Week 43 - Single Use Gadgets

It's been a while (again). I thought it had only been a few weeks, but apparently the last post was in September. This year is really flying by. I hope I manage to post about the whole challenge before the year is over, even if they're just super short posts to remind me that, yes, I did do that challenge week!

Week 43's theme was single use gadgets. We generally try to avoid single use gadgets because we have such limited kitchen storage space, but I was reminded of one that we definitely use for cooking - our waffle iron! Before that, I was just going to post a photo of the Oxo grape cutter, a single use gadget (although not entirely, because it works for grape tomatoes too) that has changed our lives for the better over the past few months. How did we not know this existed before I saw it on Instagram?

For the challenge, I decided on the bacon cheese scallion waffle from Serious Eats, taking advantage of one of B's sick days to make something new for brunch. I stuck fairly close to the original recipe, but with substitutions of flax eggs and vegan DIY buttermilk. My proportions of the bacon and scallions were probably a little off, but I wanted to use up our scallions (and get more veggies in the dish) and I didn't feel like searching the freezer for where we put the rest of our frozen bacon.

The waffles were delicious! Definitely needed more bacon though. They were also a little too salty, so next time I think I would use much less salt, especially if adding in more bacon. Maybe more cheese, more scallions too, but I think we just like extra fillings. The whole thing came out to about $6 for the same number of very large waffles, so even if the cost got pushed up from using more bacon, it would still be a very affordable brunch for three. I would make this again.

Waffle House

Three years ago today, we were off on our Southern road trip heading for Savannah. When we last wrote about this trip, we had just visited Nando's for the first time, indulging in some delicious grilled chicken before hitting the road and driving for hours. We stopped briefly in Richmond, Virginia to do some sightseeing, but otherwise our next real stop wasn't until Rocky Mount, North Carolina for a late dinner.

Waffle House is a true American institution. They're cheap, they're open all night, they have a lot of choices on the menu, and the food hits the spot. Even though they're now as far north as Pennsylvania and Delaware (still not close enough to us), I pretty much still associate them with the South. So there was no question that on our Savannah road trip, we would try to fit in at least one visit to Waffle House.

My first trip to Waffle House was in college. We were on a road trip to Myrtle Beach and after a long night of driving, we stopped off at Waffle House for breakfast. It was exactly what we needed to refuel for the rest of our drive (although I passed out from food coma shortly thereafter since I drove all night), and I've associated good memories with them ever since. Somehow, even though he had been to the South many more times than I had, A had never stopped at a Waffle House before. I was happy that around the time we chose to stop for dinner in North Carolina, there was a Waffle House right near the interstate. Perfect road trip stop.

We both opted to order off the special $5 meals menu which not only covered your choice of breakfast, lunch, or dinner (from a list of 15), but also included a drink. A opted for coffee to help him stay awake until we got to our stopover in Fayetteville (about 90 minutes further), and I went for a sweet tea-lemonade mix. We were in the South after all.

Since it was A's first time at Waffle House, he chose to go with the double classic waffle. He topped it with butter and syrup. The waffles were creamy and sweet, and the butter and syrup combined to make a really tasty concoction that was salty, sweet, and extra creamy. A had never put butter on his waffles before, but it just seemed like the right thing to do. It was great, but he's thinking that he might only do that while at other Waffle House locations and not a regular basis. The coffee certainly helped him get to the next hotel, but it wasn't anything special. For the most part, it tasted just like regular diner coffee.

I'm not much of a breakfast person (although the sausage, egg, and cheese grits bowl and biscuit were tempting), so I picked the Texas sausage melt which came with hash browns. Each of the Waffle House Texas melts came with meat (sausage patty in this case), double cheese, and grilled onions on Texas toast. This was simple, but so, so good after a long day of driving. This ended up being our only Waffle House visit on our road trip, but it made us really happy. It's definitely a Southern road trip must for us!

Week 21 - Presentation

Around the time that I started looking for something to do for the presentation challenge (one which I was not really looking forward to as I'm not really great at plating and most food I make for dinner doesn't lend itself well to good plating), the buzz about cloud eggs started heating up. These eggs have been around for a while with recipes going back years, but apparently there was an Instagram craze at the time. The Washington Post even did a piece on cloud eggs. What would be better for presentation than making something that was really all about how it looked? I decided to pair the eggs with corned beef hash and some roasted potatoes, sort of a "breakfast for dinner," until I saw something about the Pinterest popularity of a recipe for Southwestern roasted potato salad. Might as well make it an on-trend presentation challenge meal and just incorporate that too.

Roasted Potato Salad

I went with the recipe for the Southwestern roasted potato salad as a starting point and inspiration, and used the following ingredients:

- about 1.5 lbs of small red potatoes ($1.79)
- 2 green bell peppers ($1.78)
- 1 red bell pepper ($0.99)
- 1 large onion ($0.50)
- olive oil ($0.50)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- cumin ($0.10)
- dried dill weed ($0.10)
- chili powder ($0.15)
- 1 can of corn ($0.70)
- 1/2 batch of scallions ($0.65)

The steps for the potatoes were pretty easy:

- prep (scrub and chop potatoes into quarters, chop peppers, chop onion)
- grease 2 baking sheets (was going to use one but ran out of space) and put potatoes and vegetables on the sheets
- cover in olive oil, salt, pepper, dill, cumin, chili powder and mix well with hands
- bake in 400 degree oven for 50 minutes, stirring once in the middle, until potatoes are fork tender (these are basically all the same steps I would done for the roasted potatoes anyway)
- remove potatoes to a bowl and add the corn and chopped scallions
- mix together well and season to taste (didn't really do much seasoning as the bowl was a little too small for easy mixing)

Considering all the ingredients that went into the potatoes, they weren't amazingly flavorful. With chili powder, cumin, dill, we just thought there would be more to them, but after they came out of the oven, they mostly just tasted like lightly seasoned potatoes. You couldn't really detect the chili powder or the cumin in the flavor even though I used a fair amount. They were fine, since we like the taste of potatoes, but no different from normal. In general, this really just seemed like a roasted potato dish like we would normally make for the most part. The only thing that differentiated it and "freshened it up" a little bit was the addition of the crisp corn and the scallions. That was nice for making the dish a little less heavy. It was good overall and the flavor grew on us after a bit, and it was also a good accompaniment for the rest of dinner. Just don't know that I would call this a salad. I do like the idea of adding in the corn and scallions to lighten the flavors though.

Corned Beef Hash

Not much to say here, as we basically just emptied the can into a skillet and let it brown, but it added another $2.09 to the total and lots of flavor.

Cloud Eggs

For the "main event," the cloud eggs, we separated 4 eggs. The yolks all went into separate bowls, and then all the egg whites together in one bigger bowl. Adding the 4 eggs to all the other components of dinner, the total was about $9.80. Not bad considering how much food there was.

Making the cloud eggs was easy in theory. Whip the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, scoop out in four "clouds" with little nests for the yolks, bake at 425 degrees for about 3 minutes, add the yolks, and then bake at 400 degrees for another 3 minutes or so. It sounded easy but whipping the egg whites by hand took forever. We both took a turn at it and did about half the work. It did look hard in that mise en place challenge on Top Chef where they did this, but definitely not as hard as it felt for us amateurs.

The eggs were interesting. The texture of the egg whites when baked was light and fluffy, kind of cloud-like, also a little spongy. The yolks were still runny after the 3 minutes of baking, except the one that broke when it was going into the oven and spilled over like an egg volcano. The eggs generally were fine, but taste-wise, nothing special. Kind of amusing to look at, although questionable whether it's worth the work if you do the egg whites by hand.

Since it was a presentation challenge, I tried to make a landscape design on my plate and have it look nice, but it didn't really work. At least the cloud eggs still were presentation-worthy.

I'm not sure we would make the cloud eggs again. It was fun to try, even if just for the novelty of it, and they were pretty healthy as there wasn't really any oil or grease involved in cooking them, but they're a lot of work.

Passaris Nikolaos

We began every morning in Santorini the same way - with pies. On the pedestrian walkway into the heart of Oia, there was a small bakery that we passed by every day, and every day, we got some pies. I think we had read somewhere in our research that the bakery was really good, so we figured that would be a good spot for breakfast, since this was the one hotel on the entire trip where breakfast was not included.

The bakery's name appeared to be Passaris Nikolaos (if I am converting correctly from the Greek letters), and they were certainly popular. We aren't early morning people, no matter what time zone we're in (maybe someday that'll change), and by the time we got to the bakery in the morning (and it was still morning), there was never that much left. We were able to get some pies every day, but there were always some unavailable because of the demand.

One of the pies that we really liked (and I only know this because I see that we have photos of this pie on multiple days) was this special cheese pie. It reminded us a little bit of the one from Ariston in Athens, but that one was a little better, if we remember correctly this many years later.

We got a bunch of different types of cheese pies from the bakery over the few days we were in Santorini, and couldn't tell you at this point the names of the different ones or how they differed, but we definitely liked them for breakfast.

We didn't only get cheese pies though. We tried other pies including some with vegetable fillings. Unfortunately we couldn't tell you which pies we got on which days or any details, and we really wish we had written something down, but we've learned for the future. All we really remember is that we liked the pies.

One of the things we liked a lot about Greece was all the savory pies that you could get as snacks, whether you were in the city or the islands. There were pies everywhere. That's not as easy to do at home, especially for savory snacks, which is part of the reason we treasure the Greek bakery in our neighborhood. We love Greek pies!

Goodbye Nissaki Beach

Our last morning in Naxos was bittersweet. While we looked forward to new adventures, we loved our time in Naxos, had made so many good memories, and were so sad to leave. Leaving also meant we had gone past the midway point of our honeymoon and were that much closer to the end of our vacation. We tried not to think about it and attempted to extend the morning as much as possible before our ferry departure, even wading out into the shallow water at the beach one last time.

Before we left, we had one last breakfast at the hotel, which would also be our last meal in Naxos. We indulged in pasta salad, feta cheese, cucumbers, tomatoes, eggs, and Greek pies. Not only did they have spinach pie this time, but also a hot dog pie. The breakfast spread at Nissaki Beach continued to be incredible day after day, and we were so happy we had chosen to stay there.

We also got our usual fresh squeezed orange juice, yogurt, and fruit. We certainly ate better breakfasts at the hotel than we ever do at home.

After breakfast and beach time, we bid farewell to the Nissaki Beach Hotel, and walked down the waterfront to the pier where we would catch our ferry to Santorini. (No need for a taxi this time since we knew where we were going and how close it was to the hotel.) Although we had high hopes for Santorini, we knew it was a lot more crowded there and would be a lot more touristy, so we were a little sad to leave quiet, peaceful, relaxed Naxos. We hope we'll be able to return someday. Until then, farewell Naxos and goodbye Nissaki Beach, and thank you for such an amazing time!

Devinly Breakfast Once More

While M was still taking it easy on our final full day's breakfast, we still opted to go to Devinly Decadence because the options for her were better there. The options were mostly still the same. I got another turkey sausage patty, a piece of Devin's Western Eggs, Breakfast Enchiladas, Turkey Chili Topped Scramble Bake, and another Turkey Sausage Scramble.

There isn't much to add to this post since we've written a few times about Devinly Decadence in the past, and this was still a better, healthier breakfast option than the Windjammer. Hopefully if we ever go on another Royal Caribbean cruise they'll have an option like this on the ship.

An American Breakfast

On the first of our return sea days, we decided to go for a leisurely sit-down breakfast at American Icon Grill, the only non-buffet breakfast location on the ship. It was pretty crowded since it seemed most people had the same idea. On most cruises we've been on, we've usually gone for the sit-down breakfast most days, with this cruise being the exception, so we were excited to try what sounded like a good menu.

To start with, we both got cereal with sliced banana and milk. M got Cheerios and A got frosted flakes. M had thought about getting the "Seattle granola with seasonal fruit salad topped with natural yogurt," but when the server said the seasonal fruit was predominantly melon, she passed.

M chose the Southwest huevos rancheros for her breakfast entree, which was described on the menu as "fried eggs, tomatoes, avocado, jalapeños, sour cream, and salsa picante." M was expecting those ingredients to be combined into something resembling every huevos rancheros plate she'd seen before and even made at home, but what arrived was exactly what the description said. Slices of tomatoes, avocado (3 pieces), and jalapeños with a dollop of sour cream, a drizzled circle of salsa, and some fried eggs on top. This was the strangest version of huevos rancheros she had ever seen. Probably should have been called fried eggs with vegetables instead. It wasn't great and she wouldn't get this again.

A got the eggs benedict, toasted English muffins with country ham, hollandaise sauce, and poached eggs. He found this odd. The hollandaise sauce was foamy, thick, and congealed, and not an actual sauce. The ham had no flavor. We had read a lot of message board posts prior to our cruise to get a feel for what people thought, and one thing that kept coming up was people complaining about the lack of eggs benedict on the menu. They would go on and on about how it was a staple of cruise breakfasts and that the Royal Caribbean version was so good. After having ordered and tasted this, A was confused as to what people were complaining about with it not being on the menu and also why they thought it was good. This was easily one of, if not the, worst eggs benedict he had ever eaten.

We didn't particularly like our breakfast at American Icon and had no plans to return on any other sea day. We thought it would be pretty easy to get a good meal with standard breakfast stuff like huevos rancheros and eggs benedict, but we were wrong. Maybe we should have picked the "bodega breakfast" (bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich) or the old bagel and lox standby, and it would have been better, but no guarantee.

Late Windjammer Breakfast

Day 8 of our Quantum voyage brought us to another new country for us, St. Kitts and Nevis. We were in port beginning at 11 am, so we went for breakfast at the Windjammer instead of Devinly Decadence. We don't quite remember whether DD was closed that morning or whether we took advantage of our late start time (the last three ports were 8 or 9 am) to sleep in after our fun (and sunburned) day in Barbados.

St. Kitts looked beautiful from our window seats at the Windjammer, but the food wasn't all that different from past visits. I got pan-fried fish (which was a bit overdone and dry), scrambled eggs with shrimp and peppers (my notes state that the peppers were new and this was "not only in Asian section," whatever that means), corned beef hash (one of the few things I really like at breakfast that was not available in DD), hash browns, a link of pork sausage, some smoked salmon with onions (good and not as salty as the pastrami cured salmon from the other night), and some mushrooms and sautéed spinach.

We think that maybe A got some of the same stuff for his first plate but we don't quite remember and didn't take pictures, other than the first picture up top. I do know that this next picture is of his plate though, since I'm (clearly) not big into breakfast foods. On this visit, he tried a raisin pancake and plain waffle, neither of which he thought were very good and wouldn't get again, as well as some oatmeal. There was no brown sugar in the oatmeal because they ran out (this will be a running theme from here on, in case you haven't realized it) so it was kind of flavorless. To remedy that, he added some toasted coconut and cinnamon but it did very little. Disappointing.

Outside of the smoked salmon, corned beef hash, and vegetables, we didn't see many reasons why the Windjammer was better than DD for breakfast other than their late opening hours. This was my last real visit to the Windjammer for breakfast on this trip, but I had had enough of it that I certainly don't miss it!

Fiesta in the Solarium

Another Quantum morning, another breakfast at Devinly Decadence in the Solarium.

Another breakfast full of chicken, turkey, egg whites, sweet potatoes, and delicious Southwestern flavors.

But this time I also got something new, a fiesta shrimp omelette. In addition to the buffet options, they usually had a made-to-order dish if you got to breakfast early enough. That seemed to change every day (from what we remember), and this time it was an egg white omelette. Tasty and healthy.

Also different this time was the view from the Solarium. Every other port we had been to, we had been missing this view of bright sun, puffy white clouds, and turquoise water. Finally, finally, in Barbados, we got the perfect weather we were looking for.

It wasn't a humid evening like in Puerto Rico. It wasn't raining like in St. Maarten. It wasn't cloudy like in Martinique. We were pretty excited as we looked at the hot and sunny weather since we had a beach day planned, and after our tasty breakfast, we couldn't wait to get going!

Return to the Solarium

The first thing we did on day 6 of our Quantum cruise was head up to Devinly Decadence in the Solarium for breakfast. We were really excited since we had really liked the breakfast options the day before and wanted to see what they would come up with this time.

We found that the buffet was almost exactly the same as the day before, and we picked up a lot of the same stuff. Unlike other buffets where the repeated dishes could get tiresome after a while, we liked the breakfast buffet here so much that we didn't mind if the same dishes were there every single time. There was so much variety to begin with that if you really wanted to, you could eat something different every day (instead of a little bit of everything like we usually did). And the flavors were just so much better and more interesting than the Windjammer. We tried to make it a point to get up early enough to come here for breakfast every day after that.

Devinly Decadence

One of the places we were most excited to eat on the Quantum was Devinly Decadence, the "healthier" restaurant on the ship. Unfortunately at the time that we sailed, lunch and dinner there cost extra, and only breakfast was included. They eventually changed that and made it another free option, but not soon enough for us.

On the fifth day of our trip, we finally got up early enough (they closed before the Windjammer) to make it to Devinly Decadence for breakfast. We were really happy with what we found. Most of the breakfast was a buffet but we found far more interesting things in this buffet than the one was the Windjammer. So many of the dishes had so much more flavor and were made with healthier ingredients. We pretty much decided then and there that any day we could get up early enough, we'd be here for breakfast instead. It also wasn't as crazed as the Windjammer since they didn't have some people's breakfast essentials like bacon and egg yolks.

Some of the stuff we got on our first visit included turkey chili-topped egg white scramble, breakfast enchiladas, sweet potatoes o'brien, turkey chorizo patties, asparagus-chicken apple sausage scramble, and another turkey sausage crumble. Lots of chicken and turkey mixed with seasonings, spices, egg whites. What a difference from the Windjammer.

There was also plenty of yogurt and some sweet snacks (although M greatly preferred eating all the savory stuff they had). A also found the yogurt and savory items far more interesting.

We were really happy with our breakfast. It was great to eat something different and so tasty, and it was the perfect fuel before we headed off for our day in St. Maarten!

English Breakfasts

We're not really super early morning people on vacation, so breakfast for us is often just something quick in the hotel. By that, I mean something from the grocery store, like cereal bars or bananas, not room service. Although we did consider getting up early one day in London to go for a proper English breakfast, that didn't happen before the end of our trip. But we did sample a bunch of different breakfast items from the grocery store that we don't have at home.

On our visit to Waitrose on our first day in London, we picked up these Frusli bars in blueberry flavor. Out of the 2 different styles of bars that we bought, these were the ones we liked better, although they weren't that filling. The funny part to us was that this was a blueberry flavored bar, but dried blueberries themselves were much further down the ingredient list than blueberry infused dried cranberries, raisins, and fruit puree pieces (apple and blueberry). Probably a cost issue, but kind of amusing, as we considered whether it should have just been called a berry flavored bar instead. Along with all of the various fruits, there were oats, sugar, honey, a couple of different flours, and almonds. The fact that there were no ingredients in the list whose names we didn't recognize and there weren't any additives on the list is probably part of the reason we liked it, and that really came through with how healthy and natural they tasted. We also liked the texture, nice and chewy.

A couple of days later, we picked up some cheaper breakfast bars at the Morrisons grocery store downstairs from our hotel. There was a sale on these Alpen Light bars so we got 2 flavors - double chocolate and Jaffa cake. We didn't know what Jaffa cake was but guessed it was something orange and chocolate because of the box design (it pretty much was).

We didn't think these bars were as good as the Frusli bars. They were like very light granola bars, and reminded me a bit of Special K bars in how light they were. The first flavor we tried was the Jaffa cake, which we thought was okay and which A liked more than I did. They were sort of orange flavored, but mostly just tasted like artificial citrus, which is one of the things that usually turns me off of lemon and orange flavored things. The double chocolate just tasted like a standard chocolate breakfast bar, and we both liked that much more than the Jaffa cake one.

Later in the trip, we also decided to investigate some yogurts for breakfast, hoping that the active cultures would help since our systems were a little off from the traveling, the rough exhaustion from the first day, and some overindulgent eating. From the setup of the grocery stores, we concluded that the English love yogurt. One store even had an entire aisle of just yogurt. We like yogurt, so we thought that was pretty awesome. Since our hotel didn't have a refrigerator, A had to drop by Morrisons in the mornings to buy yogurt for breakfast. Thankfully it was just downstairs and close to a coffee shop for his morning coffee as well. The first one we got was this store-brand raspberry, blueberry, and cranberry bio yogurt. (Bio yogurt is supposed to have additional good bacteria added.) This seemed like pretty standard berry flavored yogurt, and A got a couple of blueberries here and there. This was fine, like yogurt we could get at home, but we were eating more for the gut benefit.

On another day, we really wanted to try to right our systems with yogurt, so A picked up 2 different Onken ones for breakfast. These seemed a bit like premium yogurts, a step up from your basic yogurt. One was apricot with whole grains, and the other was cherry. We thought both of these were better than the yogurt we had previously, but they were also more expensive so I guess we paid for that improvement. The apricot whole grain yogurt was different from other yogurt we've had since the whole grains were like little chewy bits inside the yogurt. I didn't like that one as much as the cherry one, which had big juicy cherries in it and tons of fruit flavor.

We ate some other stuff for breakfast too, like some bananas that we picked up on a Sainsbury's trip and also some potato chips once we ran out of breakfast bars (not ideal, but didn't want to buy more bars for just one day). In addition to being more convenient and cheaper than eating breakfast out, buying breakfast to eat in the room gives us a good excuse to explore local grocery stores and try local products. We were pretty happy with the results of our London breakfast exploration!

Adiós World Cafe

When we woke up on our last morning at Dreams Cancun, it was a perfect day. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the weather was gorgeous. It seemed like all the rain and showers of our first few days were truly gone, just in time for us to leave. While that was disappointing for us, at least we did get to enjoy the sun and the warmth for a little bit in our escape from the New York winter.

Our last meal at Dreams was breakfast, which had really become our favorite meal of the day. I don't ever usually look forward to breakfast, it's more just a necessity, but here that was totally different. Since it was our last time through the buffet, we piled our plates high with all the things we knew we wouldn't be able to easily get for breakfast at home. We also got glasses of our favorite juice from the juice bar - beetroot and orange - and the yogurt we knew we would never find at home - apple yogurt (and to date, we still have never seen plain apple yogurt in the States).

On A's plate, he piled chilaquiles, pollo guisado (chicken stew), a chorizo sope, and refried beans. It was like a breakfast greatest hits, especially those delicious chilaquiles, which came in salsa verde this time unlike the other days.

On my plate, I got an extra large serving of chilaquiles topped with tons of pico de gallo, as well as pollo guisado, refried beans, guacamole, and a chorizo sope. We clearly liked a lot of the same stuff at breakfast and wanted to fill up as much as we could before we had to leave for the airport.

It's a little hard to see the chorizo sope in all the other pictures, so here's a better look. It was so good, just not as good as our favorite chilaquiles.

After breakfast, we took one last walk around the resort, soaking up the sun, gazing at the white sand and turquoise water, and saying farewell to the dolphins. It was sadly time to return home and get back to real life.

Week 4 - Brunch

I'm not the biggest fan of brunch, especially since around here, brunch seems to mean an excuse for people to pack restaurants and loudly drink too much booze before noon. I was totally on board with making brunch for dinner at home though. The greatest issue I faced with the brunch challenge was figuring out what to make because my first thought was something with eggs, which I've already made for so many challenges (like the egg scramble, gravlax omelette, poached eggs with polenta, fried eggs with corned beef hash and potatoes, leek and bacon tottins, and Western omelettes). I wanted to do something different, so A suggested French toast. That sounded good to me, but since it was for dinner, I decided to do a savory French toast using one of Kenji's recipes on Serious Eats along with some corned beef hash on the side since we still had some cans left.

The ingredients for our brunch challenge were:

- 4 slices of multigrain country bread ($0.62)

- 2 eggs ($0.40)

- 1/2 cup of milk ($0.14)

- 5 garlic cloves, minced ($0.08)

- 1/2 bunch of parsley, leaves finely chopped ($0.50)

- pinch of red pepper flakes ($0.05)

- salt and pepper ($0.05)

- 1/2 cup of parmesan cheese, grated ($1.20)

- a few tbsp of butter ($0.50)

- 5 scallions, chopped ($0.40)

- 1 can of corned beef hash ($2.49)

- 2 small bell peppers, chopped ($1.56)

- 2 small onions, chopped ($0.35)

The total cost of dinner was about $8.34. Excellent price for a dinner for 2. It would be pretty difficult to get brunch with this much food for that price outside.

I've never actually made French toast before since I'm not a huge breakfast person, so I stuck relatively closely to the recipe's instructions. First up was prep (chopping parsley, mincing garlic, grating parmesan, chopping scallions, and chopping onions and peppers for the hash). Next was preparing the egg mixture for the French toast - combining the egg, milk, garlic, parsley, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, and a little bit of the parmesan cheese together in a large bowl. The rest of the parmesan went on a separate plate ready for the assembly line.

For each slice of toast, the process was to submerge both sides of the bread in the egg mixture and then coat it in parmesan cheese on each side. I'm not great at dredging things so the parmesan was uneven, but that was okay. The more noticeable issue for me was when I got to the last slice of bread. Apparently I hadn't broken down the egg whites as well as I thought when I was mixing up the eggs, so the egg mixture was really thick and I had to spread it on to the bread with my hands. There was a whole layer of fried egg on part of that piece of bread when it was done. Not intended, but not bad.

Once coated in the cheese and egg mixture, the bread got moved to a nonstick skillet in which I had melted some butter. I don't know how big Kenji's "large nonstick or cast iron skillet" is, but ours could not fit more than 1 piece of bread at a time. 2 slices wouldn't fit, so we definitely couldn't do 4 slices at a time like in the recipe. I ended up making all 4 slices separately, so it took much longer than I thought it would. Each slice cooked for about 5 minutes or so (a few minutes on each side) until golden brown (although after the first slice, most of the slices were just brown, and less golden). I put the finished slices in a 200 degree oven to stay warm until I finished the fourth slice.

While the French toast was in progress, we also put together the corned beef hash. I sauteed the peppers and onions in some butter in a large pan (and also about a third of the scallions from the French toast when I realized how many I had), and then A added the can of corned beef hash. Canned corned beef hash always looks so horrible and amusing right out of the can, but it does taste pretty good. A helped me out with this while I was working on the toast, so he broke down all the corned beef hash and mixed it together with the vegetables so that it could cook.

We let it cook for a while, basically until all of the slices of French toast were done. We tried to get the corned beef to brown as much as possible in the pan, since it seems to taste better that way. The corned beef hash was actually pretty good with the peppers and onions added in. Didn't taste the same as it would when you get the corned beef hash from a diner off the griddle (hasn't in the past either), but it was nice to have some vegetables mixed in this time.

Once both the corned beef hash and French toast were done, it was time to get it all on the plates and eat. The last step was to sprinkle the French toast with the remaining scallions and parsley. I didn't do a very good job plating it, but that's not really my forte. Generally, our feelings about the garnishes were that the parsley was fine, but the scallions didn't really add anything to the whole thing. They were just sharp, but didn't really complement anything. Could have gone without them.

I don't know if we have any cans of corned beef hash left, but if we do, I wouldn't mind adding peppers and onions to it again for a more balanced meal. There wouldn't have been many vegetables at all if I hadn't. As for the French toast, it was good. It was interesting having a more savory French toast since we've never had that before. The slice that had the most flavor actually turned out to be the last slice, which had the remainder of all the garlic, parsley, and seasonings that were left in the bowl. I guess the other slices didn't pick up as much of the flavor as we hoped they would, but they were still good. Overall, it was a fun experiment.