Sometimes breakfast for dinner just seems better, sounds better than dinner for dinner.
The other night we had a sleepover at our house. It was a Friday night and I decided that it was a great night to let each child pick a friend to stay overnight at our house.
I definitely subscribe to the theory of “What’s one more?” when I plan our playdates and sleepovers. It’s definitely easier for me to do it all in one fell swoop and let everyone invite a friend at once, rather than a friend a week for three weeks. Additionally, I find that everyone stays occupied that way. Each person has a friend, everyone’s happy.
On this night I thought about what to have for dinner and I decided I’d do breakfast for dinner: french toast and a ham and spinach puff pancake, where I would substitute broccoli for the spinach. It was all a huge hit. There was only one piece of the ham and broccoli puff left, and a couple of pieces of french toast remained at the end of the night.
When I was thinking this week about what dinner recipe to share with you, I thought of our breakfast for dinner night, but since I’d already done a blog post about the ham and spinach puff, I decided to share a breakfast casserole that we ate for brunch this past New Year’s Day, but would also work well as a breakfast for dinner recipe. It’s original intent was to be made as a breakfast pizza, and my sister-in-law who gave it to me has done it both ways–casserole style and pizza style. On New Year’s Day we did it casserole style.
The recipe is so old, I have it printed out in an email from Thursday, February 28, 2002. I only had one daughter at that time. But, I save that same sheet of paper in the overstuffed cookbook I’ve had since I was a teenager and I always know exactly where it is, what one sheet of paper to look for when I need it.
Because there are so many of us, we added a few extra eggs in and changed our method a tiny bit, so I’ll make some notes with the recipe below.
Thanks so much to Jessica for sharing her recipe with us in 2002. I was thrilled to send her a photo of the casserole and the original email she sent me on January 1, 2015.
Pizza style or casserole style, either way it’s delicious!
BREAKFAST PIZZA
INGREDIENTS:
Crust:
1 package (24 ounces) frozen shredded has brown patties, thawed and broken apart
1 egg, beaten
salt, pepper
Egg Topping:
7 Eggs (we did a whole dozen)
1/2 cup milk
optional salt and pepper to taste
1 cup chopped ham
1/2 cup sliced fresh mushrooms
1/4 cup green onion slices
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
*we didn’t add these two items in, but we did do sliced sausage links instead*
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
If you are using a pizza stone, cover with parchment paper.
For crust, combine potatoes, egg, salt and pepper in a bowl, mix well.
Spread potato mixture onto pizza stone or into 9×13 casserole dish, (we used nonstick spray on ours) pat down with back of spoon.
Bake 20 minutes, remove from oven.
For egg topping, whisk eggs and milk and season as desired.
Microwave on high 3 minutes, stir. Microwave an additional 3 minutes, stir. **We scrambled our eggs on the stove top in our cast iron skillet.**
Spread cooked egg mixture evenly on top of potato crust; top with ham, mushrooms, green onion and bell pepper (if using).
Sprinkle with cheese.
Return to oven to bake, approximately 10 minutes.
The Whole bag of Chips 
One Response to “What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Breakfast for dinner”