Quick and Easy Mashed Potato Pancakes

Last year Isla was a newborn for St. Patrick's Day, so I didn't cook and we didn't celebrate. Now that she's a toddler I wanted to have some fun and cook the traditional Irish-American corned beef and cabbage with a couple sides. This resulted in too many mashed potatoes for a family of three. I like to make leftovers a little different the next day, and these potato pancakes were a fun way of changing up the meal from the previous night. Best part is you can fry a bunch up, then reheat the leftovers the next morning with scrambled eggs. Yum!

Breakfast for Dinner: Polenta and Asparagus

Lately I haven't been cooking. Between waiting on the baby to come "any day now" and going out to see friends, cooking has been pushed to the back burner. Last night I made a quick and easy dinner that was vegetarian and filling. If you're unfamiliar with polenta, it's essentially corn porridge. You can make it yourself with corn meal, water, cheese, and butter plus whatever else you'd like to add. I like to buy the rolls of polenta. It's already cooked and packaged, all you have to do is slice it and cook it up!

Spinach, Bacon, and Mushroom Breakfast Quesadillas

My hubby and I call breakfast for dinner "brinner," and it's one of our favorite things to make. It's usually quick and easy. You can just do toast and eggs, or pancakes and omelets. We decided to get fancy and make some gourmet quesadillas. I ended up making a ton of food, which we ate. All of it. No shame. 

Poached Eggs & Asparagus

I've been seeing this all over the food blogging world lately. Spring is the absolute perfect season to buy asparagus. It's so vibrant, crisp, and full of flavor. The combination of creamy eggs with crisp asparagus is to die for, especially when sprinkled with freshly grated parmesan cheese!

Oeufs en Cocotte (Eggs in a Ramekin)

Some of you may already know that I'm a big fan of Julia Child, as well as amazing French foods. I don't cook enough French food, mainly because of the time and unhealthy aspects of butter and certain meats, but I've been trying to do more French cooking lately. I love this dish because it's simple, and you can make it as healthy and as fancy as you want.

Eggs for Dinner

There are some nights where the leftovers have gone away and it's too late to eat anything too heavy like delicious Mexican fast food bean tostadas mmmmm. These are the nights when hubs and I turn to eggs for dinner. Okay, I wont lie. Sometimes we just want eggs for dinner because they're so yummy!

No Excuses Breakfast

Give this simple and easy breakfast a shot, I'll even prove how awesome it is by listing the nutritional information.

• 286 calories
• 11.5 grams fat
• 15.7 grams protein
• 31.9 grams carbohydrates
• 8.3 grams fiber

Croque Monsieur

I'm sure as you all know by now, breakfast is my favorite. I hate getting up early to make it, but something like this is well worth the 2 cups of coffee to get me going! Croque Monsieur (crunchy mister) is a classic French sandwich made easily with Dijon mustard, bread, ham, Gruyere cheese, and butter. There are many ways to make this dish but I wanted to stick with the easy and traditional way for breakfast. To make it more of a breakfast item and less of a lunch or dinner meal I left the sandwiches open and served them with fried eggs. This sandwich can be made elaborately with a bechamel sauce and Gruyere blend. I've also seen them with cheese over the bread to get nicely brown and crunchy. Traditional is usually best in my book, so I stuck with simple grated cheese. Please, no bechamel sauce-making at 7 am.

Now I didn't have any Dijon, so I made up a batch of spicy honey mustard last night. For that, which is quite simple, you only need a few household items that I'm sure are in your pantry. The trick with mustard is letting is sit out. If you mix up the water and ground mustard and stick a spoonful in your mouth it will knock you on your ass. It's serious business. I was perched over a mixing bowl with watery eyes and cleared nasal passages while I was whipping this up. Unfortunately I didn't have a week for it to sit out and mellow before transferring it to the fridge, so it sat out on the counter overnight and then mixed a spoonful of the spicy mustard with plain yellow French's mustard to mellow it out.

Cheddar Bacon Pancakes

This meal was inspired from the S & W Country Diner where I had breakfast with my sister. She said the "bacon and cheddar waffles" were to die for. I was game, so we gave it a shot. We also ordered a side of hash browns (J loves them), a fried egg for each of us, and a side of tomato slices. We had to get a little healthy color going on the plates ;-)

Brinner Scramble

Here's an incredibly simple and healthy recipe for a delicious breakfast or brinner. I love me some brinner. It's good stuff, and basically because who has time to make breakfast?! Why not make the best meal of the day at night! Especially when it's this simple. Grab your skillet and lets get cooking!