Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Breakfast is the meal you don't want to miss

More and more studies are showing that breakfast is a very important meal . So what do you do for breakfast? You can buy frozen things, like pancakes and waffles, egg and sausage sandwich and so on. You can also pour a bowl of cold cereal or zap yourself some microwave oatmeal. Or you can whip up a really nice omelet in almost no time at all.

Cooking first thing in the morning can be hard, but if you prepare a bit the night before you can serve you and your family a wonderful breakfast they can start their day with.

So, what shall we prepare? How about an omelet filled with, what else, leftovers! If you happen to have some potatoes on hand you can also make some hash browns as well.

So, here is a simple omelet recipe that doesn't take much time to cook, and if you do most of the chopping the night before you will be ready to cook in an instant.

Healthy Left Over Breakfast Omelet

If you prepare the night before cooking this omelet will take less then 10 minutes from the time you crack open the eggs.

For each omelete use three egg whites and ONE egg yoke, room temperature
(most of the calories and fat are in the yoke and you won't taste much difference without the extra yokes)

Filling:

This is where you get creative, use what ever you have on hand. Raid your vegetable bin for: spinach, onion, mushroom, carrot (yes, carrot), avocado, broccoli, almost anything will work. See if you have any left over cooked vegetables, or do you have some frozen vegetables (such as a partial bag, not enough for a meal, but would work for an omelet). Check to see if you have some tomatoes on hand (HINT: NEVER EVER refrigerate your tomatoes and always make sure to get the seeds out by squeezing the cut tomato over a sink).

Chop whatever vegetables you are going to use the night before, if you are going to make more then one omelet you can divide up your vegetables now. At this point you can do one or two things, you can either saute the vegetables in a pan then refrigerate them for the next day or you can use them "raw." Whatever you do just make sure they are in small pieces.

Now, maybe you want a bit of meat in your omelet, again, raid your refrigerator for left overs, I use left over chicken, left over roast beef, and even left over hamburger. I also always have bacon in the freezer (lately we have been buying the precooked bacon at Costco and keeping it in the freezer for easy use). You can even use lunch meat if you like. Dice or chop your meat the night before.

Ok, now we have some vegis, some meat, so what else do we need? Salt and pepper do nicely, you can add more spices if you like, but I usually keep mine to just the salt and pepper.

What else? How about some cheese. I usually use low fat cheese, and have shredded or block cheese in the refrigerator most of the time. You can use cheddar, jack even Parmesan, just make sure it is shredded (again, you can do this the night before).

Ok, now comes the hard part, cooking the omelet (when I get a video camera this will be one o the "how to videos" I will post). The biggest secret to making an omelet is..........it isn't that hard!

Use a 5 to 7 inch pan, non stick works the best, but any pan will do.

Beat your eggs until they are nice and frothy (remember, one egg yoke, three egg whites. Save the egg yokes for another recipe). Add the salt and pepper.

Heat your pan over medium low heat and when the pan is hot add a bit of oil (I use a spray bottle designed to be used with oil, really a cool gadget, that is another post : ).

Add your beaten eggs to the pan and take a wooden spoon and gently stir the egg. You want to keep the egg moving so that the liquid keeps going to the bottom of the pan. I usually just take my wooden spoon and squiggle back and forth until the egg is getting fairly set. When it looks the most of the egg is cooked, but the top is still a bit runny, add your filling to ONE side of the omelet. I put the cheese down first, then the meat then the vegetables.

Lower the heat to low and continue cooking for another few minutes. Take a spatula and gently start to go under the omelet on the non filled side, you want to loosen the omelet so you can flip the non filled side to the filled side. Gently flip over the non filled side to cover the filled side.

At this point you only need the cook the omelet for a minute more or so, you want to cook the omelet until it is set but not browned, use your spatula to loosen the omelet from the pan then slide your omelet onto a plate.

Serve with fresh fruit and your family will love you!




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mm, sounds good! I love breakfast too. I like the suggestion of spicing up an omelette with leftovers. And using only one yoke is an excellent idea.