Thursday, October 30, 2014

Heidi gets domestic

In 48 hours I'll be in another country, so I didn't make an egg bake this week. I'll be serving with my church on a mission trip to El Salvador. They eat eggs there too, but probably not a lot of egg bakes. When I lived in El Salvador, we ate fried plantains most mornings. Eggs were actually a treat for me! Hopefully I'll get more eggs on this trip.

In the meantime I have a few photos from a person who was inspired by this blog. My lovely coworker, Heidi, made her first egg bake this past Saturday!

Heidi decided to keep things simple for her first effort. Her egg mixture included a dozen eggs, onion powder, garlic, cayenne, salt and pepper. Also a splash of milk.
Underneath all this spinach are some precooked sweet potatoes and butter. After adding the spinach she poured her egg mixture over it.
 Lots of cheese!
After about half an hour at 350, it is delicious! She was kind enough to share a piece with me, so I can verify the tastiness!

What excites me the most is that Heidi plans to make another one this weekend. Way to go Heidi!

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Rerunning a good one


One of the best batches I've made so far are the muffin tins filled with mixed frozen veggies. I still have another bag of those veggies in the freezer so it's time to repeat my success!

This time I do plan to change it up just slightly. I'm going to put all the seasoning into the saute pan when I mix the veggies with the bacon. The only thing I am adding to the eggs is the cream. I'm also going to put the egg into the cups first, so I can try to eyeball an even level in each cup.

So here we go!


This week I am using seven slices of thick cut bacon, a 16 oz bag of mixed vegetables, an 8 oz package of mushrooms, a dozen eggs with a splash of heavy cream (probably about 1/4 cup or so), and some mild cheddar cheese I have leftover. My seasonings are crushed garlic, dehydrated minced onions, cayenne, salt, and pepper.


Whenever I use bacon in my egg bake, I always slice it into small pieces, about an inch or so, and saute it for a few minutes. Once some of the fat has melted, I like to add a teaspoon or so of crushed garlic to some of the fat. Then throw the sliced mushrooms on top and put a lid on that for a few minutes. When I add the mixed vegetables I turn of the burner. I mix it all up before putting it into the baking pan. This time I also added dehydrated minced onion and the other seasonings and put the lid back on so the steam would soften the onions.


Before adding the eggs to the pan, I spray each cup with a good coating of coconut oil. Then I try to evenly distribute the eggs. I was thinking about cracking a whole egg into each cup and then breaking the yoke with a fork. Maybe next time.


Here I have added the sauteed mixture. Halfway through putting cheese on them, I remember to take a photo. The cheese is just some mild cheddar, still leftover from last week.


When they are baking, they puff up but then they collapse again after cooling.


I gave away two of the muffins to my biggest fan, and the other ten fit nicely into a large plastic container. Now I can grab two each morning and pop them in the microwave, or just eat them cold while driving to work.










I went a little heavy on the cayenne this time, and used a lot of black pepper as well. They have a nice kick but it's not overwhelming. I fear they may get hotter as they sit, but maybe I'll get lucky. I don't want to burn out my taste buds!

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

The same, but different.

Do you ever find something in your pantry, and then find it again a couple of months later, and again, and again, and again, until about a year or two later you are tired of seeing it?



I've had the last of a bag of flax seed meal in my pantry for a couple of years. I don't even remember when or where (or why) I bought it. 
I kept forgetting to use it up... until this week!
That looks like a lot of flax seed meal. I measured it later and it was just over 1/4 cup. But I suppose divided 8 ways it's not that much, right?
The reason I am cooking with spinach again is because the Costco size bag is too much for one bake, and I hate to waste delicious spinach.

 That does seem like a lot of flax seed...

So why not add some dehydrated onions?
All the major components are ready to go. The bacon has mushrooms and crushed garlic sauteed with it. The 18 eggs have heavy cream, salt, cayenne, and black pepper added too.
I also changed the cheese this week. No more Cojack. Just pure cheddar and about half the amount. 
Looks delicious. I can't wait to give it a try in the morning!

It is really good. The flax seed goes with the spinach really well. Using less cheese made it more balanced and not so fatty. Overall an excellent batch!

Monday, October 6, 2014

An old favorite

I love spinach. Raw, creamed, or something in between, it's one of my favorite vegetables. I also love mushrooms, bacon and cheese. So it is natural that I would love the combination of these in my egg bake.

I'm still working on the slab of bacon I bought a couple of weeks ago. It's pretty salty so I don't think it's going to spoil.
Of the items in this photo, the only thing I used up was the 18 eggs and the entire package of cheese. It's actually too much cheese. Maybe because it is a Colby Jack blend. If it was cheddar I would probably have liked it more. The spinach, bacon, and mushrooms were all large containers so I just used part of each container.
I like to cut the mushrooms in half and then slice them some more. Really big chunks of mushroom can actually make it hard to eat when baked into the eggs.
I added these to my sliced up bacon and sauteed them together. I also added some crushed garlic from a jar and dehydrated onions.
I normally like to spray some coconut oil in my pan before I add anything else. Trader Joe's sell a can fairly cheap.
This week I added the spinach first. I packed it down a bit but kept the level about even with the top of the pan.
My bacon and mushroom mix was added next. I put the spinach in before this layer so the weight would compress the spinach a little bit.
Here the egg mixture has been added, but it sunk into the spinach so it's not visible. This batch may have had room for a full two dozen eggs, but I was too tired to go back and add more.
I used the usual mix of eggs, heavy cream, cayenne and black pepper, but I skipped the salt because this bacon is extremely salty.
The full two cups of cheese was actually a bit
too much. The bacon and cheese together can get pretty greasy. Fat adds flavor and it helps me stay full, but too much of a good thing can be a bit overwhelming at times.
All that cheese sure does look nice! I baked this at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes or so. Sometimes I like to put the eight portions into individual containers for the microwave, but this week I was tired so I just put some plastic wrap over it and stuck it in the fridge once it had cooled. Maybe after a couple of days I will separate the portions into smaller packagers.