Simple Soft Scrambled Eggs

It seems that people always have a reason for not having something for breakfast but then it also seems that every one says that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. The meal that starts you off, gets your body going and gives you the energy you need to get through your day.

So here is a short break down on how to make a fast 2 or 3 egg soft scramble that are so velvety that you will want to make them every morning!

You don't need a large pan for this, in fact you want a fairly small pan. You don't want so much room that your eggs have room to move away from each other, you want them to stay together for the cooking process.

Slightly preheat your pan over a medium heat. Remember you will want to work quickly with this! Place a bit of oil or even butter in to coat the pan, break your eggs in and add a small nob of butter to the eggs themselves. Now start working the butter into the eggs with a spatula. You want to mix this. By the time the butter is completely melted, your eggs should be ready! Simple but elegant!

My photos today are showing off the eggs I made to go with our Sunday brunch a while ago of Blueberry Pancakes with chicken sausages.

Recipe - Easy Omelets

Omelets... what could be better?? Eggs are good on the worst or best of weather days! They can be made in so many different ways that the choices are just endless. And to top it all off new studies are showing that where as eggs were once thought to be 'bad' for you are actually not all that bad!

During the summer months, it's never hard to find to find a dozen or more eggs in our house. They not are only made for breakfast but they are even made for a quick light dinner and put in so many of my summer recipes that they are just needed in the house.

Today, I bring you my make shift and no omelet pan needed omelets. This recipe is by no means an exact recipe! You can put what ever *YOU* want in an omelet... I'm just giving you an idea of some of the things you can add!

Ingredients
 ♥ 2 or 3 eggs (I used 3 per omelet in the photos)
 ♥ tomatoes

 ♥ meats (choose a pre-cooked version or make sure your fry it before)

 ♥ mushrooms

 ♥ onions

 ♥ herbs (fresh work wonders but dry work just as well)

 ♥ olives (black work very well, never tried green though... yet)

 ♥ cheese (mix it up or choose your favorite but best to use small chunks or shredded in it)

 ♥ extra bit of cheese for topping

 ♥ splash milk or light cream

Directions

This is not rocket science so don't be so scared of these! Find a good flat bottomed pan (we normally use our crepe pan for these and it fits it all just wonderfully). In my photos this time we used a larger flat bottomed pan just for the ease of photo work. Put it over a medium to medium high heat for pre-heating while preparing the egg mixture.

Firstly chop your meats and veggies into smaller bite sized pieces. What ever size you want really just as long as you remember you are trying to fold some eggs around it. Then make sure you have finally chopped any fresh herbs you might be using.

In a small bowl add you meats, veggies, herbs and what ever else you will be adding into the eggs such as shredded cheese. Then simply add the eggs and the splash of milk or cream. Use a fork and not a whisk to mix up the eggs. You want them well combined but a whisk will cause you to have your pieces stuck inside of it instead of inside the eggs.

Add a drizzle of olive oil to your pre-heated pan and simply pour the egg mixture into it. You should hear it sizzle right away when they hit the pan, this is a good thing! Now be patient. Wait until you see it has cooked mostly through the top of the eggs. You might want to turn the heat down to a medium heat about half way. If you use more eggs, you might want to add a lid for a few minutes to help steam the top of the omelet.

When you see that the eggs are as good as cooked through the top, simply use a flat spatula to flip the eggs half way over themselves. If you choose, you can even add a bit more cheese to the middle before this flipping stage to have a gooey center to indulge in. Let it rest a minute or two longer on the heat to ensure a finished cook and melting of any choose you might have added to the middle.

Wela, your done. Use your spatula to transfer it to your plate and you have a nice yummy full of goodness and easy to boot omelet! Place some cheese on top if you wish while still hot, have a bit of toast next to it (I love toast with raspberry jam!) or in this case of our Sunday brunch, fry up some left over boiled potatoes with some herbs. Again, the choices on this are sooooo endless! Lastly, ENJOY!

Recipe - Blueberry Pancakes

I'm sitting here watching Castle on the TV with dear hubby while using my new toy... my Samsung Tab 10.1... it's so perfect for blogging with and on top of it sooooooo quiet! On that small note, if you have a tablet pc or phone that can handle blogger in browser mode, do that instead as the Blogger app doesn't have the editing abilites as the full site does.

I figured I'd make my first entry from it tonight and share my wonderful American Style Blueberry Pancakes but I was only able to start it with the tab and had finish it with my computer because I still haven't figured out how to highlight, copy and paste with the tablet. I need to be able to do that to keep this blog looking it's best and didn't want to take more time trying to figure it out before posting this.

I made these on my husband's last long weekend and they came out soooo good for a first try... light, fluffy and I have to admit to having added almost too many blueberries but I'm a bit biased, is there really such a thing as 'too much' when it comes to adding fruit or veggies to dishes?? Oh and a warning now, I took LOTS of pictures of these! I just couldn't help myself, every thing looked so good and so fresh! I mean how can you pass up the lovelies below without snapping at least a few photos??

Ingredients
 ♥ 2 eggs, separated
 ♥ 2 cups flour

 ♥ 2 tsp baking powder

 ♥ 2 tsp vanilla

 ♥ 3 tbs sugar

 ♥ 1-2 tsp ground cinnamon

 ♥ 1 cup milk

 ♥ 3 tbs butter, melted

 ♥ 1 cup fresh blueberries (give or take 1/2 cup)

picture does not include the melted butter

Directions - Batter Preparation

First thing you will want to do is separate your eggs and whip the egg whites into soft peaks.

 Aren't they just perfectly separated?? (proud moment)

first stage - light foaming

 second stage - egg whites start to keep shape with soft peaks

third stage - egg whites hold shape in stiff peaks and have turned shiny

Set the now whipped egg whites aside for a bit. In a larger bowl combine flour, baking powder, sugar and ground cinnamon. Then either in a large 2 cup measuring cup combine egg yolks, milk, vanilla and butter lightly. Add wet mixture to dry mixture and combine using a whisk and not a mixer. You do not want to over beat the mixture, you just want to combine it well but while trying to avoid adding a bunch of un-wanted air to the batter. I cheated a bit in my photos as I was working so quickly on these that my dry ingredients never had a chance to stick to the bowl, the reason why you want to separate them in the first place.

Once dry pluse wet ingredients are combine well and you don't have any lumps you will want to fold in the whipped egg whites. Do this softly and gently. The purpose of whipping the egg whites in the first place to give the batter lightness and fluff that you lose when you remove the gluten from these types of recipes. Use a jar scraping style spatchula for this. Gently turn the bowl as you scrape the sides of it, bringing the batter into the egg whites and in turn mixing the egg whites into the batter. At this stage of mixing, you can choose to either add the blueberries to the batter before adding the egg whites or after. I did it before in order to try to better retain the fluffiness of the egg whites that I was adding but it didn't make too much of a difference either way when I did it the second time around in which I added them after the egg whites.

Directions - Frying

As usual, I usually end up at least making my first couple of pancakes quite darker then I wish to but after a couple of them, I get them nice and light golden. They key to this is to be patient. I know a lot of people swear by a high heat griddle but I have learned at least with my stove (electric btw) works best on a medium heat, sometimes even more toward the high low to low medium setting. Then let it warm slowly, use liquid margarine or coat the pan with vegetable oil but use a paper towel to rub it onto the pan and to remove the excess. You want to fry these not deep fry them.

I also suggest that you use 2 pans or a large griddle that will cook more then one pancakes at a time for this process, at least if you are like me where making a half dozen pancakes can seem like it takes forever when doing them one at a time and in actuality it most likely will take about 40minutes if done this way where as you can cut this in half using two.

So with that out of the way, I find it easy to do this one of 2 ways. Either pour your batter into a large measuring cup (I have a beloved 2 cup glass one for this if I choose) or do as I do most of the time and use a smaller sauce ladle. It looks kind of like a full soup ladle but it about half the measure and has a larger pour spout which is perfect for the pancake batter.

Pour about 1/4 to 1/3rd of a cup worth of batter on your greased pan and be patient. What you will want to see is the batter start to bubble a bit and then to see those bubble pop. They will leave tiny holes in the pancake and you will see the top start to become dry.

Flip and leave for a minute longer. Your best 'serving' side will be the one that you started with as this has hit the pan while in batter form and gotten most of the time to fry compared to the mostly dried out top part.

Serve these beauties with maple syrup or just with a pat of butter. Pancakes can be made into SOOOO many different kinds that the possibilities are almost endless. I've already redone this recipe in raspberry and just plain ol' pancake batter recipes but I also have on hand to make apple/cinnamon with icing rather then syrup (more meant to be a dessert then a breakfast item though) and even cinnamon swirl ones that use a cinnamon sauce to squeeze into the wet batter and has a cream cheese icing to use on them. Is it another long weekend yet?!

Enjoy! And remember they go very nicely with breakfast sausages and eggs, specially loosely scrambled (recipe/directions to come in order to finish off the photos). Just remember when buying breakfast sausages, you check the ingredients very carefully as a lot of sausages add wheat or bread to their mixture to bulk it out. If you have a butcher nearby, he might even be able to prepare you some that are gluten free, like mine did.

Recipe - Strawberry, Orange & Banana Smoothie

We all really do seem to take the more simple things in life for granted when we are forced to live a way we wish we didn't have to, such as the case with having to live gluten free or milk free. I've noticed people even tend to do this for lifestyles they don't have to live but choose to live.

So today's post is geared toward breakfast for a change. I don't post much about breakfast because I get very few chances to cook a big breakfast that I can take photos of or even use a recipe for since my loving husband only has off on weekends and leaves work at 7ish in the morning, just not the best of times to whip up a big breakfast! But once and a while you'll find a breakfast post. I mean I do this so rarely that I even have a brand new waffle maker sitting here in it's box, never opened, never used... and if that isn't sad enough, it's been here for months now.

Are you one that takes the simple things in the life of being gluten free for granted? Do you not realize exactly how many natural foods are at your finger tips that are already naturally gluten free? I mean really think about it for a moment. Do you forget that eggs are a god send being packed full of easy to digest protein that has now even been researched as being even better for you then first thought? I know most of us must have an gluten free alternative to bread be it home-made or store bought... do you realize the endless combos you can do on toast such as peanut butter & banana, simple butter & jams, apple butter or go all out and make french toast! Want even more? Think about those eggs again but don't think fried or scrambled or 'ick, I've done eggs so many times and always the say way' but think frittata, think omelets, think scrambles with meat/cheese/veggies.... you can do countless things with eggs that are all natural and all 100% gluten free without ever having to worry about reading labels!

So that is what has brought me to my post today. How simple can you get then fresh/frozen fruit, yoghurt, juice and some thing natural perhaps for sweetening? The only thing special for smoothies that you must have is a blender that is able/features crushing ice. For me that means my wonderful 'bullet'. It comes not only with the smaller container to use with it that most Americans reading this go 'yea I know that thing' but it also comes with a 1 litre blender pot with lid. I've used it almost weekly in some form or fashion since I got it. If you have that, all you need are the ingredients! Oh and no tips this time!

Ingredients
 ♥ 1/2 cup to 1 cup frozen strawberries (store bought work well but fresh work too just freeze them first)

 ♥ 1 banana (any size you want, this isn't science)
 ♥ 1/2 cup to 1 cup orange juice (fresh squeezed works wonders but bottled is just as good)

 ♥ 1/2 cup plain low-fat yoghurt (low fat Greek style works very well too)

 ♥ 1 to 2 tsp honey or Agave syrup (very optional... it's for taste, if you want it sweeter add this, if it's sweet enough, leave it out all together)

Directions
This does have to have some direction to it as you need to make sure the stuff blends well so I'll give you my way/version. First place strawberries in ice crushing ability style blender, then banana, then pour in the orange juice. You need to use at least some orange juice as the liquid for this or it won't blend but I will say this, use as much or as little as you wish to change how thick or thin you want it. I like it kind of in between so I add about a cup worth. Then add the yoghurt. Usually with store bought strawberries, they tend to be a bit bitter so I also add the 2tsp honey to mine, add this right on top of the yoghurt but make sure it's the end product because otherwise it will stick to every thing except get blended into the smoothie.

Cover properly, pulse a few times and then blend for about a minute. Serve how ever you'd like, I prefer a pretty purple cup that I bought specially for my smoothies (insert pamper yourself thought) and enjoy! It's great for hot summer mornings as a good 'gotta run but need something' style breakfast but it also great as a snack or even a side to lunch.

Don't forget that smoothies can be made any style and with almost any mix of ingredients and as long as you stay away from the more odd things like wheat germ, you are almost promised a naturally gluten free treat.