Egg Muffins

Hubby and I have been talking about getting back into the habit of working out. For him, it makes sense to do it in the mornings at the little gym in his building at work. This got us to talking about streamlining his morning routine and ways we could make it quicker and easier.

Then I remembered this Pinterest find, egg muffins. From what I could tell on the site, they would make for a quick, easy, hot breakfast that could be kept in the fridge and heated up last minute.

So I made them!

I started off with some breakfast sausage. Don’t worry, I didn’t use all of this!

I squeezed three links out of their casings and into a hot skillet.

I used my meat-breaker-upper to crumble the sausage as it cooked.

While it was cooking, I made the educated decision to incorporate some leftover roasted baby red potatoes from earlier in the week.

As the sausage sautéed, I used a paring knife to quickly cut up the potatoes into much smaller chunks. Since they were cooked but cold, this was super easy.

Then I prepared my muffin cups. The original blogger prefers silicone cups, but I didn’t have those. Her second best was paper liners, but I didn’t see the point of that with egg muffins. So I just used cooking spray to heavily grease a nonstick muffin tin.

And brushed it around just to make doubly sure that it was evenly coated.

That probably wasn’t necessary since I was using pork sausage, but oh well. I went ahead and put some sausage into each of the 12 muffin cups.

Topped by some of the chopped potato.

Then I got out some grated cheese and put that in.

This last step attracted a silent but intense observer. He loves cheese and is always hopeful that I will indulge him, though he knows better than to beg.

Anyway…

Next, I chopped up some green onions.

And put those on top of the cheese.

Next, I cracked a dozen eggs into a big bowl.

After whisking, I added some salt.

And some dried parsley. I would, have preferred some chives, but Wegman’s was out.

After mixing all that up, I poured the egg mixture carefully into each of the muffin cups, topping everything that was already in there.

Then I put it into the oven, which I had preheated to 375 degrees.

My buddy practiced his wistful face while we waited for them to cook.

25 minutes later, they were looking beautiful!

I believe my exact words, as I pulled them out of the oven, were, “Holy awesome!”

They had definitely done some rising in the oven.

They came out of the muffin tin super easily, luckily.

Oh my.

Light and airy, since they were baked.

Pretty good. Not knock-your-socks-off good, but certainly better than simple fried eggs or something light that. Could have used more salt, but other than that, a pretty good breakfast for the next few days!

They’re quite versatile. I could have added all kinds of veggies or meats or whatever I wanted, and so I probably will next time. It’ll keep us from getting bored, I think.

 

EDIT: I made these again a week or two later. I made some changes. (1) Instead of breakfast sausage, I used chopped ham. (2) Instead of potatoes, I used chopped and sauteed peppers (red and green). (3) Instead of salting the entire egg mixture, I salted each muffin once the egg was poured. (4) I added chives, since Wegman’s had them this time.

They were better this second time! They were more flavorful all around – better seasoned and more flavors than before. I recommend these changes!

Roast Chicken

You may have noticed that I took a little hiatus from posting over the past few weeks. To be honest, I just wasn’t feeling it. I guess it was a combination of feeling a bit overwhelmed with juggling all the things in my life (working two part time jobs, school, dogs, holiday get-togethers, helping hubby make a few extra bucks by doing some work for a friend), so it wasn’t my highest priority. Also, I was worried that I’d been annoying my facebook friends by linking to my posts too often. I have plenty of people that annoy me to death on facebook and I really didn’t want to become one of those people. Yet I sense that the majority of people who read this blog do so because I post those links. I’m a little confused, then, as to whether I should continue this blog. I enjoy it, yes, and I feel a sense of pride  about it, but do people read it?

Anyway, I’ve had a break and I think I feel better. Also, I finally discovered pictures of roast chicken that I accidentally buried in a folder of pictures from my sophomore year in college, and I was excited about this because I’d been looking for them since August.

And I’m drinking wine. But that’s totally unrelated.

This was a recipe posted by Ree on The Pioneer Woman Cooks over the summer. I made it a few weeks later and it was delicious and especially photogenic.

See? Pretty ingredients.

I started off by zesting the lemon.

And tossing the zest in a bowl.

Then I took some of the fresh rosemary off its sprig

and chopped it all up.

I threw it in the bowl with the lemon zest

And took a poorly lit and oddly focused picture of some softened butter thrown in there, as well.

Here it is all mixed up.

Basically, you put a whole chicken on a greased baking sheet and smear the butter all over it.

In retrospect, this seems pretty disgusting. I feel as though I used far more butter than I was supposed to. But I feel as though I should also mention that the lemon zest smelled wonderful and it was easy to get carried away. I swear.

Next, halve the lemons. Squeeze one over the chicken itself.

Shove some sprigs of rosemary into the cavity,

Followed by as many lemon halves as you can get in there.

And then roast it until it looks like this and the internal temp is where it should be (don’t make me go look it up. I don’t remember what that is and I’m feeling lazy from a day of playing in the snow with huskies, alternated with watching movies with hubby).

Let it rest for at least 10 minutes, then serve it up! I served it with broccoli and rice. Simple and easy.

And delicious.

Okay, yes, it was a LOT of butter. That came across in the taste. It was really tasty, though I do remember thinking that it was a bit much to take in. Next time, I’ll scale it back. But the tasted of the butter, combined with the lemon and rosemary, was really good overall. The meal was easy to put together and tasty, and it also made for good leftovers. If I recall correctly, they went toward a barbecue chicken pizza or something like that.

I recommend clicking over to Ree’s original post and giving the recipe a try. Her pictures are far more professional than mine, anyway.

And if you have any thoughts on the future of this little blog project, please leave a comment!

Boozy Barbecue Meatballs

This recipe is blatantly stolen borrowed from Julia at Fat Girl Trapped in a Skinny Body. I saw it ages ago on her site and starred it in Google Reader, then promptly forgot about it. I recently scrolled through my collection of forgotten starred items and rediscovered it. Of course, I couldn’t wait to make it. Easy AND delicious? Yes, please.

The ingredients for my sauce: beer, barbecue sauce, and cranberry sauce. That’s it.

Also, a bag of frozen meatballs. I didn’t have the little appetizer ones, so I used big “Wegman’s Italian Classics” meatballs. I think this was a really good substitution.

Step 1: Make sauce by plopping the three sauce ingredients in a crock pot (cranberry sauce, beer, and barbecue sauce).

Step 2: Mix.

Step 3: Add frozen meatballs.

Step 4: Drink the rest of the beer (Honestly, that’s what Julia said to do. I didn’t think of that all on my own. I was really just following directions and didn’t have a choice).

A few hours later, the alcohol in the beer had cooked off and left behind a flavor that mixed oh so well with the BBQ and cranberry flavors.

I went a bit beyond Julia’s conceptualization of serving these as appetizers, and put them on fresh bakery rolls with sliced Swiss cheese.

Then I cut them up just to make eating a little easier.

Just as I was finishing putting it together, hubby got home from work. He announced that dinner smelled good, then walked into the room and saw what was on his plate. A big ol’ grin and an exclamation of “Oh my!” and I knew I done good.

Yes, done good.

Super easy (about 5 minutes to prepare, assuming you’re using pre-fabbed ingredients instead of making your own) and super delicious. Can’t get much better than that.