Cooking Corner with Suz C: Not Your Egg McMuffin

Weekends are my days for running errands and one of them is food shopping. So this morning I got up early and did an inventory of my refrigerator. I found a wealth of items that were begging me to use them before they went bad. I felt my creative juices flowing and I was in the mood for a breakfast other than toast which is all I manage before I am speeding out the door to get to work.

I just bought a Texas Muffin tin. This makes a double size muffin which was exactly what I was aiming for this morning. I decided to make Egg Muffins. Not Egg Mcmuffins just egg muffins. They are basically a quiche without the crust so they are more portable. You can eat them on the go and they aren't crumbly because there is no crust.

Here are my ingredients (keep in mind I am using what is left in my fridge)

1 medium onion finely chopped

6 Mini sweet peppers (it just so happens that I had three red, one orange, and two yellow. I think they add nice color as well as flavor) finely chopped

4 Baby bella mushrooms finely chopped

6 Eggs

1 cup half and half

2 hamburger rolls

6 ounces of grated Swiss cheese

Herbs de Provence about a tsp

2 Sprigs of fresh thyme

1 Sprig of fresh oregano

salt and pepper to taste ( I use that phrase with hesitation because it is an incredibly vague cooking term. What that means to me is a very light sprinkling of salt. We watch sodium in my house. And a more generous helping of black pepper, two to three turns of the pepper mill.)

I sautéed the onions first. Once they started to turn translucent I added the peppers and mushrooms and sautéed them all for another two minutes or so. I added all the herbs to the onion mix as well as the salt and pepper. Usually I would have put the herbs into the egg mixture but I changed my mind and added them to the onion mix. (Glad that I did I found that the herbs blended better and the final product tasted better.)

While they were sautéing I cut the hamburger rolls into small pieces. You don't have to use hamburger rolls. I used them because they were leftover and they looked so lonely. In a bowl I mixed the egg and milk.

To assemble the muffin I divided the hamburger rolls evenly between the 6 muffins. I added cheese to each muffin and then divided the onion mixture between the six. Lastly I ladled the egg mix evenly over the six and baked the muffins in a preheated 350 degree oven until they were cooked all the way through about thirty minutes.

My husband was my taster and his words were that the dish was well crafted and tasted delicious. He can be my food critic anytime. This morning there was only the two of us so I placed most of them in a container for another day and as a test I placed one in the freezer to see how well it would do. If they freeze well I plan to make a batch on the weekend to grab on my way out the door. I won't give up my toast everyday cause I have come to love it but one or two says a week it is nice to have a change. Hope you like the dish.