Breakfast Bruschetta

Time: 15 minutes, tops.  10 if you’re a master multi-tasker.

Ordering a lot of takeout these days? How about pizza? That pizza come with a side of bread? Or are you like me and double down on carbs by ordering cheesy garlic bread WITH your pizza? Realize when the order shows up that if you eat it all you will surely blow up and roll down the street like the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka, so you end up putting most of the food in the fridge for tomorrow? Fear not, I have the breakfast of champions using leftovers for you.

Ingredients:

• Leftover cheesy garlic bread (or you could use a leftover piece of pizza – best reheating directions ever below. OR you could overachieve and use leftover homemade cheesy garlic bread.)
• Chopped tomatoes
• Good olive oil
• 1 Egg
• Parsley (fresh)
• Fleur de sel (or sea salt, or kosher salt, or just normal table salt salt)
• Fresh cracked pepper

Make it:

1. Pop the leftover bread into the oven at 400 degrees until it’s hot and crispy and the cheese is melty (about 10 min)
2. While the bread is warming, heat a skillet over medium-high heat (spray it with nonstick spray to make life easy, melt butter in it to make life easy and delicious – it also helps get the egg out without sticking)
3. While the bread is warming and the skillet is coming to temperature, slice or dice up some tomatoes (see how the skill of multitasking comes in handy?)
4. Toss the tomatoes with fresh cracked pepper, a pinch of salt, and a tiny bit of olive oil (to taste)
5. Once the skillet is hot, crack an egg into it then immediately turn the heat to low
6. Cook your egg until the yolk is the desired consistency – Over easy for me, please
7. Topped the warm bread with the tomatoes, then the egg, sprinkle with the fancy salt, pepper, a drizzle of that good olive oil (or not) and add some fresh parsley
8. Photograph for social media and get those brunch-crowd Sunday funday “likes”
9. Bite, chew, swallow, repeat
   • Dish pairs well with take the roof off your mouth rocket fuel strength coffee

BONUS TIP:
The absolute best way I have learned to reheat pizza is:

1. Put cold pizza into a cold frying pan on a cold burner
2. Turn the burner on to low (if you’ve got the time) / medium-low (if you’re in a hurry) and cover
3. Let the pan and the pizza warm simultaneously until the cheese on the pizza is soft and you hear a gentle sizzle if any cheese has melted off, about 5 – 10 minutes
4. This gives you warm, melty cheese and super delicious crispy crust. Like, hear the crunch when you bite into it from the other room crispy crust. Worth the time if you’ve got it, may even yield better results than the original delivery… and reheating your pizza this way gives you a crisp enough crust to top it with tomats and eggaroos and have it hold up

STORY TIIIIME:

I’ve been exhausted, work is insane, I can barely keep up with Eva, she’s learning to ride a bike so literally, can barely keep up with her… The other day we were bike/walking down the street and one of our one-street-over neighbors flagged us down and said “YA WANT SOME EGGS?!” They have chickens in the back yard that Eva has visited in the past, and fresh home-grown eggs are always, always, always better than store bought so of course I said yes! Eva looked concerned.

As we’re heading home, me with the carton of eggs in my hand, I suggest to Eva that we have breakfast for dinner and she says “Well, no thanks mom I don’t think I want any of those eggs.” I asked her why not and she said “I’m afraid that the mommy chickens I visit, their baby chicks are in there and I don’t want to disturb them.” Which leads into… She has also started asking when, specifically, does a chicken turn into the kind of chicken we eat. How old are they? Where do all their feathers go? Why don’t they have a head anymore? Guys, I get the feeling I’m about to have a vegetarian on my hands. So far we’ve said oh.. they just one day go “pop! I’m food now!” or some other bullshit answer. Thank goodness cows are called beef, and pigs are pork, turkey and chicken are really the only problematic uncomfortable answer territory.  Then again, we have put a full court press on the discussion around race, privilege, discrimination, inclusion, human rights and why we need to learn about all of these things and why they matter at home, so maybe “where does chicken come from” is right around the corner.