"Hole-in-One" Breakfast Grilled Cheese

I LOVE a good grilled cheese!!! I especially love to play around with different combinations and flavors and breads and meats and cheeses and -- oh my! -- there's SO much you can do with a grilled cheese. It's not just white bread and american cheese, cooked in margarine, and served with canned tomato soup anymore! (Because yuuuck!)

I've talked before about The Magic Cheese, and I have in the past made bacon and cheese. I've even made avocado and cheese. One time a beautiful friend of mine in California, named Eve, taught me how to make "The Perfect Grilled Cheese", which incorporates mayo, turkey, and a Romano & Parmesan mix. But I recently bought a Food Network magazine, and in it there was a booklet on 50 variations of grilled cheese. That gave me some great ideas, and I immediately went to town!

Here I share "Hole-in-One". It is a mix of a couple of their ideas, and a couple of mine =)  I think that it's great for a [hearty] breakfast, but perfect for dinner one night when you want breakfast for dinner, but don't want pancakes =)

I will also go ahead and note that (if you've read Chicken Pesto Panini then you can guess that) I don't don't don't don't dig raw meat. Same for undercooked eggs. I know that runny egg all over toast is supposed to be gourmet cuisine, but I find it repulsive and absolutely inedible. It's like swallowing someone else's loogey. That said, here's the recipe:

*Serving stated is for just one sandwich*

WHAT YOU NEED:
2 slices hearty healthy whole grain bread
Butter for grilling
1 egg, whipped up a bit if you're like me and don't eat eggs runny & gooey =)
Salt & Pepper
2 slices of a more mild cheese, like Provolone
1 serving of cream cheese (1/8 brick)
1 serving of your favorite jelly/jam (usually 1 tsp.)
1 tsp. mayo

WHAT TO DO:
Heat butter in skillet over medium-lowish heat. (Make sure you are using a good non-stick pan!)
With a cookie cutter, cut a hole out of the middle of one slice of bread.

Place bread in pan; pour beaten egg in the cutout.
Let cook 1-2 minutes; flip.
Salt & pepper egg. Place sliced cheese on top.
On other slice of bread, spread cream cheese, then jelly.
Place on top of bread/egg already in pan.
Let cook another 1-2 minutes.

Spread mayo on outside of sandwich; flip.
Let cook a minute or two. Turn heat off, rest in pan for another couple of minutes.

COST: If you use cage-free vegetarian-fed eggs, each sandwich is about $1.60

Since I was eating mine for dinner, I ate it with a salad... But it also pairs well with a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice, or a mango smoothie =)

Cheers!

Gallo Pinto

This post goes out to my bff =)  ....Debs, you know the back-story, but the recipe's for you!

So, a few years ago my husband and I were involved in this church in Tennessee that would take a couple of mission trips to Nicaragua each year, and my husband and I went on several. Although we went to help the people, I have to admit, we always looked forward to the food!

The people of Nicaragua eat primarily rice & black beans. But with a couple of interesting additions here and there, a plate of plain old rice & beans becomes Gallo Pinto -- "Painted Rooster" -- a dish fit for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. And they seriously eat it for every meal. Our favorite is the breakfast version:  A pile of black beans & rice, with a boiled egg, a side of watermelon, and fried cheese (in the States, the closest cheese we can find that fries up like theirs in "Queso Fresco" - you can find it almost anywhere). But there is a lunch or dinner version, too:  Add to your pile o'Gallo Pinto ketchup and chopped hotdogs. BARF!

There is one redeeming factor to eating so much ...rice ...and ...beans is that you can add so much to it, play with the variations, and create your own! Following is my favorite way to recreate warm mornings in the tropical sun... but in the northern Midwest =)

WHAT YOU NEED:

1 pound dried black beans

3 tsp. sea salt

1 large onion, chopped

3 cups of basmati rice

1 4-cup carton of chicken juice =)

2 cloves minced garlic

Spices to taste: I really like basil in mine, +black pepper, more salt if needed

1 organic red bell pepper

1 small onion

HOW TO:

Rinse beans... Soak... Rinse... Salt and cook black beans with (large) onion in a large stock pot.

*Do not discard the water that the beans cooked in!*

Simply add rice, garlic, and carton of chicken juice.

When rice is done, add spices, bell pepper, and (small) onion.

You've got yourself a painted rooster! It's that easy =)

Like I said before, serve with freshly fried cheese... or ketchup and hotdogs... whatever...

COST: $8-9

SERVES: A boatload of people!!! Your family could eat on this for a week! Seriously! (If you want a smaller portion, halve everything. If you want to have a richer flavor, halve the rice, beans, and chicken juice, but keep the same amount of pepper and onion =)

Copycat

There's something about creating food that is exciting... and disappointing... all at the same time. Last night I was at a loss as to what to make for dinner, and only had about an hour before I had to walk out the door for an event, and had a timebomb of a baby in her crib. I already had black beans cooking the whole day, so I wandered through the contents of my fridge, which all had claim on them for other meals, and ingredients in my head. I thought, "Well, quinoa goes well with everything... I could steal a little bit of this or that from other meals..." And then I tried to open the blasted quinoa package and it had a recipe on the back for a quinoa and black bean dish! "AH! They STOLE my idea!", I thought. Then I realized that the person who came up with that idea had probably been in a pinch for dinner at the time, too. There's no real genius to this. Just well-timed ideas =)

Black Bean Quinoa Mess That Turned Out Great
What you need:
4 cups cooked black beans
3 cups cooked quinoa
1 cup cooked corn
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 organic red bell pepper, minced

What you do:
Mix it all together =)  Good hot or cold. Serve with chips.

Homemade Sloppy Joes

I hate tomatoes. Since an evil bout of pregnancy changed my every cell, I now liken the taste of tomatoes to the smell of dead rotting skunk. And Starbucks.

But, I still like ketchup... in very, very small doses, on very appropriate items, such as Chicken Tenders, or a burger if somehow Culver's has magically happened to run out of BBQ sauce upon my visit. But otherwise, I don't do tomato. I will not enter your house if you are cooking anything with a tomato. And, I don't care how ungrateful it looks or dishonoring to a cook it might be, I will pick it off of something that is handed to me in a cultural setting where I am expected to eat it.

So I don't know WHAT came over me last night (I've actually secretly been craving them for a week!) when I decided to make Sloppy Joes! I used ketchup, so that I could avoid the whole tomato issue... They still tasted like tomato tangy stingingly acidic rotten death, but my husband LOVVVVVVVED them!!! Of course, he misses tomatoes terribly. (I've banned them from the house.) I knew he liked them a lot, but it wasn't til today when he told me that all of his co-workers individually asked him what that amazing-smelling lunch was, and were drooling over it, that I decided I might have actually stumbled upon something a little wonderful, no matter if I liked them or not!

You are welcome to use my recipe, as long as you call them Sloppy Talithas =)

WHAT YOU NEED:
1 whole large onion (I actually used about 10 tiny onions I had peeled and frozen)

3 cloves garlic

1 large or two small carrots

Olive Oil for sauteing

1 1/2 cups ketchup (free of HFCS!)

Lots of spices: onion powder, garlic powder, paprika, chili powder, crushed red pepper, crushed brown mustard, salt, freshly ground black pepper, a pinch of white pepper, a smidgen of both ginger and cinnamon, and a bit of both parsley and oregano 

1 lb. ground hamburger

HOW TO:
Chop onion, carrot, and garlic. Cook with a bit of olive oil on medium in a large sauce pan til a little browner than golden brown.
Add ketchup, spices.
Add raw hamburger, and a little more salt. Cook, stirring almost constantly, until the meat has gained a firmer texture signaling that it's cooked throughly. (Note: I don't have a meat thermometer, I'm not a professional. I'm not even fancy. Just find the biggest chunk of meat and see if it's done. If it is, then the rest is, too.)
Then, just slop 'em on to some bread, and eat 'em up =)

COST:
$4-ish. Makes 6-8 sandwiches!

Scalloped Corn -- for Jean

I'm posting this for my husband's co-worker, Jean, who wanted the recipe....

Scalloped Corn??? Yes. At least that's what my mother's always called it. I think I've actually ever only seen this type of recipe one other time, ever, and they called it like "Corn Casserole" or something. This goes great with Chili or your Thanksgiving meal... um, or pretty much anything!

WHAT YOU NEED:
2 boxes of Jiffy cornbread mix (and whatever it calls for on the box - eggs and milk, I think)
1 can of corn
1 can of creamed corn
8 oz. sour cream
half stick of butter, at room temperature

HOW TO:
Okay, this is easy... Mix it all together!
Bake at whatever temperature Jiffy tells you to. That's it!!

Impressive? Not really... until you taste it!!! Your mouth will melt, and you'll never go back to that dry crap called cornbread. By the way, if you want to get creative, try adding some sauteed jalapeños & shredded cheese -- YUM!!!

ENJOY!

Quinoa Broccoli Casserole

NOT something that Alton Brown would be proud of, I'm sure, but my husband loved it!

When we first got married, I distinctly remember my husband affirming that he did not like and would not eat casserole, although now he doesn't remember saying that at all... Funny how that works! I have made him two casseroles ever. TWO. And he has loved both =)

And my Quinoa Broccoli Casserole was one of them. I'm not proud of it because I followed Alton Brown's recipe and it turned out wonderfully perfect like he said it would. Nope! I'm proud of it because as I was trying to throw together the meager things we had left in our cupboards and only buy a couple of necessary ingredients, I honestly completely forgot AB's advice on his show, and just winged it... And my husband LOVED it!!!

I went back and looked over AB's recipe, and admittedly I would've done things differently, and will next time. But this is what I did:

WHAT YOU NEED:
12 oz. frozen broccoli
1/2 cup each quinoa and wild rice
1 pint heavy cream
1 large egg
8 oz. Italian blend shredded cheese
2 pc. whole wheat bread
lots of spices, a little time, but a lot of love (*Awww!* .... and extra cheese)
No really, extra cheese, for the top =)

HOW:
Seriously, I would've done this different... All I did was cook the grains, throw all of it in the dish, top with cheese and breadcrumbs (oh yeah, that's what the bread was for!), and baked it... a little too high, for a little too long...

COST:
I couldn't tell ya... I had coupons, so I'm sure it was cheap... About $9-ish for 8 servings?

Next time, I'll tell you more, and in better detail. For tonight, I'm really too tired! Good night!