breakfast | 1000 Wonderful Things

Saturday mornings are my favorite. I wake up, run, drink coffee, grocery shop and cook. There are not many things I love more than spending the morning in the kitchen whipping up a meal (okay – I love my boyfriend, cats, family, friends and sparkling wine more – in no particular order). When one of the first free Saturdays in weeks rolled up, I had a mish mash of ideas of what I wanted to make. Here is what I had to work with:

1 sweet potato that NEEDED to be used.

I decided to go with some kind of bowl with a fried egg on top. After walking through the grocery store with an extremely empty stomach, I settled on turkey meatballs with a butternut squash sauce and swoodles (see below).

Swoodles: Sweet Potato Noodles – I recently discovered the Zoodle Maker which is a tool used to grind zucchini into a spaghetti-like shape. It’s actually really great and can be used for a number of other veggies, too. I.E.: Swoodles! (See photo below).

Swoodles: Sweet Potato Noodles

I threw the Swoodles in with some homemade turkey meatballs and Dave’s Gourmet Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce.

Butternut Squash Turkey Meatball Swoodles

Since the single sweet potato did not make quite as much as I expected, I also made some quinoa which resulted in the layering as so:

1st layer: Quinoa

2nd layer: Meatball/Swoodle/Sauce

3rd layer: Mozzarella Cheese (I also had this at home, but admittedly realized the way home from the store that I really needed a good soft rich goat cheese – next time!)

4th layer: Fried Egg

Butternut Squash Swoodles with Quinoa and Egg

Let me tell you, I was full from this meal from 11am to 7pm!

Meatballs:

1lb Lean Turkey

1 Chopped Onion

Sprinkle salt/pepper

Sprinkle Basil (fresh and dried)

Sprinkle Rosemary (fresh)

Sprinkle Oregano (fresh)

2 eggs

1/4 cupish bread crumbs

Grease pan and ball in 2 inchish balls and bake for 20 minutes.

Once Meatballs are finished, spoon into sauce with Swoodles and simmer for 5 minutes.

Serve by self or over quinoa, brown rice, potatoes or other! Add cheese and egg as preferred!

I’ve had a stash of frozen blueberries that I kept adding to over the summer. So, this week, when I cleaned out the freezer, I found my blueberries and instantly remembered pinning this breakfast cake recipe from Alexandra’s Kitchen. I had a lemon that needed to be used, so I did what anyone with an inkling for blueberry coffee cake would do, I started zesting.

I had thawed the blueberries, and then coated them in flour, per Alexandra’s recipe.

I got half way through the recipe and realized I was out of vanilla extract. But, I had some vanilla beans leftover from making Kahlua (recipe to come). So I scraped one bean in (about equal to 1 tsp of vanilla extract).

I got the vanilla beans from Beanilla.com, they’re pricing is significantly less then a supermarket or Costco. Shipping was fast, and there are a ton of options. When I scrape a bean into a recipe, I like to take the outside part and put it in a bottle to make homemade vanilla extract. To make extract, you simple take sections of a bean (scraped or not) and put them in a bottle or jar and cover with cheap vodka. Let it soak for 6-8 weeks and gently shake the bottle once a week to disturb the contents. The longer you let the extract sit, the more intense the flavor will become. I like to just add whatever extra bean parts I have over time. This would also make a great gift!

Anyways, back to blueberries and lemons, oh my! My favorite part of any coffee cake is the crispy/flaky top and edging, and by sprinkling a little extra sugar over the top, this is achieved beautifully.

Additionally, I ended up baking the cake for a total of about 45 mins.

Enjoy, and thanks Alexandra for the delicious recipe!

-h

1000 Wonderful Things

Tag Archives: breakfast

Butternut Squash Meatball Breakfast

Lemon Blueberry Coffee Cake