Breakfast Quesadillas

These are a favorite quick breakfast dish of mine.  You can play around with it, adding and subtracting ingredients to your liking.  I love the addition of green peppers and mushrooms.  

Breakfast Quesadilla

1 teaspoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
1/4 cup cooked ham, diced
2 eggs, beaten with 2 teaspoons of milk and a dash of salt and pepper
1/2 cup shredded cheese (in this particular quesadilla I used a Mexican Blend)
2 flour tortillas (I love La Torilla Factory's low carb ones- so good and super soft)

Heat the olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat.  Add the onion and sauté until softened and become translucent.  Add the ham to the pan.   Pour in the beaten eggs and scramble, combining the onions and ham with the eggs.  Remove from the heat.

Since I like these very much, and enjoy having them for breakfast on a regular basis, I found that baking them in the oven results in a nice melty quesadilla minus the extra fat from frying them in a pan with butter.

Lay both tortillas on a cookie sheet and divide the egg mixture on half of each of the tortilla's.  Sprinkle cheese on top and fold the empty half of the tortilla over.  Bake in the oven until the bottom of the tortilla is crisp.  Carefully flip and bake an additional 2 minutes or until cheese is melted and the other side of the tortilla is crispy.  Cut in half and serve with a dollop of salsa or sour cream.

Mirepoix Pork Chops

Mirepoix is such a lovely word, isn't it? Pronounced "meer-pwah", is a French word for sautéing carrots, onions and celery together. These aromatics, considered the "Holy Trinity" in French cuisine is the basis for hundreds of French dishes and many others throughout the world. There isn't much that smells better then these three ingredients (except for maybe bacon...mmmm).  I myself use mirepoix as a basic ingredient for tons of stuff; soups, stews, spaghetti sauces, etc.  But this is my favorite way to use and truly have it as the show of the dish, not just hidden in the background.

Mirepoix Pork Chops

Basic Mirepoix Recipe
1 cup diced white onion
1/2 cup diced carrot
1/2 cup diced celery
When dicing the separate ingredients, try to make the dices as small and uniform as possible, both because it is aesthetically more pleasing and because the small pieces will cook more uniformly.

Sautéed Pork Chops
4 inch thick center-cut pork chops (bone in or boneless)
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste
1 1/2 teaspoons butter
1 1/2 teaspoons olive oil or vegetable oil

Heat oil and butter in a large skillet over high heat. Add pork chops and brown for 1 minute.  Turn and brown for 1 minute more. Reduce the heat to low, cover pan, and cook the pork chops for 5 minutes (4 minutes for boneless). Turn the chops, cover the pan again, and cook for 5 minutes more (4 if boneless). They will be well browned on the outside and slightly pink in the center.

Remove to a platter and top each pork chop with the mirepoix. Serve immediately.

Millie's Whole Wheat Challah

In the 3 1/2 months that I have been weekly baking bread from scratch, this has become our all time favorite recipe.  It is super moist, slices wonderfully for sandwiches,  and makes delicious toast.  I have done it as white and whole wheat and we love it both ways equally.  Since whole wheat is better for us, I have been doing that more often.  If you want to substitute the whole wheat for white bread, all you do is use all white flour!  Simple as pie. Or, ermm bread....

Millie's Whole Wheat Challah

4 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons honey (I have also used maple syrup when I was out of honey and it worked wonderfully!)

2 extra large eggs

3/4 cup water

2 cups unbleached white flour

1 cup whole wheat pastry flour

1 1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

2 1/2 teaspoons yeast

Place all ingredients in the machine, program for Bread, Basic White Bread, Whole Wheat, Basic Wheat Whole Wheat/Multigrain, White/Whole Grain, or Wheat and press Start or On.  You can bake this in the machine for a high, domed loaf or do it by hand in the traditional braid.  

Out of convenience I always just let it bake in the bread machine, but one of these times I will finish it in the oven so it looks pretty all braided up.  But it always raises to nicely I just haven't bothered yet.