Bachelor on the Cheap

By Mike Thayer

Cauliflower pairs well with eggs

Here's a great way, a very easy and tasty way to get a not so typical veggie for breakfast in that first meal of the day.

Yesterday for lunch I had Polish sausage with a side of roasted cauliflower topped with cheddar cheese.  So for breakfast this morning and thinking about whipping up some scrambled eggs, I decided to include those leftovers to create a nice scrambled egg breakfast bowl!

The beauty of cauliflower is that it's kind of like a blank canvas, you can 'paint' just about any kind of flavor you want into it.  A boring veggie on it's own, cauliflower takes on whatever seasoning, sauce or whatever flavor you want to add to it, whether it's soy sauce, curry or in this case, sauteed with a lot of onion and garlic!

Try some cauliflower for breakfast!

Mike's Cauliflower & Sausage Breakfast Bowl

Ingredients:

• One Tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup roughly chopped onion
• 1/2 cup leftover cauliflower
• 1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese (if your leftover cauliflower doesn't already have it)
• 3 ounces of Polish sausage (or whatever leftover meat you may have on hand)
• 1 Tablespoon minced garlic
• Two eggs, beaten
• Dash of Cayenne pepper
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Green onion, chopped, for garnish

Directions:

Heat up a medium sized skillet over medium heat.  Add the olive oil.  Once the oil is warm (you can tell when it slides easily in tilting the pan to coat the bottom), add the onion and a dash of salt and pepper.  Stir occasionally until the onion is translucent.  Add the cauliflower with cheese and Polish sausage, another pinch of black pepper, stir to incorporate.  After the sausage and cauliflower is heated through, add the garlic, stir and let those flavors marry for about a minute.  Add the beaten eggs.  TIP:  Create deeper layers of flavor by seasoning ingredients as you go rather than seasoning a dish at the very end.  Add the dash of Cayenne pepper along with a little salt and pepper before beating the eggs.  This is going to create a better overall flavor profile for the dish.  Stir to incorporate the eggs and until the scramble reaches your desired level of consistency.  Garnish with green onion and serve. 

Not only does cauliflower pair well with eggs making for a great breakfast bowl, this meal was Carb-Check friendly.  Cauliflower has only 5 grams of carbs per cup.  This breakfast bowl as prepared has only 9 grams of carbs (2.5 from the cauliflower, 3 from the onion, 2 from the Polish sausage, 1 from the garlic, 0.5 from the cheese) and these are all good carbs!  Compare that to including the same amount of potato instead of the cauliflower in the dish along with a side of toast and that would shoot the carb count way up to 33 grams!  This bowl has plenty of protein in it to start your day too, packing 21 grams.

Utilizing leftovers this was a very Bachelor on the Cheap wallet friendly meal, costing far less than hitting the fast food drive thru or heating up one of those pre-packaged diet (and not so delicious) breakfast bowls in the microwave.