Breakfast Eggs

My day usually starts at 6.30am. My husband, who would have been awake before that (freak), grinds and makes coffee when he gets up and eats a bowl of cereal over his Bible. Then he potters into the bedroom to wake me, which can be a protracted affair (I'm not a morning person). It is then my duty to make breakfast. At 6.30am in the morning, I'm usually not at my best. So for all you non-morning women out there, I want to give hope: It IS possible to have breakfast at home, dress AND make-up in an hour, and still get to work on time.*

* This assumes it takes you 30 mins to dress and make-up, and that coffee is done. A coffee machine is a good substitute for husbands in this case, but perhaps not otherwise.

This breakfast is healthy because there is no added fat except what you get from the bacon, and we eat only the whites of the eggs, so you get the protein without the fat (in the yolk). It can easily be turned into an English breakfast, except you'll have to slice mushrooms too. The recipe feeds two.

So, the little morning breakfast dance goes as follows:

RECIPE: BREAKFAST EGGS

(Cooking time: 20 mins)

1 frying pan
1 food processor

Bacon (Oscar Meyer has a low fat option)
Onion
Tomato
Eggs
Milk
Cayenne pepper
Garlic powder
Refried beans (in can - Kroger brand fat free option has the best nutrition count, even beating Amy's and Rosita's)
Shredded cheese (optional)
Tortillas (optional)

- Husband wakes and makes coffee. Wakes me and jumps into shower.
- I get out of bed (reluctantly). I take ingredients out of fridge/pantry.

*switch to third person*

- Heat frying pan to medium heat (I actually do this first and take ingredients out of fridge while the pan is heating up) and lay 3 strips of bacon in pan. Fry till crispy, turning over half way.
- While bacon is frying, do all your slicing: onion, tomato.
- Turn bacon over.
- In a food processor, blend: 6-8 egg whites, dash of cayenne pepper, dash of garlic powder, 1/2 cup milk - this will ensure that your eggs turn out fluffy.
- Take bacon out and lay on kitchen towel.
- Add chopped onion into the remaining fat from the bacon and fry till soft. Then add egg mixture, stirring it around occasionally. This will ensure that you get a fluffy scramble instead of an omelette. You can scatter some shredded cheese at this point if you want.
- While the eggs are cooking, put refried beans in a bowl with a dash of garlic powder and heat in microwave.
- When the eggs are almost done to your preferred consistency, add chopped tomatoes and crumble the crisped bacon into the pan. Mix.
- Take refried beans out of the microwave (careful, it will be hot!) and put tortillas in (if eating with tortillas - this is optional), covered. The cover is important so that it doesn't dry out.
- Plate eggs and beans


*switch back to first person*

- While husband eats, I brush my teeth and put on some war paint, sipping coffee while doing so.
- I eat quickly, with husband, now being more capable of reasonable conversation. Then we dress. We leave. Some time in between all this, I make the bed and the dishes find their way into the dishwasher. More often than now, however, they get washed later.

While this might sound way too complicated for the morning, it is also safe to say that practice makes perfect. We do the drive-thru at El Rey sometimes too - nothing wrong with that. Sometimes we have an English breakfast instead (eggs over-easy, bacon, tomato, mushrooms), or bak chor mee (a version of Singaporean noodles) in the morning (it's an Asian thing), or roti prata (S.E. Asian pancakes) with leftover curry. Sometimes my husband heats up a frozen burrito himself so that I can sleep a little longer. Whatever works for you, so long as you remember to eat breakfast!