A Month-of-Eggs: Peppered Eggs

Egg Baked in Bell Pepper

Here’s another eggs-baked-in-veggies recipe. For this one, you can have some holiday fun. Use red bell peppers for Valentine’s Day, green for St. Patrick’s Day, and red and green for Christmas. Yellow might be for New Year’s Day brunch. Too bad there aren’t white and blue peppers to go with the red, right?

Peppered Eggs (serves 1 or 2)

2 eggs, small or medium

½ cup baby kale, divided

½ cup Asiago cheese, divided

½ cup leftover rice, barley, or quinoa (see NOTE), divided

Cut the pepper in half through the middle to make the egg cups. I cut long ways, but it works cutting through the “belly”, too.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Put a liner on your cookie sheet (parchment paper or Silpat).

Place the pepper halves on the cookie sheet and put into the oven for about 5 minutes. Remove from oven and reduce heat to 375 degrees.

Crack the eggs into two small containers for easy addition to the peppers.

Stack the kale leaves on top of one another. Roll up and slice into ribbons.

Drain the liquid that was released from the peppers. Return to cookie sheet and put half the rice/barley/quinoa in the bottom of each pepper half.

Top your carb with kale ribbons and the cheese.

Make a nest for the egg by creating an indentation in the center of each pepper. Pour an egg into each center and bake for about 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and serve immediately.

NOTE: Fill the pepper with leftover cooked rice, barley or quinoa. I used my kale and quinoa recipe but you can use regular cooked quinoa. I would suggest spicing up the leftover rice, barley, or quinoa with tarragon to give it some oomph.

DH’s Rating: 3 Tongues Up   He’s never been a fan of cooked bell peppers, and this recipe didn’t win him over. It was fine, he said, but he won’t ask for it again. The next morning he said he still felt full! Is that good or bad??? And it had kale. I used baby kale because it isn’t so bitter, but he still isn’t a fan.

A Month-of-Eggs: Quinoa with Eggs and Other Good Stuff

While having brunch at a chain restaurant recently (The Good Egg), I was intrigued by, and ordered, a bowl of fancied up quinoa topped with eggs. Yummers! And talk about hearty not to mention so good for you.

I didn’t get their recipe, but here is my take on the dish. I served this for dinner one night and it was a hit! A vegetarian main dish that no will one notice is missing the meat. DH does not like kale, but, teehee, he didn’t even notice it was kale. Or if he did, he thought it was spinach ‘cause I dump that into a lot of my recipes.

Quinoa with Eggs and Other Good Stuff (serves 4)

1 cup quinoa

2 cups vegetable broth

1 tablespoon butter

1 cup mushrooms, cut into chunks

3 green onions, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

½ cup tomatoes, chopped (or use sun-dried tomatoes)

1 large handful kale, chopped into chunks

8 eggs, sunny side up or soft-poached

4 tablespoons Asiago cheese

Rinse the quinoa per package instructions. [very important step]

Put rinsed quinoa in sauce pan with 2 cups of broth. Bring to a boil and then lower the heat to simmer. It should be done in 15-20 minutes. When done, the quinoa will have a gelatinous look, like tiny eyeballs.

While quinoa is simmering, melt the butter in a skillet. Add mushrooms, onions, garlic, and tomatoes. and stir until tomatoes are softening and the mushrooms are tender. Immediately add the kale and mix together thoroughly.

Remove from heat and prepare the eggs the way you like them. We like them soft and runny, but if you’re a hard egg person, cook them that way.

When the eggs are almost done, stir veggies into the quinoa. Put one cup (or so) of quinoa mixture on a plate or large flat bowl. Sprinkle on a tablespoon of cheese on each dish. Top with eggs and serve.

This goes great with corn muffins and a fruit salad.

NOTE: It is really important to rinse off the coating nature puts on quinoa or you will end up with a bitter dish.

Of course, you can substitute chicken or beef broth just as easily as the vegetable broth. Some use no broth and just use water.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up   “I feel so healthy.” Smart aleck. But he did like this dish and said I should make it again. Since it was just the two of us, I had leftover quinoa mixture which will be a side with salmon later this week!