copyright Bettina Network, inc. 2014
It gets to be a challenge to come up with fantastic ideas for breakfast 365 days of the year.
So far, sometimes, in the process of coming up with new, different and fantastic ways to start the day for our guests, we manage to outdo ourselves and others. This latest breakfast is one of those times.
MENU
Fruit and, of course, Juice
Orange Juice
Ripe, Organic, Mangoes – sliced with organic strawberries and blackberries
Main Dish
Organic Grits
Mushrooms
Biscuits (Homemade)
Ending With
Beignets
Organic Coffee made in a French Press; organic Tea – try hibiscus or hawthorn berries or Tulsi; Warm Milk with Cinnamon; or Warm Lemon Juice in water with Organic Turbinado Sugar to taste – the guests choice.
PROCESS
1) Using organic frozen orange concentrate – put one container in a large pitcher and add three containers of filtered water. Put the juice of one or two organic oranges with the frozen juice. Let this sit in the refrigerator while you continue breakfast. Don’t stir the mixture until you are ready to serve. and don’t take it out of the refrigerator to serve until guests are seated. Nothing worse than juices in the morning on the way to becoming room temperature.
2) Start the organic yellow corn grits. The amount you use depends upon the number of people you are feeding. We use one cup grits to three cups water. If you want something really different, put frozen whole organic corn into the grits as they cook. Not everyone likes this, but we think it is fantastic.
Put your grits mixture in a glass Corning pot with a glass cover on top, bring to a boil and let it simmer for about one hour or until the grits is the right consistency – which means, not too watery and not too clumped together, but just right. It can actually simmer until you are ready to serve it even if this is longer than an hour. Great grits cook for a very long time. No quick cooking, processed grits should come near your breakfast table. You are trying to nourish your guests in the morning – not fatten them and processed, quick cooking, etc. is meant to make the processing company rich by making their grits able to sit on the grocery shelf for years until it is sold – not to make you and your guests healthy.
Occasionally stir the grits with a wooden spoon to keep the consistency smooth and great.
3) Make the fruit for cups by slicing the mangoes – ignore the pit, peel the mango with a small sharp knife, and slice it lengthwise all around the pit until you have reached the pit and can’t slice anymore. Use as many as you need to make a nice fruit cup. We’ve heard lots of complaints about slicing mangoes – don’t fight it. Go with the mango – slice it lengthwise around the pit, don’t try to take the pit out and then slice the mano – it is not an avocado, it has its own way of being used.
Rinse the strawberries, take out the green top and slice into two pieces. Put the strawberries in the bowl with the Mangoes.
Rinse the black berries and put them in the bowl with the strawberries and mango slices.
You can use any fruit to make this fruit cup. Think of the nutritional value of the fruit you are combining – the colors and how well they look together – and how the combination taste together. Serve the fruit in a beautiful bowl – nicely mixed – so guests can put the fruit into their fruit cups in the amount they want to eat.
It is nice to serve fruit cups by putting them filled with fruit at each place, but much nicer to give guests the freedom to help themselves with however much they would like.
4) Once guests are served with their fruit cups, you can now pay attention to the star of this breakfast – the mushrooms.
Best made with organic portabello mushrooms because of their size and how nice they look sliced lengthwise.
Lightly rinse and take any dirt or other debris off the mushrooms
Slice them the longway so you have nice long and fairly thick slices
Put butter in an iron fry pot and when it melts, put the sliced mushrooms into the pot.
Add himalayan salt, a touch of cayenne pepper, and a barbecue sauce – either one you make or your favorite kind found wherever you buy such. Trader Joe’s has an “All Natural” sauce which is very good. We don’t like the fact that it is not organic and they try my last nerve by making this “All Natural” claim and expect that to pacify me, but until I can find a great organic barbecue sauce or learn to keep a large jar of such sauce that I make in the refrigerator for just such instances, well… what can I say.
Pour the sauce over the mushrooms and add an equal amount – at least – of water.
Let the mushrooms saute for five minutes or so and take the top off the fry pan.
These mushrooms are best when the sauce has boiled off and they are left glazed with the sauce and seasonings.
Serve these in a very elegant flat bowl to go along with the grits. Guests can put their mushrooms over their grits or they can put them on the side of the grits and eat them together – a little grits and mushrooms on the same fork because they do go together fantastically well.
You could serve the mushrooms before the sauce cooks out if you are a person who likes a bit of gravy with your grits.
Either way they are awesome and a great breakfast which wakes up your metabolism and makes sure your food is used and turned into energy as the day progresses.
5) Homemade biscuits are a great bread to go with this because if you keep the gravy with the grits you can sop up what remains with these biscuits.
To make these biscuits takes about ten minutes, if that long.
Put 2 cups flour (organic whole wheat flour) – in a food processor with one teaspoon himalayan salt, a touch of cayenne pepper, a teaspoon baking powder.
Let this whirl around the processor for a minute or so.
Add one stick butter and let this whirl until you have what looks like little peas – That should take another minute or two.
Then add 2/3 cup organic milk – or organic heavy cream, and not the ultra-pasteurized kind . It is bad enough you have to use that awful pasteurized milk, Puleeze don’t ruin these biscuits with the ultra-pasteurized milks. The only thing ultra-pasteurized does – and not for you – is to make their shelf life extend into eternity. Ultra-pasteurized has less of everything – less nutrition, less taste, less texture – more convenience for the processing company and more time it can stay on the shelf.
Take a wad of biscuit dough from the processor, roll it around in your hand very gently and put it on a buttered baking dish. Being careful you don’t squash the biscuit. Lightness is the code word as you make biscuits. Take other wads of dough all about the same size so they cook and are done together – until you have used all of your dough.
Bake at about 425 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes.
6) After the main meal, serve all of this with Beignets – old fashioned beignets, not the kind you get today in New Orleans where they are now served under a box of powdered sugar. Meant to make sure you think they are fantastic because you won’t be able to taste the beignets only the sugar – and we know sugar doesn’t taste, it only gives us a sweet sensation and lots of health problems.
The recipe for the beignets – another time. I am not ready to give up all my secrets in one blog.
7) Breakfast drinks.
We have found to add a cup of warm milk with a teaspoon of organic Ceylon Cinnamon is a nice alternative to coffee or tea. With Organic Ceylon Cinnamons’ reputation for helping to control diabetes, that is a nice way for some of your guests to start the day.
Another drink you can offer is a lemon – squeezed – with enough hot water added to fill a cup and organic turbinado sugar to taste or organic honey or organic maple syrup. Bettina’s Breakfast drinks.
The lemon and water helps to give your body an alkaline environment in spite of the acid in the lemon. It changes in the body to produce that alkaline environment which helps ward off disease, colds, etc. What a nice way to start the day.
And there you have a great Bettina Breakfast.
If you find this served in other non-Bettina Homes, you know they read Bettina Network’s Blog.
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Tags: bed & breakfast, Bettina Cookbook, health
