Happy Friday y’all! Instead of hitting the pavement for some miles this morning, I grabbed a knife and went to work in the kitchen! Sometimes your scheduled workout just doesn’t sound like a good idea and this morning was one of those. Fridays are tricky because I don’t have class so I always try to schedule a long run for these mornings. But I also tend to forget that by this day of the week I’m pretty wiped out from school, work and training the rest of the week ….. So far this semester Friday workouts have happened ZERO times.
I’ve come to terms with these kind of mornings and instead of wasting the whole day, I have to be up by 9 (pretty late!! It’s awesome). And then, rather than take advantage of a rare day off of training (“take advantage” meaning, eat whatever the hell sugary, awful-for-me food that I normally wouldn’t on a training day), I use that time and energy to do something that will instead get me closer to my goal. Sometimes I’ll foam roll, sometimes I’ll clean around the apartment but this morning I worked on this recipe :). It was really nice to not have to rush to eat before catching the bus, or cook something while I’m still in my sweaty running clothes!
Veggie, Sausage and Egg Casserole
This casserole was inspired by this recipe from Prevention. I made it slightly healthier by using skim milk instead of 2%, omitting the salt (you truly don’t need it!) and throwing in an extra veggie!
- 1 package of Spicy Italian Turkey Sausage links
- 2 heads of broccoli
- 1 red pepper
- 1 red onion
- 2 small zucchini
- .5 c skim milk
- .5 cup parmesan cheese
- 8 eggs
- Pepper to taste
Begin by pre-heating the oven to 350 degrees. Next, remove the casings on the sausage links and put the meat into a skillet (sprayed with non-stick spray if you don’t have non-stick pans 🙂 ). Don’t be afraid if you’ve never used this kind of sausage before – it’s not too hard to get it out of the casing! Using a wooden spoon, break the links up into pieces.
Brown the meat!
While the sausage is cooking, chop your veggies! Cut the zucchini in half lengthwise and then thinly slice. Chop the onion and red bell pepper and for the broccoli, lay it on its side and slice the florets off. In between vegetables, return to the skillet to move the meat around. Once your veggies are chopped, line the bottom of a casserole dish (I used an 11×17) coated with non-stick spray, with the sausage. Remove the grease from the pan and add the chopped veggies. Allow the veggies to cook for about 10 minutes or until soft.
Chopped veggies!
Cook em up!
While the veggies cook, use a whisk to blend the 8 eggs, milk and cheese together in a bowl.
Eggs – great protein source!
Dump the veggies evenly over the sausage layer, adding cracked black pepper to the top. Next, pour the egg mixture into the dish evenly over the meat and veggies. Don’t worry if the eggs don’t come to the top of the chopped stuff, the eggs will fluff up in the oven!
The eggs are in!
You can see the shredded cheese nicely coats the top of the veggies! Mmmm that’s gonna taste so good!
Into the oven!
Place the casserole dish in the 350 degree oven and let the ingredients bake for 40-45 minutes (or until the eggs are firm). When it comes out, the eggs will be nice and fluffy, the cheese perfectly melted and the veggies just a little crispy!
Perfect!
Allow the dish to cool – maybe while you clean up the kitchen, check your emails or hop in the shower – before slicing into 10 rectangular servings. I had to have two pieces the mixture of spicy sausage and cheesy vegetables was so good!
Delicious!
This was such a delicious way to get 4 different kinds of veggies and a heaping serving of protein in at one meal! If you don’t like zucchini or really LOVE spinach, you could easily modify the vegetables you put in. Same with the sausage – maybe you prefer sweet, or leave it out entirely if you’re a vegetarian! So many ways to shake this dish up 🙂
Enjoy your Friday!
RUNMEM 