Someone mentioned to me this week that it had been a long time since I’d posted anything about food.  So I thought it was probably time for another food post.  Which required me to take the camera to the kitchen to photograph last night’s dinner.  While it was being prepared, of course!

First I should explain.  I was having a conversation yesterday about one of my favorite restaurants – Le Peep’s.  It’s been quite awhile since Dear Hubby and I have been there and it is definitely one of our favorites.  For breakfast.  But this was dinner!  However fixin’s at our house were pretty slim last night.  So after convincing Dear Hubby that picking up a $5 pizza on my way home didn’t sound good to me, I started thinking again about Le Peep’s.  That’s when I decided that there was absolutely nothing wrong with Breakfast for Dinner!

So here are the simple ingredients:
 

I probably should warn you right now.  If you can’t handle canned salmon then you probably shouldn’t read any further today.  Dear Hubby and I happen to love canned salmon.  And it is a good ingredient to have on hand to use in a pinch.  The rest of the ingredients are just eggs, butter, olive oil, cream cheese, salt and pepper.  Simple.  And very breakfasty.  Except perhaps the salmon?  But this is my take on a favorite of ours at Le Peep’s and it sounded good to me. 

First the salmon.  If you’ve never used canned salmon, I’ll warn you right now that there are bones in it.  Dear Hubby says you can just eat them, but I’m not crazy about crunchy eggs.  Makes me feel like I missed getting the egg shells out or something.  I like canned salmon better with the biggest bones removed.  WARNING:  FAIRLY GROSS PICTURE AHEAD.  There.  You can’t say you weren’t warned.  (It’s OK, Sally.  There are no peppers involved in this recipe.)  Here’s what the bones look like:

You could just about do a fingerprint sample on my pinky from this picture!  Up close and personal with the bones.  They are pretty easy to remove if you carefully flake the salmon apart.  After removing the bones, I just flake up the salmon with a fork so that it looks like this:

While you’re flaking and removing the bones from the salmon, you can be heating up your skillet on the stove.  With a little olive oil (probably about a tablespoon) and a couple tablespoons of butter.  The good stuff.  And I use a cast iron skillet.  Because as you know by now, I’m a big Pioneer Woman fan.  Huge PW fan.  And she’s a cast iron skillet kind of gal.  So I had to have one too.  It’s great for cooking eggs.

Then throw some of the salmon in the heated skillet and listen to the sizzle.  You actually just need to get the salmon heated a little.  I was taking pics and trying to stay ahead of what I was doing and my salmon got a little browned.  That was OK too!  While that’s sizzling a little, crack 4 eggs into a bowl and beat them together slightly with a fork.  I was just making dinner for two.  So I ended up only using about half the salmon.  We might have salmon patties for dinner tomorrow night!  And 4 eggs was plenty for just two people.  You could do more if you have more mouths to feed.

Add a small amount of salt and pepper to the bowl of beaten eggs. 

Dump the eggs into the pan with the salmon.  Then add some globs of cream cheese.  Globs….. such a technical measuring term.  I use the 1/3 less fat cream cheese.  Because I’m all about using less fat and being healthy with my cooking.  Not.  But I do think the 1/3 less fat stuff is softer than regular cream cheese.  So I pretty much use it for any recipe that needs cream cheese.  At our house the theory is that anything with cream cheese in it is good.  And just FYI, if you need softened cream cheese for a recipe?  You can pretty much take this stuff out of the fridge and use it immediately.  No need to warm to room temp for it to be softened.  Just a little cream cheese tidbit for ya.

Cook the whole mess until the eggs are starting to set.  Then scramble it around a little.  Loosely.  You want there still to be globs of cream cheese and you don’t need to incorporate the salmon completely.

It should look a bit like this when it’s ready.  Quick.  Easy.  Simple ingredients.  A fast breakfast…….. for dinner!   I served it up with just some quartered apples and pears that I had on hand on the side.

Here’s a little tip I learned from Rachael Ray.  Cut the apple into quarters and then on each quarter, hold your big fancy knife on an angle and just chop that core right out.  I did the pears the same way.  Simple. 

See?  Here are the pears done the same way.  I’m all about taking lots of pics to really show you these things in detail.  No fancy apple coring equipment needed.  Just one big fancy knife.  A Santuko or Sashiko or Sudoku or whatever this knife is called.  It’s a great knife.  And I always get the name confused with that game.  Santoku.  That’s the knife!  (I had to google it.)  If you don’t have one, you need one of these knives.  Great knife.

Here’s dinner!  And Dear Hubby declared it very good.  He is so easy to please when it comes to food.  But I thought so too.  And probably better for us than $5 pizza would have been.

Don’t forget to leave a comment on yesterday’s posting to be entered in the drawing for the free pattern!  Just click on “A Talented Friend” in the list at the top right to get there.  I’ll be drawing for a winner on Friday, so you still have 24 hours to leave a comment and be entered.  Our first giveaway on the blog!

Happy Breakfast (or dinner, as the case may be),
Barb