The Food Desert Project - Make-Ahead Breakfasts

Per my earlier post this week, I thought I would make ahead a few quick, healthy breakfasts and see how they were.  Sparky and I had spent a lazy evening cuddled on the couch, watching Julia and Jacques cook eggs, so I decided to steal liberally from both their methods of making an omelette.  I'm no Julia Child, so knowing mine wouldn't be quite as graceful, I cracked five eggs into the blender (I find the blender is the best beginning for any kind of mixed-egg preparation) and got to work.

After the eggs had blended fluffy, I heated some butter in a nonstick skillet, and when it was sizzling, I poured in the eggs.  As I'd seen Julia do, I shook the skillet vigorously back and forth so that the cooked eggs "broke" and the runny eggs seeped underneath.

As I'm not as skilled with technique, when the eggs started to set, I used a spatula to begin rolling the omelet towards me until it could go no further - then I pushed the whole thing backwards and rolled it onto itself so I had a nice, neat tube of fluffy cooked eggs.

This I divided into six parts: two rounds for the breakfast sandwiches and four oblong slices for the breakfast burritos.  The remainder of the prep was easy:


Breakfast burrito:

1 small flour tortilla
1 spoonful fat-free refried beans
1 portion omelette, cut in half
1 lowfat string-cheese stick, split (or half a cheese stick)
1 spoonful jarred salsa (we used a green salsa which worked very well)

Assembly was simple, I set the tortilla on a large square of plastic wrap, spread the tortilla with beans and piled the rest on.  Then I simply rolled up the tortilla (I didn't bother closing the top and bottom as my tortillas were a bit thicker than I realized when I bought them - but this was an asset in the final product) inside the plastic wrap until it was well sealed, and tossed it in the freezer.

Breakfast sandwich

1 English muffin (I used whole-grain)
1 round portion omelette, cut in two slices
1 slice cheese (we used cheddar)
1 slice ham

Before assembly, I had to trim both the ham and the cheese to fit in the English muffin, but otherwise this was a simple enough task.  Like the burritos, this was wrapped with plastic wrap and tossed in the freezer.

I'm no fan of microwaved foods, so my preference for reheating these meals is the toaster oven.  After unwrapping, I set the burrito on the baking sheet seam-side down (you may want to consider wrapping your burrito in aluminum foil instead of plastic wrap - you can just toss the whole thing in the toaster oven without a baking sheet.) and the sandwich as-is, for twenty minutes on medium heat.  If expediency is more important to you than texture, you can microwave these as well - but please remove the plastic wrap first. (you can also do a combination - 60 seconds in the microwave and 2 minutes in the toaster oven on high heat.)

These turned out to be quite tasty - the burritos were a quite zesty pick-me up (our best taste tester - Sparky's Dad - mentioned the burrito was a bit cheesy for his taste,) and the sandwiches were crispy and gooey as they should be.  All in all, an excellent breakfast.