Breakfast of Champions

Eggs Benedict, hash browns, and raspberry lemon smoothies

Over the May long weekend my husband had the great idea of having our parents over for brunch on the  Monday. We hadn't had them all over together since moving into our new place and thought breakfast would be a nice way to say thanks for all the help they've given us. I wanted to try making eggs Benedict. It's one of my favorite breakfasts but I'd never tried to make it before on my own. I served it with hash browns and fruit but Daryl, a guy I work with gave me the great idea of making a cheese and bacon scone type thing to serve with it. Unfortunately I couldn't find any recipes that I liked and didn't want to make up my own at this point, so I served it with hashbrowns instead however those cheese and bacon scones will make an appearance on this blog at some point.
Because I am someone who likes making everything from scratch and tries to avoid using packaged food at all costs I started looking for recipes for hollandaise sauce. The recipes all called for almost two dozen eggs and three cups of butter (I was making it for 6 people and wanted to make sure I had enough). So because my love for my family trumps all and because I didn't want to give them heart attacks because of all of the cholesterol, I used packaged hollandaise sauce instead and I must say, it was pretty good. This might be one exception to my "no packaged food" rule.
So anyway, here it is:
 - 12 eggs
 - 6 english muffins, cut in half, toasted and buttered
 - 12 slices of Canadian back bacon
 - 2 packages powdered hollandaise sauce
 - 1 cup of butter (for the hollandaise)
 - Butter for spreading on english muffins

My wonderful mother has this egg poacher that she brought along to make poaching the eggs a little more simple for me. My equally wonderful dad helped me with this and watched over the eggs while I was busy preparing everything else.

Look at how cute those things look! If any of you need ideas for what to get me for my birthday an egg poacher (or a nice food processor) would be it ;)

Voila. I also made hash browns using 2-3 tablespoons of butter and 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil heated up in a pan and about 3-4 cups worth of frozen hash browns. If I were as good as my grandma Elma I would have boiled potatoes the night before, let them cool in the fridge overnight and shredded them that morning. I like to cook my hash browns low and slow so I actually started those first. Once the butter was all melted I chucked the hash browns into a pan and added salt, pepper and Italian seasoning ( the Italian seasoning trick was something I learned from my BFF Whitney and her husband Ryan. Well more from Ryan I guess ;) but Whit can get the credit too).

I cook them until their a nice golden color like in the picture above and serve them as soon as they're done.
For the raspberry lemon smoothies (which were UNREAL) I followed a recipe I got off allrecipes.ca and just doubled it approximately. Here's the original: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/raspberry-lemon-smoothie/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=raspberry%20lemon%20smoothies&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page
And here's what I did:
 - 20ish small ice cubes
 - 1 large tub of Activia vanilla yogurt (sorry I can't remember the exact size)
 - 2 whole lemons, seeded (yep, rind and all)
 - 2 cups raspberries
I tasted it before I was supposed to put the honey in and I thought it tasted amazing without it so I didn't add honey. It was quite tart however I like it that way so if you find that it's too tart by all means add honey.

My blender filled to the max.

Action shot of the blending and my very white arm. Sorry everybody, I'm a redhead.

Eggs are plated and table it set. Happy breakfast everyone! If I can manage to get my hands on an egg poacher this would be something I would definitely make again.
Up next on food talk at five, one of our favorite meals, lime chicken tacos!

- A