PW: Breakfast Burritos

It's getting near the end of the month, and we still had to make the breakfast burritos and the chicken pot pie. I keep forgetting to defrost any chicken, but we've had the ingredients on hand for the burritos, so they were destined to be cooked this week.  I am embarrassed to say that I let the peppers go bad -- something I hate to do -- and had to re-buy them, which really forced the issue for me that we were cooking these, pronto.   We didn't feel like making them Sunday morning as we'd thought we would, so we decided to do "breakfast for dinner." Then Jim and Marie stopped by and I invited us to dinner at their house, and so the burritos got pushed back, yet again, to Tuesday night.  (Since Monday, of course, was the kids' spaghetti dinner, we had to skip a day.)

I was tutoring Tuesday, so Mick cooked this while I tutored in order to allow us to all eat as early as possible. (It was a school night, and we work hard to eat almost the very minute tutoring is over when tutoring bumps up into dinner time.)   Consequently, there aren't many photos.  Sorry about that.  But I'm pretty sure you're all comfortable with skipping the typical food-prep photos just this once.  Right? 

Breakfast Burritos

Verdict:  Meh.
Cook it Again:   Maybe.  It'd need some tinkering.
Cost Factor:  Moderate.  Bell peppers, hash browns, cheese, fresh chives, and almost a dozen eggs!  But it fed a lot of people, and there were leftovers.  And none of us went hungry!

I am not really sure what I didn't care for about this recipe, but it didn't wow me the way I hoped it would.  It was good, don't get me wrong, and oh-so-filling.  Mick, Jim, and I even had seconds, and it was a nice, hearty meal (even for dinner)!  But it didn't have the kick I think I expected the sausage to impart (and in fairness, we didn't add Tabasco or anything because we had a mixed audience of who does and does not eat spicy food).  And we did take the "cheat," and instead of using PW Breakfast Potatotes, we used frozen hash browns.  I felt like that was actually a bad call; the ratio of egg to potatoes was not quite right.  It was almost hard to even find the eggs, as Jim pointed out ... as if they'd cooked into the potatoes.

Now, part of this critique may just be what I thought I was getting -- and in my head (influenced by the cookbook's photos) I envisioned this recipe as making more of a casserole-y mixture, which was definitely not what happened.  As I sit here and type this, the more I think about this, the more I am leaning towards the idea that it really may have been the egg/potato ratio.  

So, if we do this again, we'll either use breakfast potatoes or we'll reduce the amount of hash browns we add.  We'll also use hot sausage instead of regular.  And we'll cayenne-or-whatever the heck out of it for a little kick.

Or, all that being said, maybe we'll just find a Jimmy Dean or some other breakfast casserole recipe and try it, and then decide which one to stick with and tweak.

But it's important to say that we all enjoyed dinner.  We added cheese and fresh salsa to our burritos (and Mick, I think, even used some Tabasco) and there were no complaints about the meal being bad, not by any stretch!  We just wouldn't rave about it, either, and so we'll definitely explore other recipes before we commit to returning to this one.

Photos to come. We didn't get many, but we did get a few -- I just haven't had a chance to upload them yet.

--Jen

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