Crusty Omelette Bake

Every day for breakfast I drink an Instant Breakfast.  I've been drinking them since high school and I think they're delicious.  On weekends Brett loves to eat a giant bowl of Cheerios, so I just make my Instant Breakfast as usual.  As you might guess, breakfast for breakfast is pretty rare in our household, but that doesn't mean we don't like breakfast, we just have breakfast for dinner on occasion.

This recipe came with my Longaberger pie plate.  Longaberger is well known for their beautiful baskets (pictured above) but they make ceramic bakeware and all sorts of other things too.  It's one of those recipes that, in addition to the ingredients, tells you what Longaberger tools you can use.  (Don't tell the folks at Longaberger, but I used a different mixing bowl, and it worked just fine.)

I started by taking a couple of large handfuls of thawed Southern-style hashbrowns and spreading them out in the bottom of a pie plate (that had been sprayed with cooking spray) and up the sides a little bit.  This baked for  about 10-15 minutes until the hashbrowns were starting to brown around the edges.

While that was cooling slightly I got to work on the egg mixture.  Really you could put whatever you like in your omelettes but I chose to follow the recipe.  5 beaten eggs, 1/2 a cup cubed ham, 1 cup grated cheddar cheese, 1/4 cup milk, salt and pepper, 1/2 cup broccoli florets and 1/4 cup of chopped green onion.  Some of you may be amazed that I didn't leave the broccoli out (Brett wanted me too) but I figured it was an easy way to sneak in a little bit of vegetables.

I poured the egg mixture over the hashbrowns and let it bake at 400 for 25 minutes.  When I took it out, the eggs were still a little runny, so I gave it a couple extra minutes.

We sliced it up like a pie, and ate it with ketchup on the side.

It was really good, but we both agreed that next time we'll leave out the broccoli.