Sunny Friday

Welcome to Friday!!  This is a beautiful, clear, sunny, bright, happy and awesome day!  It's been filled with some great things already.  First, I want to really address something I found on my website last week.
Last week, the amount of readers from Russia were double my readers from the States and Canada combined.  I'm super excited, thank you and all my readers who come here to read some seriously lengthy and inconsistent posts and hopefully enjoy some good recipes!  I really enjoy the internet's reach across oceans.  I had a friend living in Russia, teaching English for a while.  I have a Polish friend, Canadian friend, Bosnian friend, Costa Rican, Italian, Australian, Japanese, Chinese, English (UK!) Brazilian  and many many more!!   One of my friends, we call her a Guammy Bear - she's from Guam!  I'm not sure that's completely politically correct, but she rocks and it's all great fun.  I grew up in a small town where not a lot of come and go existed.  People lived their whole lives in that town, their kids lived there and then grandkids.  There was almost zero exposure to other cultures and customs.  The States are a very mobile people.  We do tend to move and when I was 13 we moved to an even SMALLER and close knit, non mobile town.  I couldn't wait to get out.  I never had money to travel, and when I first connected to the internet in 1998, and created a hotmail account, I used to beg my friends to email me after I moved away from home.  The internet has done horrible and wonderful things since then.  There are entire thesis' written about how the internet has corrupted cultures and destroyed traditions.  It's brought evil into homes and completely changed life as we know it.  For every negative though, you'll find a positive.   Information flows freely now, people can meet other people and learn about other cultures, schools are online - saving me personally - hundreds of dollars in gas, communication involves more than just a voice (Facetime/Skype) and the world can connect in one big abyss of collective knowledge.   Remind anyone else of the Borg?  No?  OK, let me beat back the inner nerd trying to surface.   Thank you, dad, for making sure I grew up a Star Wars AND Star Trek fan.  Nothing like being placed in the middle of a large, volatile, bloody, nerd vs. geek battleground.

So, I realize I "missed" last Friday.  I was exhausted and I'm sure you're thinking, "Really?  How hard is it to just post a recipe?"  Well, I like to test some of my recipes a few times to make sure they are working right and last week, the recipe I had, is the one I'm posting today.  I've made it quite a few times now, and  I'm COMPLETELY addicted and I hope you'll absolutely love it too!  There are some variations which will enhance or destroy the flavor you're looking for.  Choose wisely (Oh, Indiana Jones... how I miss you!)  If you don't like eggs or are like me, have really developed an aversion to them due to eating them for so long, give this a try!  It's very different and flavorful and it's not just "an egg."


Sunny Side Tacos
2 eggs
2 white or yellow corn tortillas (organic, non gmo preferably)
1 ounce of butter
2-4 ounces of your choice cheese (monterey jack, mozzarella, yorkshire, goat)
1 clove of garlic minced (if desired)
1 tSp of chopped onion (if desired)
1 ounce of fresh spinach (if desired)
sour cream (if desired)
cooked crumbled Italian sausage (if desired)
chopped cooked mushrooms (if desired)


Base Recipe! (use this to get started, add things as you go!)

Fry 2 tortillas in a buttered pan or griddle over medium heat until lightly browned - about 3 minutes a side.  When they are done, remove from pan, place on a plate and fold  in half.   In the buttered pan, over medium heat fry two eggs over easy or sunny side up until cooked about 2-4 minutes depending on how "slimy" you want your eggs.  (My kids HATE slimy eggs, so I cook them until all the white is set, but the yolk is still liquid... this is a nerve wracking process.  A little TOO long and it's all over, a little too short and it's all icky.)
When the eggs are cooked how you like them (yolks should still be runny,) remove from the pan and place one in each tortilla.  Butter the pan a little more, brown your garlic and onion in the pan about 5 minutes and throw in your spinach.  Twirl in the pan for about a minute or until the spinach has "wilted" but is not cooked through.  Place on top of the egg.

Now.  Get creative.  Add cheese, sausage, mushrooms, sour cream, tomatoes or NOTHING at this point.  Basically, try this recipe basic first, and then from there add one or two things.   Don't over do it, or you'll lose some of the foundation.   The first one I did had egg, white cheese, salsa and sour cream.  It was killer.  The next one I tried was egg, sausage, and spinach.   The most recent one I made was egg, yorkshire cheese with cranberries and spinach (pictured.)  It was brutally good.  Just remember your base:  tortilla, egg - then pick 2 "toppings" and go from there.  Below I've matched a few combinations to try, that are delicious.

Monterey Jack and sausage
spinach and Yorkshire with cranberries
salsa, white cheese and sour cream
sausage and mushrooms
Mozzarella and spinach
Sriracha and sour cream! (this one is out of my league but I KNOW some of you out there who are hot sauce fans will LOVE it!)

This makes a great dinner as well as breakfast.  So if you come home at the end of a long day and all you can think is, "I need something NOT complicated but delicious and healthy!"  Well, this is it!  Simple, healthy, delicious, and customizable!  You can't get a food better than that.  Enjoy!

Saturday Morning Breakfast!

In celebration of breakfast today,  Friday's post is going to be Saturday morning!  That was the best excuse I had for not making it to my computer yesterday!  There was a lot going on and the day ended with me crashing at 8:30 at night.  I do wish I had a cup of coffee to share this interesting recipe, which I found at Food.com, but we can make due with a bowl of yogurt and almonds.

Things have come along well at the house.  Kids entertained, bedrooms cleared, and waiting for mom to show up.  I've been trying to make some menus (again yes!) to have an idea for grocery list and such, but so far I'm coming up blank.  Not sure what some good ideas are for when company is over.  There are still 300 soups in my freezer, so that's always a good fallback right? 

Let's discuss for a moment vegetarian and vegan perspectives in this blog.  I am obviously  not against eating meat in any way shape or form.  I am highly dependent on it for keeping my blood sugar regulated and my metabolic syndrome in check.   However, there are some people, like a friend of mine, who recently was told to stop eating meat - for medical reasons.  I'm going to go for an elementary and short explanation, search the web if you want more comprehensive idea of how these diets work, I don't follow them, so I'm NOT the expert!  Cutting out meat and meat products would be vegetarian.  Cutting out meat, dairy and any animal product or by product is vegan.  Vegans won't eat honey, eggs or milk because it's taken from bees and cows.  Vegetarians will or can eat honey, eggs and milk.  Everyone's food choices are what's best for them and in this blog, there's an abundance of meat.  You'll find sometimes that I've thrown in a vegetarian option (and I've tried to dabble in veganism a couple times to no avail.)  Coconut and almond milk can only go so far for a person who can't/shouldn't eat grains.  Eventually you need some substance.  Vegans can wake up in the morning and have a bowl of cereal with almond milk and go about their day.  I haven't had a bowl of cereal in over three years.  

Keep these three things in mind when you're going over some of my recipes: 

1.  Chicken stock/broth can always be substituted with vegetable stock/broth.  Always.  It's good stuff!  Likewise with milks, some recipes (not yogurt! or custards, they require different methods) can have almond or coconut milk substitute

2.  Some soups/foods can omit the meat and still taste great.  Try substituting portabella mushrooms for steak or hamburger. 

3.  Beans are also a good meat substitute.  Later, you'll find me substituting wheat flour with beans.  =) 

Today's recipe is neither vegan nor vegetarian but you can modify it to vegetarian if you like (just leave out the bacon! - what??? Leave out bacon is capital crime in my house.)

Here's my source!  http://www.food.com/recipe/carb-free-cloud-bread-411501  Yes, I changed some things,  YES! I do make the recipe as stated FIRST before making my modifications.  You can be sure this recipe is a lot of fun in my house and makes amazing hot ham and cheese sandwiches! 

Bacon Onion Cloud Bread

3 eggs separated (very carefully - no yolk in the white at ALL!)

3 pinches of cream of tartar

2oz softened cream cheese

8 drops of liquid stevia

5 green onions chopped into tiny pieces

2 pieces of bacon (cooked) and the meat parts (cut off ALL the fat) chopped into tiny pieces

Preheat the oven to 300f. 

In a mixer,  mix on high the egg whites and cream of tartar until STIFF white peaks form.  Stiff is the keyword here.  High, fluffy, and can stand in towers on their own.  

In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks, cream cheese, liquid stevia, green onions, and bacon until as smooth as possible.  

Then, we're going to FOLD, the yellow mixture into the whites.  Don't go crazy here.  Take a spatula (bowl scraper) with a silicone end and fold fold fold, then stop.  If you over mix it, it's going to turn into a liquid and that's what we want to avoid.  Go for fluffy. 

These things tend to be a bit sticky.  Try wax paper on your cookie sheet but just cooking spray or oil is not going to be enough to keep them from sticking.  I greased my pan with liquid bacon fat (from cooking the bacon) but they still got stuck, but didn't fall apart taking them off the pan.  

Drop into large spoonfuls on a cookie sheet.  I get about 6 to a sheet and they are the size of a regular burger bun.  They do not spread so much, but leave some room.  

Bake on middle rack for 23 minutes.  Some people might need longer, some shorter, just keep an eye on it, you don't want them overly browned but white is definitely not done.  

Cool on a cooling rack and store in a plastic container in the FRIDGE!  Use two to make a delicious hot ham and cheese sandwich (heat a fry pan med heat, put some butter in it, put cheese on one 'bread' and top with meat, and another bread - fry on one side till the cheese is melty, then flip and cook another 3 min.)   This bread is also good if you add 2 cloves crushed garlic and serve with low carb spaghetti or one of the soups on this blog!

Hope you enjoy this recipe, it's a LOT of fun to make.  I have added sweet things to it too as a dessert or breakfast bread and it's always turned out well.  They are fluffy, low carb, wheat and gluten free,  interesting bread substitute and easy to pull out of the fridge and have for any meal.  

Here are some pics of the steps I took.  I DO have a camera now, but I was still using my droid for these pics!  

Have a fun weekend!