Egg Muffins

In my mind, I'm still the girl who wakes up at 4 am to work out, eat breakfast, and has plenty of time to get ready before heading out the door to the office at 8.

In reality, I'm the mom who never gets enough sleep. Who still gets woken up by my daughter many nights every week. Who needs the precious extra sleep between the hours of 4 and 6 am, and goes into the office an hour earlier than pre-baby, so I can leave an hour earlier. So in reality, I have very little time to actually get ready. Throw in a little person pulling at my leg, and running around while I'm trying to get dressed, and I'm always scrambling to get out the door on time. And I never have time for breakfast.

Since breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and I will eat my entire lunch by 10am if I do not manage to eat something by 8, I had to face reality and figure out a new, paleo friendly solution. Enter the scrambled egg muffin. I was inspired by a recipe in Every Day Paleo. And let me tell you these babies are good! And they freeze well. And for something based on eggs, they have enough veggies that they aren't too "eggy". I was able to make a batch of 18 on Sunday afternoon while Hailey napped, and will have breakfast through next week.

Here's my version of the recipe:

10 eggs whisked well
2 zucchini
3 cups kale
1/2 a cup jarred roasted red peppers
1 lb COOKED breakfast sausage (check the label to make sure it's paleo)
pepper to taste (I used about a tablespoon)

Preheat oven to 350 and grease (I used olive oil) muffin pan(s) (recipe makes 18)

In a food processor throw in the zucchini and jarred peppers and process until finely chopped. Add chopped veggies to your eggs, along with the cooked sausage. Throw the kale into the processor, chop and add to your eggs. Mix the egg mixture well.

Put 1/4 cup of egg into each greased muffin cup.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the eggs are set in the middle.

I eat 2 every morning. You can mix out the meat (bacon for example), and the veggies. Some recipes out there call for frozen spinach instead of fresh (or kale like I used), but I found it makes the cupcakes too soggy.

Meal Plan Monday-errr Tuesday

The long weekend has me off on dates, so this is posted a day late. Inspired by http://onceamonthmom.com/ I'm trying to cook more in one sitting and lesss during the week. While I'm still doing my own menus/meal plans and doing it on a weekly basis I'm aiming to have more frozen left overs during the week.

Yesterday I doubled my recipe and froze half the pork chops, I plan to incorporate them next week (making a stir-fry maybe?). Tonight's chicken will be shredded and frozen for chicken soup next week. And you'll see a lot of our meals this week are leftovers from last week.

Monday - skillet pork chops with carmelized onions and apples
Tuesday - Whole Chicken in Slow Cooker and sweet potato "fries"
Wednesday- Left over chicken leg adobo from last week, with cauliflower "rice"
Thursday - Left over chili (note - when buying dried peppers, it's probably a good idea to check the heat index online, because this stuff was SPICY)
Friday- Zuchini Spaghetti with left over sauce
Saturday - Shrimp tacos (in lettuce instead of tortillas)
Sunday - Stuffed Roasted Eggplant

Getting Back on Track

Most of my readers already know my family suffered a huge loss on January 21, when my brother (Honolulu Police Officer Garret Davis) was killed in the line of duty. The subsequent days and weeks were a whirlwind of traveling, visitors and funerals. We are so grateful to everyone who brought food so we did not have to worry about cooking. But three weeks of eating lots of gluten and dairy took their toll.

This Monday, I went back to work and we've started to try to get back to our normal routines. This means getting back to clean, whole food, and to this blog.

Just two days back in and I already feel much better (health wise) than I did on Sunday. I'm only 10 lbs from my goal weight, so my goals are shifting from pure weight-loss, to shaving minutes off my 5k time.