a bean counter's food blog
Last weekend, I posted a super simple super quick recipe for the Ahmygawd Breakfast Sandwich.
Today, I made a repeat of that masterpiece with the addition of some Frank’s Red Hot:
I swear to you, this breakfast sandwich is eyes-roll-into-the-back-of-your-head delicious.
If you are a yolk lover like me (and a sausage lover for that matter) do yourself a favor and make this for breakfast. Immediately!
Stats on the life changer: 255 calories, 24g carbs, 10g fat, 20g protein, 3g fiber
Yesterday morning, I was the picture of perfection and actually woke up at the time I had intended and did NOT sleep through my alarm for a solid hour. Let’s hope I can keep this up all week!
I rolled out of bed, and headed straight to the gym for a 30 minute round-and-round on the hamster wheel… elliptical. Then, straight from the gym (in all my sweaty glory) to the grocery store to buy all my foods for the week. Silly me forgot to pack a Luna bar or nourishment of any variety for my grocery conquest.
Bad news bears.
Needless to say, I was FAMISHED by the time I got home, and I was unfortunately facing a dilemma. Issue #1: I wanted eggs. Hot and dippy with ooey gooey smooth-as-butter yolk. Issue #2: I was also craving sausage…. as in Mary’s special eggs. I wanted yolk, but I wanted sausage. And I’m not talking sausage on the side. I’m talking sausage all up in my yolk.
It was at this precise moment that I concocted my PERFECT breakfast sandwich. The best of both of my worlds.
The Ahmygawd Breakfast Sandwich.
First, I sautéed half of a Honeysuckle Hot Turkey Sausage link (casing removed) in a pan:
Hello sausage! Ima eat you.
THEN I cracked an egg right on top of this mound of sausage:
The egg white dribbled down around the sausage and formed a glue to hold the whole shebang together. Once the underside was cooked, I flipped her over:
Whattttttt????? Insane.
And once that side was cooked (though not TOO cooked –we’re going for oozy yolk here) I slid the egg/sausage combo onto a toasted whole wheat English muffin:
World = Rocked.
Ah.my.gawd.
Stats on the life changer: 255 calories, 24g carbs, 10g fat, 20g protein, 3g fiber
What you’ll need:
This time of year, my absolute favorite thing to make for my work-week lunches is soup. I’m sure you all can relate to the need to feed your belly warm comforting foods once winter weather rolls in. Unfortunately, the last few soups I’ve tried haven’t been very exciting. I made a chicken taco soup and came to the realization that corn just needs to stay on the cob and keep the heck out of my soup bowl. I also made chicken pot pie soup. I love chicken pot pie… but the best part of the pot pie is the flaky crust and by turning the pot pie into a pot pieless soup I had effectively cooked up a big batch of blah.
So, I’ve been searching high and low for a new soup to try and finally came across a promising recipe for White Bean Soup with Kale and Chorizo in the November 2010 issue of Cooking Light. It sounded pretty darn delicious to me, and even though I’d never tried Kale I figured I’d give it a shot.
I’ve never had chorizo either (though I’m sure I’d love it), and I happened to have some leftover Honeysuckle Hot Italian Turkey sausage I wanted to use up… So the starting point for my soup was two of these links:
I used a knife to remove the casings on the sausage, then tossed them into a soup pot that I’d heated up over a medium high flame and sprayed down with some cooking spray.
I let the sausage do it’s thang for a bit, stirring occasionally. No need to worry about the hard brown bits on the bottom of the pan – these will turn into little nuggets of flavor in just a bit:
Once the sausage was no longer pink, I added four large cloves of minced garlic along with my beloved onion:
I seasoned this mixture up with some S&P.
I would have been more than happy (elated, actually) to have eaten this simple combo for dinner…
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t grab a spoon and savor a few bites of the sausage onion goodness straight out of the pot. Heaven!
Once the onions were nice and soft, I added about 1 cup of fat-free low sodium chicken broth to the pan and used a wooden spoon to sort of “massage” the brown bits off the bottom of the pan.
Work it….. Wooorkkkkk ittttttt. 
Then I tossed in the rest of the stock in a box (approx 3 more cups), 2 cans drained and rinsed cannellini beans, and another 1/2 tsp black pepper:
I let the soup jive on the stove for a bit, while I got to tackling the kale monster in my sink:
I’ve never had kale before. For those of you who haven’t had it—it’s kind of like broccoli and spinach had a baby… A really large overgrown baby who was a little rough around the edges. You follow? 
Luckily, my years of dedicated Rachael Ray 30 Minute Meals watching had trained me how to handle this kale monster.
Once the kale was ready, I dropped about 6 cups into the soup:
I gave it a good stir and let the hot soup wilt down the kale:
One nice thing about kale is it doesn’t get super mooshy and limp in soup like spinach does (not that I don’t love spinach in soup – the kale just adds some welcomed texture to the pot).
Once the kale was worked in, I popped a lid on the pot and let it simmer away for 15 minutes or so while I cleaned up the kitchen.
And dinner was served my friends!
I topped my soup off with 1 teaspoon of shredded parmesan cheese:
This pot of soup made 5 good-size servings, which was plenty for me because I wanted to have some ciabatta for dunking!
If you wanted your bowl to overfloweth with soup – well, then I’d say the pot serves 4.
Regardless of how many people the pot is serving, this pot SERVES it up. DELICIOUS, EASY, AND HEALTHY! That’s the trifecta in my book!
Now the only test remaining is how well this soup freezes… stayed tuned on that!
Sausage, Kale, and White Bean Soup Ingredients List:
Stats on 1/5 of the pot o’ soup: 236 Calories, 38g carbs, 4g fat, 20g protein, 10g fiber
It’s no secret that I love eggs for breakfast. Every. Day.
Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to whip myself up some eggs before work every day, so I like to cook a big ole batch on Sunday night. I was getting a little burnt out on my normal scrambled eggs and broccoli (not to mention the fact that my coworkers were getting sick of the broccoli stinking up the microwave), so I decided to switch things up a bit.
And so evolved Mary’s Special Eggs!
For a 5-serving batch, I start off with 2 links Jennie O’ Hot Turkey Sausage, casings removed. I pop those into a hot skillet and cook until no longer pink while crumbling with a spatula.
Once the sausage is finished cooking, I remove it from the pan and set aside while I get to work on the veggies.
In the same skillet (which should still be hot), toss in
Season these guys up with salt and pepper, and let them cook over medium heat until soft.
Meanwhile, get to crackin the eggs. For 5 servings I go with:
Give those a good whisk. The onions and mushrooms should be softened up by now and looking oh so tasty.
At that point, you pour on the egg mixture:
Season these up with S&P, and as the eggs begin to cook, use your spatula to scrape the cooked eggs off the bottom of the pan. Continue this process until the eggs are nearly cooked through,
then toss in the cooked turkey sausage:
And some more veggies!
Into the pan:
Then I just use the spatula to fold everything in and finish cooking the eggs through:
Soooo yummy.
Once the eggs are done cooking I divide them up into 5 containers—and there’s Breakfast #1 for the workweek!
I like to break my breakfasts up into 2 small breakfasts rather than one large meal, so I typically follow the eggs up with a serving of oatmeal about 2 hours afterward. On the weekends I like to take a serving of the eggs, pop them on a low carb tortilla with some Franks Red Hot, and give them a nice grill on the George Foreman. Trust me, it’s one delicious (HEALTHY!) breakfast burrito!
Stats on 1 Servings of my Special Eggs: 189 Calories, 9g carbs, 9g fat, 23g protein, 1g fiber
Every time I think of New Orleans, I hear the Zatarain’s rice commercial in my head. You know… Zatarain’s! (Said with much sass and flavor while jazz music wails in the background). Even before my trip to the Big Easy, I had this funny mental quirk.
This thought popped into my head tonight when I began to think about what to make for dinner. I was presented with the following challenge: what do you make when you’ve got leftover meats out the wazoo?
JAMBALAYA of course! It seems like ages since I last made Jambalaya! Well at least four months anyway. I had some chicken leftover from last week’s lunch and the turkey sausage was leftover from my Zuppa Tuscana…
Lucky for me, I keep frozen shrimp in the freezer at all times in case of emergency. So whipping together a 3-meat entre was easy peasy tonight!
3 meats, one dish:
The meats were ready to roll, so I heated the oven up to 400 degrees and got to choppin 2 roma tomatoes, 1/2 a white onion, and 1 green pepper:
I tossed the veggies into a bowl with:
I gave everything a good toss, then added:
I intended on using 1.5 cups of brown rice, but I ran out! Ooops! That’s what happens when I grocery shop without taking inventory first! Dangit!
I divided the mix up evenly among three foil packets that I had sprayed down with some nonstick cooking spray:
One for my dinner, one for my lunch, and one for the BF’s lunch because I’m clearly dabomb.com. 
I popped the packets into the oven for 30 minutes, and VOOOOILLLAAA!
Oh so spicy, and ohhhhh so delicious!
Yes, the jambalaya we had in New Orleans (and again) was a teensy bit tastier than my healthified version, but I’d like to see NOLA try and stack up to these stats:
Stats on 1 serving: 314 calories, 33g carbs, 9g fat, 27g protein, 3g fiber 
Jambalaya Ingredients List (serves 3):