Breakfast for Dinner!

Growing up we ate pancakes for dinner fairly often. My favorite was the "pancake taco" (a pancake held taco shell style, filled with applesauce). Something about a warm, crispy crusted, soft pancake, filled with cold, sweet applesauce was irresistible for me. I still can't resist breakfast for dinner sometimes. Breakfast burrito night is a pretty common standard around here, and sometimes nothing but a good bacon or broccoli omelet will fulfill my dinnertime cravings. I have a standard brunch/breakfast casserole that I use pretty often when we have people over for brunch, but I just made it for dinner today, and it might be one of my new favorite breakfasts for dinner. Since you make it ahead of time you can assemble it in the morning before work, or even the night before, and then just pull it out of the refrigerator and bake it after work. All it really needs on the side is a bowl of fruit to make it a nice well-rounded meal. I use 1% milk and 2% cheese, so it's relatively non-bad for you (I feel that saying "good" for you might be going a bit far, so I'm going to stick with "non-bad"').

The original recipe I found on allrecipes.com called this a breakfast strata, and called for the ingredients to be layered. I've made it this way, which produces a creamy custard on the bottom, and a meaty-cheesy layer on the top. It's pretty good this way, but I prefer to un-strata it, and jumble the bread and sausage and cheese all together, so that you get creamy custardy bites intermingled with the cheese and sausage; and some of the bites of bread end up on top, so they get crunchy and golden brown. I think it has better texture all jumbled together, but hey, give it a shot both ways, you really can't mess this up. The recipe is also really flexible for adding different ingredients. You can substitute bacon or ham for the sausage, or even a mix of mushrooms and onions if you're making it for some veggie friends. You can also use different kinds of bread and different kinds of cheese to play with the flavors a little. And, on a sidenote, this is a rare dish that actual reheats quite well in the microwave, so you can easily have a tasty breakfast (for breakfast) the next morning.

Sausage and Egg Casserole

1 lb ground pork sausage
6 eggs
2 cups milk
2 cups shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 tsp onion salt
1/2 to 1 tsp italian seasoning (or dry mustard, or even paprika, whatever really, I'd go heavier on italian seasoning, closer to 1/2 tsp on the other two)

Crumble and cook sausage in a large skillet over medium heat until well-browned, drain any extra grease. Cut the slices of bread into cubes. Lightly grease a large casserole pan (I used an oval 2.8 liter pan which works perfectly, but I think a 9x13 would work too, you'd just have to watch it a little because it might cook faster). Toss the bread cubes, 2/3 of the cheese, and the sausage together in the pan. Then sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the top of the mixture.

In a medium bowl slightly beat the eggs, then beat in the milk and seasonings. Pour this mixture over the pan of sausage, bread, and cheese, trying to saturate all portions pretty evenly.

Cover the pan with foil and refrigerate at least 8 hours, or overnight.

Half an hour prior to baking remove the pan from the fridge to rest on the counter. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Bake (uncovered) for 50-60 minutes, or until the casserole puffs up slightly and the cheese on the top is golden brown. Let rest for 5-10 minutes after removing from the oven, then enjoy!