Breakfast Recipes

By Jennifer Dean

After reading Crystal’s blog recently requesting breakfast recipes I started digging through my recipe file. I am helping an elderly neighbor in the mornings and one duty is fixing her breakfast. She doesn’t seem to want anything but toast and boxed foods. It’s almost boring! I grew up being taught to cook from scratch. The only boxed food I remember having in our home on a regular basis is cold cereal and macaroni and cheese. That was it. I began a recipe file box at 16 and it is overflowing! Every few years I go through the file box and weed out the newest recipes that were not tasty to my family. I also look for unhealthy recipes I had saved with hopes of converting them to a healthier meal. If that didn’t work those get tossed or passed along too.

My Great-Grandma Schmidt passed along a breakfast recipe from her Great Depression days that became a family tradition. She didn’t have much money or food during the Great Depression and said many mornings she would fix Bread, Egg, and Potato. A very simple combination but not many people I’ve asked have eaten it.

Bread, Egg, & Potato
Use several baked potatoes, peeled, and cut into small bites
¼ cup to ½ cup a butter (of course the more you use the better it taste)
2-3 pieces of bread, torn into bite size pieces
4-6 eggs scrambled
Salt and pepper

Melt butter in skillet and fry potatoes until lightly browned. Add the bread and toss with potatoes. If bread is not moist enough you may need an extra tablespoon of butter. Fry for several minutes. Add scrambled eggs, salt, pepper, and mix together. Cook until eggs are done. Change the quantity of potato, bread, and egg as needed for your family.

Variations: add cheese to mixture and melt. Use sausage, bacon, or seasoned ground turkey, and add to mixture.
Fruit salad or applesauce are good sides for this breakfast.

I’ll share a few more family favorite’s:

This is a yummy special “puffy” pancake.

Pan Pancakes from Kathy Crowther
3 eggs
1 cup milk
¾ cup flour (or ½ cup unbleached flour and ¼ cup whole wheat flour)
½ tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. nutmeg
3 TB butter

Mix first 5 ingredients well whisking them. Put butter in large iron skillet and place in warm oven to melt. Pour into hot skillet and bake 20 minutes at 425 or until puffy. Serve with butter and honey or maple syrup.
Berries or crushed nuts and cinnamon can be added to pancake mixture.

My Uncle Mike would fix this for breakfast occasionally if my brother, sister, and I had spent the night. It can be quickly prepared the night before and be ready to bake in the morning.

Sausage Breakfast Casserole
2 cups milk
6 slices bread-cubed
1 cup shredded cheese
6 eggs
1 lb. sausage or seasoned ground turkey, crumbled and cooked
Salt & Pepper

Mix bread and milk. Stir in the other ingredients. Pour into 1 ½ quart or 8x8 baking dish and refrigerate overnight. Set out 1 hour before baking in the morning. Bake 45 minutes at 325 degrees.

Here’s an easy and tasty granola a friend’s mother would make.

Cinnamon Granola from Elaine H.
4 cups whole oats
4 cups rolled wheat flakes
1 ¼ cup coconut
1 cup wheat germ
1 tsp salt
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
½ cup water
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix dry ingredients. Add cinnamon, water, and vanilla to dry ingredients and bake 2 hours on cookie sheets at 225 degrees. Raisins can be added after baking.

I remember Elaine bringing this breakfast dish to potluck several times. They had their own chickens.

Make Ahead Scrambled Eggs
1 cups potatoes, diced and cooked
¼ cup green onion
3 TB butter
Fry in skillet
Fold in 12 scrambled eggs
Fold in 3 oz. mushrooms

Cheese Sauce
2 TB butter
2 TB flour
½ tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. pepper
Stir and cook till bubbly then add 2 cups milk. Mix then and cook. Add 1 cup mild cheddar cheese. Stir eggs into cheese sauce and bake in 7x12x12” baking dish for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Finally I’ll share my favorite pancake recipe. My Mom found it in Nature Friend magazine when we were little. The subscription was well worth it in the recipe use alone!

Nature Friend Pancakes
1 ½ cup whole wheat flour
2/3 cup corn meal
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. baking powder
½ cup oil
2 eggs
2 cups milk
Mix well and fry.