Since today was the first day of school, I decided to make breakfast for the boys. Most mornings they fend for themselves. (Especially the one with the 6:58 am pick up, he's always on his own!) But since I'm not a morning person I decided to crock pot it. My husband wasn't quite sure why I bothered...but then, he's not a Jewish mom! The guilt comes along with the job!
I had pinned several crock-pot breakfasts but I wasn't thrilled with any of them. So...I kind of combined a few. I took the ideas mostly from these...I think...
This recipe from:
and this one:
I have also had a lot of experience just throwing together egg stratas. But today I wanted it to be gluten free, so I decided to leave out the bread. I wasn't wasting expensive gluten free bread on 3 people who would not appreciate it!
My biggest problem was that I had never made an egg dish in a crock pot or over night. When I was trolling trough the recipes (and their comments) I found that most over night egg dishes tend to dry out and over cook or burn. So since I am all about convenience, I put some frozen additions to the pot hoping that it would slow down the cooking even more than just putting it on low. My pot does not have a "warm" setting. I also made sure to reduce the milk added to the eggs since I knew that my food would defrost and add extra moisture to the dish.
I was still so paranoid that I was going to ruin breakfast that every time I woke up last night, I went to check on it. I had turned it on at around 10 pm and ended up turning off...I think...around 3 am. I then came down at 6 am to turn it back on so it would be warm for everyone to eat.
When my husband was serving himself breakfast he said I was kind of defeating the purpose for having put it in the crock-pot in the first place. He gave me a great idea...Get a timer for it! I'll have it turn on in the middle of the night by itself! Genius!
This is what I finally came up with...
Crock-pot Baked Eggs (serves 4, generously)
8 large eggs
1/2 cup milk (I used skim, If using fresh vegetables and meat add a little more milk)
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried minced toasted onion flakes
1/2 tsp dried chives
dash granulated garlic
sea salt and pepper to taste
1 c chopped ham, frozen (I used leftover ham steak)
1/2 c chopped sweet red peppers, frozen
1 c chopped spinach, frozen
1 sm finely chopped onion, fresh
1-1/2 c shredded pizza cheese (mine had mozzarella and provolone)
1) Place eggs, milk and seasonings in medium mixing bowl. Whisk well. (I hate when I have scrambled eggs that have a bit of white in them!)
2) Spray crock-pot dish really well with cooking spray.
3) Layer veggies, cheese and meat in pot. I alternated with the eggs. (I wanted to make sure I had enough egg mixture to cover the extras.)
4) Place in crock in crock-pot on low for 5 hours.
5) Maybe, make yourself a piece of toast...and enjoy!
Oh...and all of my seasonings (but the salt) came from Penzey's Spices! I love this place! And just so you know...the catalog is very worth having in hand! It has recipes and it tells you what each of the seasoning are used for.
Yum!
ReplyDelete