I make breakfast every day that I don’t go to work. This means Saturday and Sunday most weeks, and random days sprinkled in here and there. When on a diet, the usual bacon and eggs doesn’t really cut it for both weekend days. Neither does the leftover taco ingredient omelet, the breakfast pile, the McDonalds steak egg and cheese clone, or the sausage sandwich with pancakes as bread smothered in high fructose corn syrup also known as fake maple syrup (Figure 1, After click-through) I decided this week to go light for breakfast and make some blueberry buckwheat pancakes. There is a recipe with yeast right on the bag of buckwheat, but I decided to go with an Ellie Krieger recipe I saw her make a few weeks back. Another quick pancake anecdote – I used to hate pancakes all my life until about a year ago when I first made them without using a box, then I realized its pancake mix that I hate, and not actual pancakes.

At Mandi’s office, it is the tradition to bring in breakfast for everyone on your birthday. This seems backwards to me and that someone else should bring YOU breakfast, but that’s another story. Unsatisfied with the standard donuts and pastries that most people bring in, Mandi needs eggs to have a proper breakfast. So in addition to the massive amounts of planning for the crazy weekend we are about to have, shopping at multiple stores to get all the right ingredients, making cheesesteak filling and buffalo chicken for her pizza / birthday party tonight, me making her a cake, standing on the south east coast trying to literally blow the hurricane off course, and cleaning the apartment for the arrival of the design team(they are somewhere over the Atlantic at this moment), Mandi has to make quiche! Today, (just a few hours ago) Mandi woke at the crack of dawn to begin cooking. It isn’t an inconvenience for her, because she loves birthdays and wants to be awake for every hour of hers. This is based on a Paula Deen recipe you can get here. Click below for more!

Because my last quiz was so popular, and also because I am a little behind in the cooking department, I have another one for you all today.  Today’s quiz asks you to guess the cereal name, and mascot name, for each of the cereal mascots below.  There are 20 pictures and therefore 40 available points for correctly naming the mascot shown and what cereal he sold.   Scroll down after the pictures to see the answers.  Some are very obscure and one is fictional so don’t feel bad if you miss some.  Feel free to post your score below if you think you are smart.  If you get above 30, lay off the sugar in the morning! Click below to start the quiz.

I haven’t put any breakfast posts up, but in my interview I mentioned that breakfast is my favorite meal to cook.  I think this is because it is very relaxing to me.  There are no cameras around, it is a weekend morning, and I am in relaxation mode making an omelet for Mandi or a few egg sandwiches before heading to the beach.  I decided to put some of my favorite breakfasts up here.  They are all very simple, nothing crazy or innovative, and most involve eggs.  Today we have the infamous “breakfast pile.”  I’m sure everyone has made this before. A big pan of scrambled eggs with any and everything breakfast related mixed in.  Make no mistakes; this meal is made for hangovers.  This is the perfect breakfast for when you don’t feel so good when you wake up, but you have plans for the day that need to be carried out.  The breakfast of champions.  It is also helpful to have a lot of leftovers in the fridge.

The most important thing when making the breakfast pile is that it's not a recipe, it is an order of operations.  Similar to the FOIL method when learning math (first, outer, inner, last), there is a breakfast pile method I like to call the VEMCH method (Veggies, Eggs, Meats (cooked), Cheeses, Herbs).  Once you own this method, you can put whatever you want in here.