[Horsa]

Makes me hungry just reading it ...

This takes: 25 mins for prep and cooking if you’re used to the routine and know where things are. If you have to fumble for things, it could take 40 minutes.

1. Put two heads, I mean, hash browns, into the oven. You can just place a layer of aluminum foil in the oven and put the hash browns on it, or if you have one of those metal containers for ovens, line it with a layer of foil just big enough so that its edges wrap around the corners of the container, and then put the hash browns in it. This is so that you don’t have to wash the container afterwards; you just discard the foil after you’re done cooking.

2. Slam the oven door shut and set its temperature to 450F / 230C. Those hash browns will take roughly 20 minutes to brown.

3. You shouldn't just sit around waiting for 20 minutes. You can prepare other things in the meantime. Crack the eggs into a container, pour in a bit of milk, sprinkle on some Cajun powder and pepper, add some salt and beat with a fork. This is your scrambled egg mixture.

4. Next, you prepare your salad dish. Use 1/3 of a 283g or 10oz bag of pre-packaged vegetables. Wash the vegetables, put them into a strainer to drain off the excess water, and put them onto a dish.

5. Chop one or two tomatoes into chunks and place them on the same dish.

6. Open a can of pineapple- a 398ml or 14oz can - you can use any similar-sized can. Put half the contents onto the same dish and drop the rest into a Tupperware container, which you should then put into the fridge to save for later use.

7. Sprinkle on some salt and season with a few spoons of sesame oil. Any dressing will do, but sesame oil has a unique aroma and taste, which will complement the dish perfectly. Your salad is complete, check your hash browns to see if they are cooked. If you were quick enough with the salad prep, they probably aren’t, so just flip them over and put them back in.

8. Now it’s time to fry the bacon. Cut your strips of bacon into appropriate size bits. If it is regular bacon, you won't need to do this at all because the rashers will shrink as you fry them, but bacon is essentially ham in disguise. Ham doesn’t shrink - especially if it is low-fat.

9. Apply non-stick cooking spray to the skillet you’re going to use. Set the stove temperature to mid-high and throw in the bacon bits. Those ham bacons bits have feelings, too, and they want to be cooked gently. If you set the temperature too high, they’ll jump about and quickly burn. Stir until cooked.

10. Tip them onto another dish. So you have one dish for salad and one for the rest.

11. Wash the skillet thoroughly, as you’ll need to use it again for your scrambled eggs and not only will blacks from bacon (or any meat) ruin your scrambled eggs, but they can also cause cancer. Until the day we conquer cancer, let’s just avoid it as much as we can.

12. Apply the non-stick cooking spray to the skillet again and preheat for a minute or two at a mid to mid-high temperature.

13. Check your hash browns again. If they are done, take them out and lay them onto the dish where the bacon is laid out.

14. Pour the egg mix onto the skillet. Spread it evenly and let it sit for a while. Then go crazy and scramble it.

15. Empty the contents of the skillet onto the dish.

16. Squeeze some ketchup onto the corner of the dish for the hash browns and eggs.

17. Hog away.


This meal is inspired from an overnight stay at my friend A's house while I was back home in Cambridge over the summer. His mom treated me and B, an equally good friend of mine, to breakfast which consisted of eggs, bacon and hash browns. A typical North American breakfast, you might say, but this was the first real North American breakfast I’ve had in my 9 years of living in Canada. I had been cooking stir fries every day all through my first year in Ottawa and grown tired of them, and was pondering about ideas for simple, tasty and nutritious meals. I had forgotten about it until I came back to Ottawa for my second year at the university, and I suddenly recalled the breakfast I had at A's house and decided to modify it into my own style, by going low fat and adding salad.