Growing up, I went through phases when it came to breakfast. As a small child, it was my favorite meal of the day. My usual dinner requests were for scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes, waffles, or French toast — never all at the same time, obviously — and my mother was only ever happy to oblige, as breakfast is probably the easiest meal of the day to cook. I can still remember with great sadness the first time my father took me to a McDonald’s for lunch and the oil-slicked teenager who apathetically informed us we were too late for breakfast.

There were many such incidents in my life. Luckily, growing up in New Jersey means there’s a plethora of diners within driving distance from any place you might be, and most diners serve at least some breakfast foods 24/7.

It was sometime in my early, precocious pre-teen years that my love of breakfast began to wane, and by the time I was in high school, I’d forgotten the meal all together. I usually slept well past the point of breakfast or brunch on weekends, and at some point, I’d decided that all cooked eggs smell rotten, all pancakes are fattening. The entire point of breakfast was lost, until my senior year of high school when my best friend and I would arrive at school half an hour early for cream cheese and bagels washed down with a bottle of Surge.

Still, without Nanette’s presence to share in chewy, bagel goodness, I usually declined breakfast — or slept right through it.

My sophomore year of college, I again began to explore the idea of breakfast as the perfect compliment to a night of boozing; eating eggs after a particularly drunken evening is still a ritual I carry to this day, and I will — without exception — always wake up craving eggs after a particularly rough night. But it really wasn’t until this past year that I began to look forward to the weekend as a time when I could begin cooking breakfast for my husband and myself, looking forward to the same eggs, chicken sausage, pancakes, waffles, and French toast I loved as a child.

Which brings me to the subject of pancakes.

As far back as I can remember, pancakes came from a box. My grandmother actually started this tradition; completely and utterly impressed by the awesome, newfangled contraption that is a microwave, my first pancakes came out of a little red box from the freezer. They were always perfectly round and uniformly colored golden brown, thus setting an impossible standard for all subsequent pancakes to follow in the most purely superficial way. This being the 1980s, however, microwave meals weren’t exactly at the height of quality — often, the pancakes came out completely uneven with tough rubbery edges and a center that still contained ice crystals.

When my mother quit full-time employment and rescued me from my grandmother’s obsession with microwave foods, I didn’t fare much better. My mother’s first response to pancakes — or anything requiring a flour base — was “Is there a Bisquick recipe for it?” From shortcakes to coffee cake, pancakes to waffles, if that horrible yellow box said it could be done, it would be done. For years, in my mind, most bread and cake-like products had the distinctive baking powder taste of Bisquick.

Then, in the late eighties and early nineties, there was a new invention — shelf-stabilized liquid pancake batter. All my mother had to do was go into a supermarket and grab a yellow bottle marked “Pancake Batter” and she could squeeze out perfectly round (though not perfectly cooked) pancakes for me whenever I wanted them.

It was around this time, I’m sure by pure coincidence, that I stopped eating breakfast.

For the longest time, once I began to rediscover the joys of eating in the morning, I too fell into the trap of the instant pancake batter — especially Wegman’s store brand, which was as simple as adding water and cooking. I could get up, pour a cup of water into two cups of box batter, and have more pancakes than you could ever dream of within ten minutes or so. Sure, they weren’t as good as diner pancakes, but they weren’t has horribly powdery as Bisquick, and by adding water to a powder mix, it sure felt like actual, geniuine cooking.

But then, one day, there was no pancake mix — we’d used it all and hadn’t had a chance to buy any more. I stared at some eggs in the fridge, wondering if those would help me make pancakes, completely unsure of what ingredients were required in pancake making, and whether or not homemade pancakes could be created that were fluffy, golden, and wonderful without any kind of batter.

I closed the refrigerator door and cracked open my copy of New Cook Book (Better Homes and Gardens Test Kitchen) and was dismayed. The recipe only called for one egg (which was a relief, since I only had two in the fridge,) but it also required an entire cup of milk — which I had, but that would leave me without milk for my coffee.

Frustrated, I turned to the only other source I could think of in such desperate times: Vegan with a Vengeance

This, kids, is why you should have at least one vegan cookbook in your home — and if you only get one, please make it this one! Even if you’re not into sustainable eating, even if you’re a meat-and-potatoes kind of household, there will come a day when you need to make pancakes or cupcakes or just a side dish to go with the steak and potatoes you’re doing, and you won’t have an egg in the house. Or you’ll be out of milk. Or whatever. Only a vegan cookbook will save your ass now.

There are several things I learned from Vegan with a Vengeance about pancakes in general, thanks to Isa’s one and a half pages within the book dedicated to making perfect pancakes. The key, of course, is the gluten in the flour — when you add moisture and mix, the gluten binds together — over mix, and the gluten will become elastic (like when you kneed dough) and give you tough pancakes. If you don’t let the gluten rest and “relax” after mixing, it stays tightly bound together and doesn’t give you the lift you know and love in your pancakes. After reading the entire section a few times, I couldn’t wait to give these pancakes a try.

Were they good? Oh hell yes, they were good. While the cinnamon in the recipe is optional, I added it anyway and can’t imagine pancakes without it.

Pancakes

Ingredients
• 1 1/4 c. flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
• 2 tbsp canola oil
• 1/3 c. water
• 1 to 1 1/4 c. plain rice or soy milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp maple syrup

Instructions
1. Oil a large skillet and preheat over medium-high heat about two minutes
2. Sift together flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon, if using. In a separate bowl, combine all other ingredients. Adding wet ingredients to dry mix, mix until just combined. Do not overmix.
3. Unofficial 3rd step I’ve added: Let mixture rest ten minutes — during this step, I preheat my skillet.
4. Cook pancakes until browned on the bottom and bubbles form on top, about 4 minutes. Turn the pancakes over and cook until the bottoms are browned and the pancakes are barely firm to the touch. Transfer to individual plates. Repeat with remaining batter, adding more oil to the pan as needed

Note: I usually transfer the pancakes to an oven-safe plate and keep them in a just-warm oven until I’ve finished cooking all the batter and am ready to serve.

Another tip from me to you: use an ice cream scoop to scoop out perfectly round pancakes. Just like the ones from the box!

It was a cold, rainy Saturday two weeks ago when I received three packages from Amazon.com in the mail: Green Day’s new album 21st Century Breakdown, Chuck Palahniuk’s novel Pygmy, and Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s new book Vegan Brunch: Homestyle Recipes Worth Waking Up For-From Asparagus Omelets to Pumpkin Pancakes. Guess which book I picked up and read through cover to cover almost immediately?

Now, honestly, I’m a kinda chubby girl who has an insatiable sweet tooth, one that calls my name softly in the middle of the night with dreams of cakes, cookies, and all sorts of very sugary things. Even breakfast cannot escape – I’m a huge fan of a giant stack of pancakes dripping with syrup on Saturday morning and a muffin, danish, or pastry when grabbing a weekday breakfast on the go. Naturally, I looked to Isa’s new book and immediately was captivated lovely food items in the sweet section of the book, and especially Banana Rabanada, which is parenthetically noted as “Brazillian French Toast”.

Now, I’ll be honest — I was that Girl Scout who always threw a tantrum about making French toast on our camping trips. The scout masters would bring with us eggs and milk and cinnamon, and I’d be the little girl pouting and crying to Mrs. Butterworth, the only person who loved me. There was something just dreadful about milk and eggs whipped up and bread soaked in that mixture and then thrown onto a hot skillet. There was always some little trail of egg that seeped out of the bread and onto the surface, leaving a yellow crust that tasted of fried egg and sour milk. Ick.

But this was different. For one, it’s vegan so there’s no fear of eggy-in-a-basket-ness to it, and second, the name! It’s called Banana Rabanada! Who could resist making something called “banana rabanada”? I know, I couldn’t. The name just calls to me, teases me, tells me “You know how much fun it’ll be to just say “banana rabanada” all day? A lot!”

Of course, because I’m never satisfied doing a recipe the right way, I made a minor modification. In Step 2, instead of putting my bread on a baking sheet, I put my slices in a casserole dish and poured the mixture over that, which completely covered all slices on both sides. I let my pieces sit for a total of 20 minutes per the instructions but didn’t need to flip. Since the slices soaked up most of the custard by the end of the twenty minutes, I’m guessing that 10 minutes total would have been sufficient; the extra time lead to a breakdown in the fibers of the bread, leading to a more bread pudding-like texture, which I LOVED. I’m sure the right way is fine too, though.

Banana Rabanada

From Vegan Brunch: Homestyle Recipes Worth Waking Up For-From Asparagus Omelets to Pumpkin Pancakes by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

INGREDIENTS
• 2 very ripe bananas
• 1 1/2 c. almond milk (I used soy)
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1 stale baguette, sliced diagonally in 1″ pieces (the book has very good instructions on how to do this for greater surface area)
• sliced strawberries and bananas for garnish

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Blend bananas, milk, cornstarch, and vanilla in a blender or food processor until smooth.
2. Spread out baguette slices in a single layer on a baking pan. Pour banana mixture onto the bread and flip slices to coat. Let sit for ten minutes, then flip over and let soak for 10 minutes more.
3. Prehead a large, nonstick skillet (cast ironed preferred) over medium heat. Spray with cooking spray and cook bread for 5 to 7 minutes on one side and about 3 on the other. When ready, the toast should be golden to medium brown and flecked with darker spots.

Confession time: food blogging is not my day job. Not only do I not make a dime testing other people’s recipes and posting my photos of them online, but I actually lose about $130 annually keeping this site up for your reading and viewing pleasure. But that’s okay, because I have a day job that can support that habit. That is, until the governor ordered all employees to take unpaid days off; the money I’m losing today, pre-taxes, is exactly the amount it takes to maintain this site for a year.

I’m not complaining, I’m just saying.

Of course, there is an upside to being furloughed today, namely that I got to crack open my brand-spankin’ new copy of Isa Chandra Moskowitz’ newest book, Vegan Brunch: Homestyle Recipes Worth Waking Up For-From Asparagus Omelets to Pumpkin Pancakes. I received the book from Amazon a few days after it came out, and immediately was drawn to the idea of creating my own homemade bagels. Several other food bloggers have tried making their own bagels with varied amounts of success, and I thought to myself, what the hell, it’s my turn now — and if anyone knows how to make a good bagel, it’s going to be a Jewish girl from Brooklyn, so I’ve got a leg up on all those suckers!

Apparently, the secret to crispy on the outside, soft on the inside bagels is boiling. First, those little guys get boiled — at which point they plump up like a Ballpark hot dog — and then you bake them to a delicious golden brown. The whole process — including mixing, kneading, and rising time, is a large time investment for a morning breakfast, so I hadn’t actually tried the recipe, though it called to me from the moment I got the book.

However, on a furlough day, I had all the time in the world.

It was definitely worth the unpaid day off – the recipe made enough bagels for me to take to work for the next two weeks — all I had to do was slice the suckers in half once cool and then pop them into freezer baggies. Every morning, out of the baggie and into the toaster then went and mmmmm. Now, considering I’d been going to Panera Bread every morning for a toasted bagel with cream cheese at $2.50 a pop, and I now had ten days worth of breakfasts, my day off saved me $25.00.

Okay, it didn’t really make up for the money I lost, especially since later I went to IKEA for a new liquor cabinet, but I like to think it did. At the very least, it kept my mind off of the work I wasn’t doing and the money I wasn’t making, so that when I opened my paycheck a week later and saw the decrease in cash, it was a really nasty surprise.

Wait, I guess that isn’t a benefit of the recipe either.

Delicious bagels, I suppose, will have to be their own intrinsic reward. Oh, and I infused them with love and all that stuff.

Vegan Bagels

From Vegan Brunch: Homestyle Recipes Worth Waking Up For-From Asparagus Omelets to Pumpkin Pancakes by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

INGREDIENTS

• 3 tbsp sugar, divided
• 1 1/2 c. warm water
• 1 1/4 oz. pkg active dry yeast
• 4 cups flour (Ed Note: I used whole grain for a healthier bagel).
• 2 tbsp vital wheat gluten
• 2 tsp salt
• Poppy or sesame seeds (optional)
• Oil

INSTRUCTIONS
1. In a small bowl, dissolve 1 tbsp sugar in the warm water, then add yeast to proof.
2. In a large mixing bowl, combine other ingredients.
3. Add the yeast mixture and knead for a good ten minutes or so; the dough should be neither dry nor wet, but nicely tacky. (I used my trusty KitchenAid mixer with dough hook attachment).
4. Place dough in an oiled bowl (I sprayed mine with spray olive oil) and let sit for an hour or so.
5. Put a large pot of salted water on to boil and preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.
6. Turn dough out onto a dry surface and cut into 12 equal pieces. (Ed. Note: don’t worry if the pieces look small. They’ll plump in the water.)
7. Rol each piece into a ball, then use your thumbs to tuck the dough under until you polk a hole through the center, then work the hole until it’s roughly half-dollar sized.
8. Place the bagels on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper, cover with a damp towel, and wait for the water to boil
9. Once boiling, reduce to a gentle simmer and add three of the bagels – they should bob up to the surface in a few seconds; if they don’t, nudge them with a spoon until they unstick. Simmer for one minute, then flip them over and simmer for another minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and place them back on the baking sheet. Repeat with remaining bagels.
10. Place all bagels in the oven and bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until nice and amber brown, then remove and let sit for 30 minutes.

Wordpress ate this post. Boo-urns!

For the past few days, I’ve simply, flat-out refused to edit this entry in my great strike against WordPress for nomming my (admittedly “nom-able”) entry. Damn it. I typed out an entire long rant about my hatred of raisins, complete with pithy reference to my favorite children’s book of all time, and hit publish. Bam! The entry appeared, just like I wanted it to, so I toddled off to bed, satisfied that I’d done well and gotten a post up on time.

Except the next day, when I went to copy the formatting to post a new entry about Vegan With a Vengeance and muffins, guess what? No entry.

My rage was palpable.

Suffice to say, I’m over my anger and angst — having learned the message of “forgive and forget”, over time leads to forgetting more than just your anger but also the wording of the damn post WordPress ate. It went something like this:

When I was a child, night after night without fail, when my mother came to tuck me in and read me a story, I’d always have only one that came to mind: The Monster at the End of This Book (Starring Loveably, Furry, Old Grover). Grover was not my favorite Muppet — that honor was shared between Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch — but the book took full advantage of Grover’s two character features: adorableness and stupidity.

You see, Grover is meant to be your humble narrator through this lovely, fuzzy (like him!) children’s book. But as soon as he sees the title on the first page, he has a bit of a melt down. Because Grover is scared of monsters. Each page you turn brings you closer and closer to the end of the book, where there is guaranteed to be a monster, and Grover cannot let this happen. He ties, glues, nails, and bricks closed the pages. He begs and pleads and cries in vain attempts to convince you, dear reader, to stop turning pages because there is a MONSTER at the END of the book, and with each page turned, you bring yourself (and him) one step closer to the monster!

Luckily (as you may have deduced), what Grover has failed to realize is that he is the main character of the book and is, himself, a monster. Thus (SPOILER ALERT!) he, himself, is the titular monster. It wasn’t so scary after all!

It is with this sort of apprehension and panic run amok that I approached my goal of making every muffin recipe in Vegan with a Vengeance because like Grover, I have an exaggerated, irrational fear: raisins. I hate the damn things. And at the end of the section on muffins are two recipes: Carrot Raisin Muffins and Raisin Bran Muffins.

*gulp*

Momentarily, I felt like Grover and considered tying, gluing, nailing, or even bricking shut the pages dealing with raisins, so I could pretend they did not exist. And like Grover, as I worked my way through the book, toward those two horrifying pages, I could feel the dread washing over me. But unlike Grover, I could avoid the menace of Carrot Raisin muffins with one simple substitution: Crystallized Ginger.

>Crystallized Ginger is simply ginger root that’s been cured and coated with sugar. You can buy it, finely chopped, in the spice aisle in a small jar by McCormick or Spice Islands for $11 an ounce. Or, you can go into the Asian aisle and buy it in slices you finely chop it yourself for about $2 for the same amount. I usually buy a box of Asian Gourmet, but Ty Ling brand is the same, and you can buy that brand in bulk on Amazon.com.

Carrot Ginger Muffins

INGREDIENTS
• 1 1/2 c. flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 c. rice or soy milk
• 1/4 c. canola oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 c. grated carrots
• 1/2 c. crystallized ginger (finely chopped)
• 1 tsp ginger paste

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat the overn to 400; prepare muffin tin w/spray or cupcake liners
2. In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices, sugar, and salt.
3. Create a well in the center and add the milk, oil, and vanilla, stirring until just combined.
4. Fold in carrots and ginger.
5. Fill muffin tins and bake for 18-22 minutes until done.

As such, I usually experience a significant sugar crash midday, and have tried to figure out ways to make sure I get breakfast into my angry but sleepy morning body, and muffins — whipped together on Sunday and then pre-bagged in Ziplock baggies for a grab-and-go breakfast throughout the week — are the perfect thing to fill my morning void.

As usual, I couldn’t leave well enough alone and added some ground flaxseed meal to the recipe for some extra wholesomeness. Because something just seems very wrong about eating a muffin that tastes like it could be a dessert. And oh, these could be a dessert. If anything went wrong, though, it was probably due to the flaxseed, or my use of a KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer instead of using a spoon and blending things by hand. Either of those changes could explain why I didn’t get the “apple pie filling in the center of the muffin” like the book promises.

Apple Pie-Crumb Cake Muffins

FOR MUFFINS:

• 1 1/2 c. flour
• 1/4 c. + 2 tblsp sugar
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 c. apple cider
• 1/3 c. canola oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 c. grated apple.
• 1/2 c. chopped apple (1/4″ pieces)

FOR TOPPING

• 1/4 c. all purpose flour
• 1/4 c. brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground allspice
• Pinch of salt
• 3 tbsp canola oil.

Instructions:

1. Prepare the topping by mixing all the dry topping ingredients together in a small bowl. Drizzle the oil in while mixing with your fingertips until crumbs form. Set aside.
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees; lightly grease a twelve-muffin tin. (For portability purposes, I use cupcake papers)
3. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, spices, and salt. Create a well in the center and add the apple cider, oil, and vanilla. Mix, then fold in the grated and chopped apple. (I used my KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer on the “stir” setting.)
4. Fill each muffin cup two-thirds full. Sprinkle the crumb topping over each muffin. Bake for 22 minutes.

Until recently, if you asked me for a pumpkin muffin recipe, mine would be one handed down from a friend at my old job who got it from her friend who attends Weight Watchers meetings: mix one yellow cake mix with one can (15 oz) of pumpkin puree (not pie filling) and mix until blended. Bake according to package directions. Sometimes, to feel healthier, I’d add one or two tablespoons of my favorite ingredient, ground flax seeds, to the mix, but otherwise, it was pretty much the same. And the result was pretty much the same — uniform cake-like muffins of a neon orange color and smooth (except for the flax seeds) consistency.

Then, a funny thing happened on the way to the kitchen. One Sunday, I returned from taking David to work and found my parents (who we newlyweds were living with at the time) sitting up, waiting for me. As exchange for the free room and board, we did the grocery shopping and some light cleaning for them, and today, they wanted to talk to us about the list.

It turns out that when their radio alarm had gone off to wake them for church, a “doctor” had been on, talking about the health benefits of going vegan. For a diabetic with a heart condition, such as my father, veganism was the absolute answer to his weight gain and high cholesterol and blood sugar. Veganism would cure my mother’s thinning hair and weakening teeth. It was a miracle, to only be eclipsed by Jesus himself!

Having always been a meat and potatoes kind of Irish family, I was not only shocked but at a loss. What, exactly, would I  — or could they — cook? Other than salad and veggie burgers on vegan rolls (and let me tell you how hard it is to find a bread product commercially available that doesn’t include honey, whey, or some other animal product!) I couldn’t think of a thing for them to eat. So, I went to my local bookstore looking for a vegan cookbook for my pentioner parents.

The only vegan book in stock? Vegan with a Vengeance : Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock

The veganism thing lasted for five weeks, from the day after Easter until sometime in the summer, at which point the lure of Hebrew National hot dogs called them back to the meat-eaters. Not that they were particularly good vegans, mind you. Every now and then, my mom would sneak Morningstar Farms burgers instead of  the vegan Gardenburgers I’d bring home; my dad would get veggie burgers at Burger King. They’d both put honey in their tea and (when they learned they had to give up dairy) were buying Egg Beaters and Horizon organic cheese as “alternatives” — ignoring that both use egg and milk, respectively.

And all that time, there sat the little cookbook I found, waiting to be cracked open even once. For my parents, vegan meant prepackaged everything, leaving me (the grocery shopper) to read the labels and make sure what they were eating was vegan — an issue I quickly remedied by buying mostly Wegmans brand products, which are labeled on the front with a green V for vegan. One day, curious, I cracked open the book and the pages fell almost immediately to the Best Pumpkin Muffins.

Best? Oh really?

Yes, really.

The Best Pumpkin Muffins

Adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance : Over 150 Delicious, Cheap, Animal-Free Recipes That Rock by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
• 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 cup pureed pumpkin (Fresh or from a can; do not use pumpkin pie mix)
• 1/2 cup soy milk
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons molasses

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Lightly grease a twelve-muffin tin.
2. Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices. (Ed. Note: I added 2 tbsp of ground flax seed to the dry mix for extra nutrition.)
   
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together pumpkin, soy milk, oil, and molasses. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and mix.
4. Fill the muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Until recently, David worked every Saturday and Sunday at his second job, in addition to his Monday-Friday 9-5. As such, we rarely had time to sit down and have a nice breakfast together. That is, until a snowstorm two weeks ago left us stranded in the house without groceries. Luckily, moving out recently meant BOCA burger crumbles in the freezer.

To be honest, I’d never made a frittata before in my life; my mind had been geared more toward omelets that morning, but a frittata sounded like the perfect thing for a cold, icy morning, and it meant I could finally put my brand-new, cast iron skillet through its paces. I’d received the skillet as a hand me down from my parents, my father having purchased it one day for my mother under the false assumption that she’d actually use the damn thing, and it sat for at least a year collecting yellow rust rings like ringworm on a wrestler, unseasoned and unloved. When David and I moved out, I instinctively grabbed it, determined to rescue the poor thing from the neglectful parents who forgot about its existence.

A month later, my father emailed me. “Next time you come down and visit, you should take that big cast iron pan with you. Your mother never uses it.”

They didn’t even notice it was gone.

Since coming to our household, the cast iron skillet has found itself much loved and the subject of much attention. David finds it brilliant to make his mother’s spaghetti bolognaise recipe; I am quite fond of it for pancakes, falafal, fried chicken, and curry. In fact, with rare exception, we make almost any dish in that pan, whether it calls for non-stick skillet or wok; now that it has been seasoned, heated, and reseasoned–lather, rince, repeat–several hundred times, it is possibly one of my favorite cooking utensils, especially because it can do one thing those Teflon-coated pans cannot: go from stove to oven and back again without even wincing.

Playing with this baby, I think to myself, “This is how God must feel.”

By the way, I ate my Boca Breakfast Frittata with ketchup because I am a complete and utter sucker for ketchup; it is, after David, my one true love. However, David enjoyed his just the same without a condoment, because he’s a risk taker like that.

BOCA BREAKFAST FRITTATA

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup cholesterol-free egg product (we used five eggs)
• 3/4 cup fat free milk
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 cup chopped green pepper
• 2 cups cubed cooked red potatoes
• 1 (8 ounce) package frozen BOCA Meatless Breakfast Patties or Links, chopped
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup reduced fat mozzarella cheese

Directions

1. MIX egg product and milk; set aside.
2. HEAT oil in 10-inch ovenproof skillet on medium-high heat. Add onion and green pepper; cook 2 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add potatoes, chopped patties and seasonings; stir. Cook 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat; sprinkle with cheese. Pour in egg product mixture.
3. BAKE at 350 degrees F for 45 minutes, or until center is set.