Mangling the Egg Veggie Mountain

Eggs put up quite a fight if not treated with due respect. They fight, they bleed, they refuse to conform to the best intentions of the cook. You can kind of push them back into something that resembles the intended perfection of an over-easy egg... kind of.

Defiant eggs stand proudly mangled on my plate, taunting me by proclaiming to the world that "This 'cook' is NOT a good flipper of food." Kind of snotty things, eggs. They were still dratted tasty though!

Egg Veggie Mountain should have been two lovely over-easy eggs casually drooling their hot yet still liquid yolks throughout a mountain of spicy sauteed veggies. Oops.

Egg, Turmeric, and a Tortilla

Those are the critical ingredients. All the others are optional or interchangeable or totally dependent upon where your whimsy takes you. I'm going to give you the basic idea for use in a small tortilla. Your choice of tortilla may change the nutrition which I've set for a small whole wheat tortilla.

What to assemble and prepare in advance of beginning the cookery:

2 t extra virgin cold pressed olive oil, preferably habanero infused.

1/4 cup onion, chopped - more or less depending on how much you love onions. I like sweet onions here, but you may be a yellow or white onion person. I don't think red ones would work, but they might if they are your fave.

1/8 t turmeric - fresh fresh fresh. I never try to buy it in the little tin anymore due to one very unfortunate experience. Go to a store that has bulk herbs and spices. Then you can then see if it is a pretty bright yellow with a rich aroma or if it is an unfortunate mottled brown with a rancid smell. Many people that think they don't like turmeric, have only had it from the little tins and it is not good. At least that's why I thought I didn't like it. Also, it is a whole lot cheaper to buy your spices in bulk, so if you haven't tried that do give it a whirl. 

1 egg of quality* from happy hens that get to trot about and are fed good whole food and not given medication to counter the fact that they are inhumanely raised in dirty confines. Crack it into a bowl and whisk a bit with a fork.

1 tomato, chopped - buy a good tomato please. They are worth the price. The Compari tomatoes that are starting to appear in stores everywhere are very good.

1 jalapeno, de-seeded and sliced or diced as you like.

1 tortilla - use any whole grain tortilla you prefer. I like whole wheat, but I also like the Artisan whole grain corn and flax tortillas. Very tasty. Experiment with several types until you find a favorite. Sometimes you just have to have the real deal with white flour and lard, but just make sure you must have it and then enjoy the heck out of it as mindfully as you can. If you are lucky and live near a store that makes tortillas, get some fresh ones!

Options:

use salsa instead of the onion, tomato, and jalapeno. Just spoon on as much as you like. Spinach is awesome in this, add about half a cup of fresh spinach to the pan after the onion softens and before you add the egg. A dose of that great Chipotle Tabasco sauce adds a lot of depth to the flavor and it goes well with the turmeric - as does just about any other pungent seasoning.

Easy Peasy Cookery:

Heat the oil in a small non stick skillet over medium heat. When the oil shimmers a bit, add the onion and saute for a few minutes. You can saute just til they are soft, or go until they begin to brown a bit.

Add the turmeric and stir a minute releasing the gorgeous aroma.

Add the beaten egg and stir until the egg is cooked to your liking. Some of you like your scrambled eggs well done, others not so well done. Making your own choice instead of just following directions exactly is as mindful as it gets.

Warm the tortilla just a little if possible (small toaster oven set on warm or microwave for 15 seconds or so is fine). Spread the egg mixture down the center of the tortilla from one end to the other. Top with the tomato and jalapeno. Fold and enjoy.

This is a very fast to make even on a work day breakfast. If your tortilla is large, double the recipe - this will keep even the most hungry of you well satisfied until lunch. Add the spinach to ramp up the nutrition levels and to add yet another veggie to the start of your day.

Look for quality eggs at a local farm or farmers market. Or you may get real lucky and find some in your local health food store. Do avoid eggs from egg conglomerates as the poor chickens there lead terrible lives and nobody wants to contribute to that. Be mindful of your egg choices.

Simply Spinach Frittata

Sometimes it's fun to eat breakfast for dinner. My Mom, much to my great pleasure, often made scrambled eggs and pancakes and sausage for dinner. While that still sounds good to me, I eat a little differently now. Even my breakfast is filled with veggies. I've detailed the nutrition given the recipe as it is and set at a dinner portion, but do see the notes below for ways to lower the calories and ramp up the nutrition to suit the way you may eat.

Simply Spinach Frittata

The stuff to assemble:

1 9x13 pan sprayed with non-stick cookery spray
1 large skillet
2 T olive oil, divided use
1/2 of a large sweet onion chopped
16 oz (or more if you like) fresh spinach, torn in half
12 eggs, lightly beaten with a fork (my favorite humane egg in a store comes from Country Hen, but you may be even luckier and have a local farm source - buy from them, it is worth every penny.)
1 pound Jarlsberg, shredded
8 oz Parmesan, shredded
Fresh cracked black pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

What you need to do:

Always do your prep before starting the actual cookery. In a dish like this, stuff happens so fast at first, and if you aren't ready, you will be more likely to miss ingredients or make a humongous unmindful mess.

Once you have done the prep heat 1 T olive oil in the skillet over medium heat until the oil is shimmering. Add the onions and saute until they are nicely browned and caramelized. In order for the browning to happen, you have to let them sit a bit and not spend the entire time stirring. If you do that, they will cook to the point where they look a bit more translucent, but they will take a few hundred years to brown. So, stir them when you add them to get the olive oil distributed well and let them sit a couple minutes, stir, let them sit, etc.

Remove the onions to a plate or bowl to cool.

Add the second tablespoon of olive to the skillet and saute the spinach until it is nicely wilted. If you've never sauteed spinach before, trust me on this all that spinach will reduce dramatically within a few minutes. Suspend a fine mesh colander over your sink and dump the spinach in there. After it cools a bit, press the spinach with a wooden spoon squishing out much of the liquid. No need to get obsessive about squishing it completely dry, just get the bulk of it out or your frittata will not set well.

In a large bowl mix the beaten eggs, Jarlsberg, Parmesan, and fresh cracked black pepper. The mixture will be a bit thick. Add the onions and spinach and stir until the spinach is nicely distributed throughout.

If you haven't already sprayed the pan with non-stick spray, go ahead and do it now. Then tip in the egg spinach mixture and spread it out a bit until it is fairly even in height.

Pop into the oven and bake about 35 minutes. The whole thing will puff up a little bit and the top will brown prettily. To make sure it is done, insert a clean dry knife in the middle, if it comes out clean, it's done. If eggy stuff is on it cook a few more minutes. Tent for 10 minutes under aluminum foil, and serve.

Flexibility is incredibly mindful:

All ingredients can be adjusted to the proportions you need. All ingredients (except egg) can be replaced with food you prefer. You may not be a Jarlsberg person, so use sharp cheddar or your favorite whatever cheese. If you like feta, use that instead of Parmesan or use both Parmesan and feta. If you want less cheese, cut the quantity with no worries as to how it will turn out. If you LOVE spinach, you can easily dump in about 24 ounces. Other things to consider adding: sweet red pepper, sausage - crumbled cooked breakfast sausage or hot Italian sausage would work wonderfully, jalapenos, sauteed summer squash, banana peppers, use kale instead of spinach or use a mixture of both. Well, you get the idea.

We make this for dinner and then on the following day I love to cut a small square just the right size to sit between two halves of a whole wheat English muffin. Cut the square in half horizontally and put one piece on each of the muffin halves. Toast in the toaster oven, put the sandwich back together and enjoy.

Climbing The Egg Veggie Mountain

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As you all know, I enjoy eating beginning with First Breakfast, continuing on over the course of the day eating pretty much like a Hobbit. A nice quick starter First Breakfast before heading off to work, then about midway through the morning a lovely Second Breakfast, Elevenses (a tiny snack before the lunch walk), and so on.

On the weekends, First Breakfast is substantial enough that I rarely ever give a thought to Second Breakfast... unless it's a small piece of fruit. Yet somehow, the nutrition facts were under the calories of both my work Breakfasts - even with the addition of a whole wheat English muffin with jam. That was so interesting to discover. Usually I put all this into an egg scramble, but one day I felt a little more effort was required. So I made over easy eggs on a mountain of sauteed spinach and turmeric with browned onions. That's a bit much for a recipe title, so let's call it:

The Egg Veggie Mountain

You need two really great eggs.

I know they are expensive, but what good does it do your body to put less than stellar stuff into it? We don't eat as much beef anymore, but when we do, I get the best I can. You can do the same with eggs. When it matters - and it does in this dish - get the best. I love Country Hen Eggs because I can get them at the local HEB. Central Market free range eggs are another good choice and a little less expensive. If I had a farm nearby, I'd use their eggs instead. If instead of living in a great huge metroplex of nearly 4.5 million people I had a little home in the country, I'd have hens.

Break one of the free range naturally fed eggs into a bowl next to one of your regular eggs. You can see the difference in the color and size of the nutritious yolk. Oh, breaking the eggs into a bowl is always the best way to start the prep for this dish anyway. All you have to do then is just turn them out onto the pan to cook when it's their turn and you'll never break a yolk.

2 t habanero olive oil... ok, you may not all have habanero oil. If you don't use your fave sauteing oil. You can always jazz up the taste with some crushed red pepper flakes or cayenne or Srirachi Sauce or whatever you love the most.

1/2 - 1 cup of onions all nicely sliced (how much depends on if you are an onion lover or not).

I use about 1/4 - 1/2 t of turmeric. Some of you will find that too much, but it's what I like. You may want to start with more like 1/8 t until you find out if you even like the stuff (it has a rather peppery flavor). If you have arthritis though like I do, you will find that the turmeric eases your inflammation and rocks the painful hands.

Then you need about 2 cups or more of fresh torn spinach. Prep this before cooking too like you did the eggs.

That's it. Five things. Oh, and a nice pan just the right size to cook Breakfast for one... and strips of red, green, yellow, or orange peppers are always good to add with the onions. Ok, I guess that makes it seven things. Yes, the spatula and spoon make it nine. Picky picky picky.

What to do once you have assembled and prepared all the ingredients:

First, heat the olive oil in your pan over medium or just over medium heat and saute those onions til they start to brown and caramelize. Let them sit a bit instead of constantly stirring otherwise they won't brown. They need contact with the pan to do that. To truly caramelize them you will need about 20-30 minutes of slow cookery. The goal is to accent the natural sweetness of the onion. If you don't have time, just cook them til they brown a bit. In the pic below, they are not caramelized, just browned a bit.

When they are browning nicely, add the turmeric and stir for a minute inhaling the most awesome aroma. Then add the spinach stirring until the spinach is nice and wilted. Plate this. Return the pan to the stove (you may want to add a little more oil).

Now, if your pan needs more oil, add a smear. Gotta have some to cook those eggs. Gently tip them into the pan and allow to cook until the whites are mostly but not completely set. Loosen the edges if you need to and gently slip the spatula under the part with the yolks and flip fast but as gently as you can. Flipping is one of those things that some people are good at. I am not particularly, so sometimes one of my eggs will leak a bit. They still taste good. It should only take a minute or two to finish the eggs depending on how "done" you love them. Then plate them over your veggie mountain and enjoy mindfully.

Marvel at all the spinach and flex your Popeye muscles.

Spicing Things Up

Made one of my favorite breakfasts today - a pile of chopped onions and sweet red pepper sauteed in habanero olive oil until the veges start to turn a pretty brown. Sprinkle with turmeric - one of the foods and herbs that work wonders for my arthritis - and stir a minute. Add about a cup or so of torn spinach and saute until wilted. Finally add two Country Hen eggs and scramble til you get the consistency you like. Incredibly aromatic way to start the day. I folded the egg scramble inside of a slightly warmed tortilla. No need for cheese - I've tried it and it competes with rather than enhancing the other flavors.

When you cook with eggs, always go for the high quality humanely raised by happy chicken eggs that you can find at a local farm or farmers market. Or you may get real lucky and find some in your local health food store. Do avoid eggs from egg conglomerates as the poor chickens there lead terrible lives and nobody wants to contribute to that. Be mindful of your egg choices.

Unfortunately, I finished the bottle of oil with this breakfast but can order another! I also ate it all before remembering to take a pic. So, for your visual enjoyment, here's another beautiful acrylic painting by Sarah Jayne Blackhall, entitled Habanero.