sriracha. 

Delectable. Is your mouth watering yet? 

Quick demolition. The aftermath. 

Love,

Food. 

Quick and Easy, Knife and Fork 

Breakfast Sandwich 

2 mini bagels 

2 veggie sausage patties

2 eggs

1 slice cheese (any kind. I used pepper jack)

Pesto, sriracha, other hot sauce, avocado, whatever you want on the side

pepper to taste 

Toast the bagels. 

Poach the eggs in boiling salted water in a pot. Let boil for maybe a minute or two. Keep your eye on them to make sure everything's lookin good 

Nuke or fry the sausage patties - veggie patties are pre cooked for the most part so they just need reheating. 

Cut a slice of cheese in half and put on sausage after it's done. 

Add the egg on top of the cheese. 

Put toasted bagels on the side along with any sauces or spreads. 

Eat. At whatever pace, but be sure to enjoy the velvety eggs and the delicious flavors. 

Late Night Pizza

This is a tale of how sometimes things go wrong when you're making a semi-easy meal, due to fatigue and hunger pangs, that still, for the most part, produces delicious results. 

After a lovely softball game, which ended in a not so lovely loss, a lovely run with this lovely app, with a lovely friend, I was starving. Straight up, I could have eaten my arm. My friend and I stepped out of the car coming back from our run and smelled pizza. Instead of ordering take out, which would have come in like 10 minutes, we decided to make our own...at 9:30pm. This was a dumb, but delicious idea. 

Here are the key players for this killer crust recipe - courtesy of and adapted from The Faux Martha and given to me by my awesome friend, Jackie!  

Sea Salt
Parm - shredded or this powdery stuff works just fine too
Olive Oil
All-Purpose Flour
Whole Wheat Flour - provides awesome texture - could use allll all-purpose, but I would call you boring

Fast/Quick/etc Rise Yeast
Sugar
Water 110-115 degrees pretty much that temp out of the hot water tap 

Oh and for good measure, why don't you preheat the oven to 450 now, I always forget that...

Add the flours, salt, and parm together. I used a food processor. We only use it for THIS recipe and an occasional salsa - great, ridiculous purchase. We are justifying it by saying we'll make baby food someday...someday. So pulse this all together. I'm SURE you can use a bowl and incorporate it or a blender or whatever else you have handy, but we use the mega food processor that sits dormant until we want pizza. 

Yeast. Living little organisms = scary, I have no clue how to use those. Panic. Also, I think I've made it PRETTY clear that baking is not natural to me, but when I got this recipe, man, I was blown away by how easy it was and really yeast isn't so scary (unless you think of it as little creatures that make your bread yummy) or, even, time consuming! It can be quick and make delicious little pizza crusts. So...go ahead, yeast, make my day! I'm gonna let you activate via some sugar, olive oil, and 110-115 degree water. Take that for like 5 minutes! See, I'm scary back. 

After the yeast is activated, the flours and whatnots pulsed, combine it all together in a big bowl and use your hands to bring it all together. Then knead it until it's one lump. Flour a surface and start rollin' it out. You can cut this into 4 sections of crust to make 4 little pizzas, but I've been cutting some off for bread sticks and then rolling the rest into one large pizza. I think it works, I eat it all every time!  

Once I got the dough nice and flattened out and ready to bake, I realized I had not started the pizza sauce, of which I didn't possess a nice can that we could use, so I threw together some stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, some water, some olive oil, a bit of sherry cooking wine, lots of garlic powder, salt, pepper, and some basil and simmered it to a sauce-like consistency (I'm sooo official). At this time, I was also burning those aforementioned bread sticks...toooo many things going on, toooo little organization, tooo much fatigue and HUNGER.  

I chopped up all my faves for pizza - mushrooms, broccoli (seriously try it, it'll change your life), basil, and tomatoes. I got some pesto, balsamic, feta, and pepperoni ready, too. Oh, and mozz, lots of mozz. 

I FINALLY got all the components ready and constructed the pizza. Popped it in the oven. Took a pic. And let it cook for, well...I forgot to set the timer (geesh), so I just kept watch for about 12-15 minutes at 450 degrees.

And ya know what??? It turned out...AMAZINGLY. Where have you been all my life, homemade pizza?? For all the trials and struggles that it was put through from my lack of planning and strategy, this little (or big) guy was a survivor - until Katelyn and I devoured it. Piece by piece. Over some really fantastic bouts of laughter. To the dismay of my sleeping husband. 

And in case you thought I mentioned every mistake I made in this process. This next picture just goes above and beyond all the other mistakes. Sometimes, even with the best of intentions, your bread sticks can come out lookin like a caveman and burnt to a crisp when you're not watching the oven and you're too busy chatting/cooking/chopping.....yikes. that is crispy... 

| Love, Food. 

Late Night Pizza Recipe:

Step by step, ingredient for ingredient use the No-Rise Pizza Crust from The Faux Martha

Sauce:
1 can tomato paste
1 can stewed tomatoes (could use diced, but you'll need to add more seasoning)
3/4 cups water
1 tbsp Olive Oil
2 tsp of Sherry Cooking Wine (optional-just adds a bit of depth)
garlic powder, salt, and pepper to taste (i like a lot of garlic powder)
1 tbsp basil (dried or fresh)

Combine all sauce ingredients into a pan and simmer together for about 10 minutes until it's sauce like and less watery. Ha. Sorry that was terribly nondescript.
 
Toppings:
Go crazy! Whatever you want, whatever you like on your pizza, cuz you made it from scratch.
My faves right now:
Balsamic
Pesto
Tomatoes
Feta
Mushrooms
Broccoli
Spinach
Olives
I love veggies. I really could do pizza without meat all the time and no I'm DEFINITELY not a vegetarian.

Bake for 15ish minutes (keep an eye on it) at 450 degrees.

Eat.

Asian Fresh Rolls

It's fitting, really, that my first official recipe should be something Asian. After all I am Asian and I love Asian food. So let's get cracking. As you read my blog bear with me. I don't know the absolute correct terminology and I also don't use recipes/measure anything often, unless I'm baking, then I always use recipes. I don't trust myself. 

First things first: the ingredients.  

I used scallions, romaine, and cucumber as my veggies...you could use carrots, peppers, really whatever you want that's crunchy and fresh. 

You'll want to cut all these up nice and little for roll stuffing purposes. 

For the protein, I used chicken. You could you shrimp, tofu (if that's what you're into), pork (maybe), or beef (depending on the kind of "fresh" you want). 

Cook the protein with some seasonings in a pan-I used olive oil, garlic, trader joe's everyday seasoning, and black pepper. 

Also, mix some rice vinegar, Bragg's aminos, cut up fresh basil (could use mint or cilantro), and garlic powder in a bowl (you may need to add more liquids to the chicken when you incorporate it all). 

Here are the rice sticks (soak these for 10 min in hot water) and spring roll wrappers (soak these one at a time as you wrap in cool water - wait till gummy-like and transparent or until the lattice pattern pretty much disappears). 

Then you wrap. Fold like a mini burrito making sure all contents stay nicely inside the wrapper (the first few are tricky, but you'll get the hang of it! I know you will) 

Serve with a side of sweet chili sauce - trader joe's has a great one!  Enjoy. Like I did. 2 at a time. All day long. 

Love, Food.

"recipe" for ASIAN FRESH ROLLS

yields 8 rolls - 35ish min. prep

1 big basil leaf

2 scallions (mostly the green part)

1 1/2 cups lettuce

1/2 of a cucumber - medium sized - julienne style 

1/3 package (or less if you aren't into noodles) of rice sticks (used Maifun Rice Sticks)

1 1/2 chicken breast or 3 chicken tenderloins - seasoned (garlic powder, salt, pepper, etc), cooked (with olive oil), and chopped

1 1/2 tbsp rice vinegar

1 tbsp soy sauce or Bragg's Aminos 

8 spring roll skins 

1 tsp garlic powder (or more)

Sweet Chili Sauce to dip 

1) Soak rice sticks for 10 minutes in a bowl of hot water. 

2) Chop all veggies.

3) Stir rice vinegar, soy sauce, basil, and garlic powder together in a bowl and add cooked chicken. 

4) Soak spring roll wrapper in a big bowl of cool water that is wide enough to submerge whole skin (I used a wok)

5) When spring roll wrapper is gummy-like and transparent, lay flat on surface. 

6) Put a spoonful of chicken, some cucumbers, lettuce, scallions, and rice sticks near top of wrapper.

7) Fold in sides of wrapper until they touch each other/stick together

8) Carefully, roll from top of skin keeping all ingredients tightly inside of wrapper.

9) Place on a plate, serve with sweet chili sauce, and ENJOY! 

 

 

Love, Food. Intro

Mostly, I'm starting this blog because my brother and sister, bless their hearts, hate that I post all of the food pictures that I am proud of on my Facebook (and Instagram - 2 in 1!) and then hashtag the crap out of them. #sorrysibs #thisismyattempttomakeamends

Secondarily, there has been a reasonable number of people who have commented on those said pictures and want recipes, think they look good, or admire my humble attempts at making edible goodies.

Be Warned. My blogging attempts have been nothing short of unsuccessful in the past, but I'm willing to give it a go since I like food and cooking so much. 



So, come along with me as I share the small amount that I know about cooking, even less about baking, and my simple life with you.