breakfast

Kitchen Adventures: Broccoli, egg white, and basil frittata

/ SallyJBrz / 1 Comment

Quiche and I have a solid history – I used to make them for and with my grandma, I made them a ton when I moved to Boston, I buy them for lunch sometimes at this delicious place downtown.  But what do you do when you really don’t need that crust anymore, and would rather save the calories and room in your stomach for something else?

Cue the frittata.

I came up with this recipe, which is the kind of frittata that falls somewhere between “crustless quiche” and “baked eggs”, because I wanted something light for dinner that could also serve as breakfast or lunch, and I wanted it to taste like summer – as fresh as possible.  I ate this for almost a whole week and never got tired of it – so good!

Frittata

Broccoli, Egg White, and Basil Frittata

Ingredients:

  • 3 cups broccoli, chopped and steamed
  • 1 cup onion, chopped and cooked
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 4 eggs
  • 1 carton egg whites
  • 1 bag of shredded, low-fat Italian cheese mix (about 2 cups)
  • 1/4 cup half-and-half
  • 6 tbsp basil (about 10 leaves, chopped)
  • Salt and pepper, to taste
  1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees (F) while you steam the broccoli in bite-sized pieces and cook the onion with a little oil and the garlic in a frying pan.
  2. Whisk together the eggs, egg whites, cheese, and half-and-half in a large bowl.  When blended, add the rest of the ingredients, with the basil last so it doesn’t cook too much in advance.  Pour the entire mixture into two glass pie plates.
  3. Bake for 30-45 minutes, until eggs are set.  Eat hot, and then refrigerate when cool, including freezing some for later!

This recipe and its simple ingredients make two whole pies worth of delicious frittata, for 4 PointsPlus for 1/8 of the total serving.  Since I used similarly sized pie plates, this means I could eat 1/4 of a pie (2 pieces) for less than the value of two pieces of toast with peanut butter.  So good, so simple, so healthy!

What’s your go-to breakfast, for now and later?

Kitchen Adventures: Quiche Tartlets

/ SallyJBrz / 4 Comments

I am the definition of a breakfast person.

I could eat it three times a day – eggs for breakfast, cereal for lunch, crepes for dinner.  Bring me to a diner at any hour and I am 99.9% likely to order hash and poached eggs.  I simply can’t live without a good meal to start off my day.  But when I combine my love for breakfast with my tendency to hit snooze a million times (right family?), it gets to be an expensive habit that ends up with me stopped in at Dunks on my way to work.

Luckily, I saw this pin the other day and decided to whip up some planned-ahead breakfasts so I could save some money and time in the morning.  These tartlets came out great, and in 45 minutes, I was able to pack up 6 healthy breakfasts to eat and freeze for the week ahead.

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Quiche Breakfast Tartlets

  • 5-8 oz of baby spinach
  • 1 cup baby portobello mushrooms, sliced
  • 2 links chicken sausage (optional)
  • 1 cup cheddar cheese, grated (low-fat preferred, or another kind of shredded cheese works too!)
  • 3 eggs and 6 egg whites (I use them from the carton) (alternatively, you can use 5 eggs)
  • Dash skim milk
  • salt and pepper, to taste
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.  In a frying pan, heat up 1 tsp olive oil and cook the mushrooms.  Cut the chicken sausage into small pieces (1/2 dime sized or so) and add to mushrooms, browning lightly.  Remove from pan.  Wilt spinach in frying pan. add to mushrooms and sausage.
  2. Mix all ingredients in a bowl.  Pour into lightly greased muffin tins, making sure that each section has all types of filling as well as some liquid.
  3. Bake in oven for 20-25 minutes, until edges are browned and tops are solid.  Remove from tins and let sit before freezing/storing.

By the end, you should have 12 muffin-sized crustless quiches (mine actually made 5 mini muffins as well – use it all up!) which are each worth 2 PointsPlus each (I recommend two as one serving).  In one travel-sized bite, you have cheese, eggs, meat, and veggies, or as I like to call it “perfection.”

These quiches are super versatile to whatever you have in your kitchen – asparagus and red pepper, cheese and more cheese, garlic and onion, you name it.  My recommendation: go light on the fat, especially in the cheese.  I only had full fat cheddar around, and these were a little more oily than I would usually eat, but they’re still quite healthy and definitely delicious.

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What’s your go-to breakfast food?

Kitchen Adventures: Mini muffin, mega delicious

/ SallyJBrz / 1 Comment

In my flurry of cooking last weekend, I made some awesome mini muffins to snack on all week.  I know that I’m never really going to get over my sugar cravings in this lifetime, so I figured it was time to find a way to indulge in a healthier manner.  This was the perfect balance.

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The recipe I used is here, with the following changes:

  • I didn’t have quick oats, so I chopped up whole oats in a food processor before starting
  • I forgot to buy vanilla yogurt so I used the plain Greek yogurt I had around, along with an extra tsp of vanilla and a tbsp of brown sugar to balance it out, overall
  • Mini chocolate chips are amazing and I ate many of them.  That’s all.
  • I think this could have stood to have another banana added.  It didn’t have a lot of banana influence, if you ask me.

This made 45 mini muffins, though it was supposed to make only 36 – maybe I let it sit too long as I used my one muffin pan or maybe I wasn’t filling them enough, but I don’t really mind either way.  More to share!  They are not super sweet, but they’re tasty, healthy (>1 pointplus each!) and easy to make – win!

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Fuel for any time, any pantry

/ SallyJBrz / Leave a comment

Pros about this dish:

  • It arrived in my inbox one morning and I easily and cheaply could make it for dinner the same day.
  • It’s healthy and adaptable to whatever you have around.
  • You can whip it together in 15 minutes once you’ve chopped and gathered all the ingredients.
  • It makes me feel smarter than Cameron Diaz.

According to Self magazine, this is her favorite dish, a breakfast classic she makes before surfing.  But the serving sizes in the original recipe don’t really make sense, and neither do the directions.  (Once you cook chicken and veggies in oil, there’s no way there’s enough liquid left to make a roux.)  Also, some of the comments on the blog warned about there being too much broth in the recipe, so I only added about a tablespoon and suggest skipping it all together.  Here is my twist on this recipe, which I just had seconds of because it was so good.  I might actually eat it for breakfast, too!

Cameron Diaz’s Garlicky Lemon Chicken

Ingredients:

  • Olive oil
  • 1 chicken breast, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
  • 2 cups broccoli or some other green veggie
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder (or combine these two and use garlic salt)
  • 1/4 tsp black pepper
  • 2 tbsp flour
  • 2 cups cooked brown rice (one boil-in-bag packet will do the trick)
  • 3 cloves garlic, chopped
  • zest of one lemon
  • 1/2 cup lemon juice
  • 3 eggs (1 or 2 whole, the others just the whites)
  • 5-8 large basil leaves

This is a recipe that cooks quickly, so you’ll want to get everything ready at once.  Otherwise, you’ll be like me, turning the stove off halfway through so you can get out more ingredients.

  1. Cook the brown rice.
  2. Sprinkle chicken and veggie with salt, garlic powder, and pepper.
  3. Add chicken and broccoli to a skillet with some oil, and cook until chicken is lightly browned and your vegetable is wilted.
  4. Add flour and cook, stirring continuously, for 1 minute.
  5. Add rice, garlic, and lemon zest to the pan.  Cook 2-3 minutes.
  6. Add eggs and mix well until the egg is integrated and well cooked.
  7. Add lemon juice and basil (or other spices, if you so wish).  Cook until the liquid is absorbed and the rice is slightly brown and crispy.

And that’s that!  I really like the idea of this dish, like a healthy version of fried rice.  I’d like to try it with some cheese mixed in and maybe some peppers next time.

Kitchen Adventure: Muffin Munchies

/ SallyJBrz / Leave a comment

I can always tell which recipes I’ve tried in my cookbook because those are the pages that are slightly stuck together with sugar and such from recipes of the past.  My Grandma’s cookbooks are also a testament to this idea – you can see where people have pawed through them with a chocolatey finger after losing their place making brownies.

My latest baking endeavor: muffins to enjoy and especially to freeze.  I love muffins for breakfast, especially before the gym.  My mom makes really good morning glory muffins, but I wanted to go for something a little simpler so I whipped up these cranberry-orange muffins with Betty Crocker’s recipe.*

Ingredients:

3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon grated orange peel, with a little orange juice for good measure
1 cup coarsely chopped cranberries

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