my best breakfast yet

I used to love going out to breakfast, especially when I was presented with a meal that looked like a work of art. Eggs Florentine was a favorite, with all those spiffy garnishes and pools of delightful hollandaise. Those days are over for me, and I don't miss the pain one little bit. I do, however, miss pretty meals.

At home I'm sure I could make our table and plates look lovely, I just haven't gotten there. I'm still in the whining about preparing from scratch every single bite that goes into my mouth phase. It's been more than two years, so I hope I get over that soon.

I am over thinking of my meals as limited or limiting. I've mentioned one of my favorite things about this Paleo adventure is that I get to enjoy cooking and being a foodie again with no guilt, pain, or regrets. Yes, I'm still mourning the loss of really good cheeses but only slightly.

My mind started wandering down this path, the breakfasts out path, this morning as I ate my very ugly breakfast. This one did not even sort of look nice. I must have been REALLY hungry to serve myself a pile like that. (I did take the time to make GK's look pretty, partly to make up for forgetting to cook dinner last night.)

The thing is that lumpy bumpy pile of food was one of the best breakfasts I can remember eating. I sat there just savoring the flavors that almost took me by surprise. Not one thing on my plate was there for the first time: sweet potato hash browns cooked crisp in coconut oil, oven-baked and perfectly finished Beeler's bacon strips, two soy-free eggs cooked in bacon fat to just barely past over-easy. I don't think I've ever combined them all before. That's probably because sweet potato hash browns are fairly new to me and bacon, even safe humanely raised bacon, is not an everyday protein choice for me. Whatever the reason for the delightful flavor combo, I savored every bite.

I really should start working on the aesthetics, though. Flavorful and healthy may come first, but pretty meals are such fun.

If you've never made sweet potato hash browns, you're in for treat. With the use of a food processor, they are almost effortless. It certainly possible and not at all hard to make them without a food processor, though I can't make the effortless claim when a dish involves grating or shedding by hand.

Sweet potatoes vary in size, of course, and when shredded seem to grow in volume more than I ever expect. This is more of a method than it is recipe for that reason.

I usually peel one or two, since I keep them on hand for awhile. If your sweet potatoes are fresh and thin-skinned, you can certainly leave the peels on. Using the shredding disc or small julienne disc, shred potatoes. I use the pulse button, usually, as it give me more control. This takes approximately 45 seconds. To a preheated griddle or low, wide pan add an ounce or 2 of coconut oil and shredded sweet potatoes. I like to mound them in piles that touch but can be turned independently. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt. All that's left is to turn them occasionally, keeping a close eye as sweet potatoes can burn quickly.  As I turn them, I often add a little more oil to the pan around the edges. The result is crispy, slightly sweet and salty goodness.

can't stop thinking about breakfast

For some unknown reason, breakfast has been on my mind a lot lately. In general, I'm not really even a big breakfast fan. That is---I alwasy eat it; I just don't get excited about it. Lunch, dinner, even afternoon snacks, excite me. Breakfast not so much. That wasn't always the case, however. When I think of what I loved about breakfast in the past, my mind goes immediately to extra-crispy hash browns and Eggs Florentine, then skates on to chile verde omelets and shrimp and jalapeno burritos. At one time not so very long ago, anything drowned in hollandaise would quickly catch my eye and my imagination. Mmm, thinking large grilled shrimp, resting on a bed of hollandaise, edged by crispy hash browns and softly poached eggs.

Okay, back to reality, Pamela. Most of that no longer works for me, though the best parts still do. And one of these days, I swear, I'm going to figure out a way to enjoy the hollandaise experience dairy-free. Mayonnaise, even beautifully creamy homemade mayo, just doesn't do it for me.

Still, this is an ode to breakfast present, not a lament of breakfast past. And while I love a breakfast of meat and veggies, eggs are what I've focused on as of late. Eggs cooked lots and lots of different ways. Steak and eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, scrambled eggs, omelets, shrimp and eggs---seems to be no end of possibilities.


grass-fed beef strips, kale and beet greens make a bed for eggs to gently poach

One of my favorite things to do is to start by sauteeing whatever veggies look tempting (often meaning cleaned and ready to use) in the fridge. Often that means mushrooms, scallions or onions, broccoli, asparagus, or leafy greens. I love them all. I may or may not add meat. When all is near done, I drop an egg or two or three on top, then cover it all with a lid, letting the eggs gently poach on the veggies until softly cooked. This can be varied in so many ways; you could follow almost the same steps each day for a year and never repeat---unless, of course, you want to. Without the eggs, even, it's still a great breakfast. I could eat a version of this everyday.



soy-free egg "poached" on a bed of beef and spinach with raw sauerkraut

As I've mentioned often, we go to great lengths to get soy-free eggs. I recommend them wholeheartedly. And while we're talking tasty and healthy, a little raw sauerkraut on the side makes almost any breakfast better. Trust me on that one and give it a try.

our paleo comfort breakfasts

hash-browned cauliflower is great with scrambled eggs

Weather is funny. Sometimes I barely notice it, but it's always a factor, a major backdrop to everything else that's going on. Today, we have rain, lots of rain. We've had almost none this year, so this is a big deal. I've spent so much time marveling over the rain, enjoying heavy drops on my kitchen skylight that I forgot to cook breakfast. I always wake up hungry. We always eat breakfast. On weekends, it's usually a big breakfast because, well, because it's the weekend. It's also usually an early breakfast since we run lots of errands in the morning before GK's standing lunch date with the guys. Only today, mesmerized by the rain, I forgot. How do you forget breakfast? It's his favorite meal of the day, so trust me, he did not understand.

Though I always wake up hungry, breakfast is not my favorite meal. Breakfast foods have never been my favorites, at least not the traditional breakfast foods I've been around. I hear people mention liking or not liking foods based on what they had in childhood. I'm sure that must be true of me in some ways, though it's overwhelmingly the opposite in most cases. When I was a child breakfast was cold cereal, oatmeal, cream of wheat, pancakes, waffles, bacon, eggs, and toast. Not all at the same time, certainly. Breakfast sometimes meant only toast with a little jelly, very little jelly, just enough to make the surface shimmer. When my mother discovered refrigerator biscuits in those cans that were prone to explode when opened, they became a staple on non-cereal days. It was much later that potatoes entered the picture. I'm not sure when I was introduced to breakfast potatoes like hash browns or potatoes O'Brien or country fries. I may very well have been an adult. I really don't remember them at all during childhood.

My favorite breakfast when I was young was never cereal for sure. I've never been a fan. I was an egg girl. My mother would fry bacon, then scramble or fry eggs in the same pan and without removing any of the fat. Now, those I liked. Eggs completely soaked in and dripping with bacon grease were my idea of the perfect breakfast. Sometimes she made omelets: eggs whipped with milk and seasoned with dried mint, then cooked quickly in butter. Nah, it was likely margarine, then, and lots of it. Interestingly, I started high school weighing 86 pounds and graduated weighing almost 96. That fat was clearly not making me fat, much as I longed to put on weight. Then along came the low-fat era, and my pleasure in eating those eggs quickly vanished. I have been health conscious, though admittedly misguided from time to time, most of my adult life. The bacon was out; the bacon fat was out; even the eggs were deemed practically life-threatening.

If I could safely eat anything I wanted, which I cannot for sure, breakfast would be either Eggs Florentine or softly poached and piles of hash browned potatoes, extra crispy, with either choice. Or maybe eggs fried and in butter. Most of those options are totally out of the question for me. But I've found what (almost fully) fills the bill. These days, one of our favorites when we long for an old fashioned breakfast is hash browned cauliflower with eggs. My eggs are usually over easy to medium, while GK prefers his scrambled. Sometimes his become an omelet or a scramble with veggies and aromatics, but mostly he prefers plain scrambled eggs in either olive or coconut oil. I'm not a big fan of eggs in coconut oil, but butter is not an option for me, and olive oil is a bit scary for cooking. Often I cook my eggs in beef tallow or bacon fat.

If you haven't yet tried hash browned cauliflower, you must---even if you're not sure about cauliflower. It's not potatoes; I'll grant you that. But it is a truly satisfying alternative, considering all the drawbacks of potatoes---nightshades in general, for that matter.

For starters, they are one of the quickest and easiest dishes around. After much trial and error, I now always start with raw cauliflower. Trust me on this one. Though some suggest using a food processor to chop cauliflower into small, rice-like chunks, I prefer to use a knife. It gives you much more control over the size you ultimately end up with. Sometimes I want tiny little pieces, and sometimes I want larger chunks, more like country fries. Other times, I go for something in between.

This step is so simple. Just place your rinsed cauliflower on a board or chopping block and, avoiding your fingers, slice through the head of cauliflower. Turn the cut pieces 90 degrees and chop again. Do this as often as you like until the pieces are a size that looks good to you. There is no right size.

Melt some coconut oil, or the healthy fat of your choice, in a saute pan. The quantity is a matter of personal preference. I like to use enough to cover the bottom of the pan generously. Fat is what will make your hash browns crisp and, well, hash browns. Don't skimp. I own only two non-stick pans. Neither is Teflon. Teflon is good for tossing in the trash, little else, in my opinion. For sauteing cauliflower, either non-stick or standard pans work great. Today I was feeling a little lazy, hence the non-stick.

Add a generous layer of cauliflower to your heated, well oiled pan, and resist the temptation to stir constantly. Add a generous sprinkling of salt, I prefer sea salt, and pepper.

As your cauliflower begins to brown, turn or stir. Add another sprinkling of salt, as you stir.

Continue to cook until they reach a beautiful toasty brown color or to your preferred depth of color. I like them a dark brown, but you should be the judge when you're cooking.

If you'd like, add onions, bell pepper, or other aromatics to the cauliflower at the beginning of the cooking process for an almost unlimited number of variations.

Please give this a try and let me know what you think.