Dirty Snack - Hard Fried Eggs

Growing up in southwest Ohio, just across the river from Kentucky, I never knew about over-easy eggs. My mom, who was a southern cook by assimilation, always hard fried eggs in a cast iron skillet. She used bacon drippings, which she kept for days in a can on the back of the stove. I don’t know what kept us from dying from food poisoning, but eventually she switched to Crisco shortening. She fried eggs until the edges browned and curled up and the whites and yolks were solid and rubbery. Today, I use a Paula Deen non-stick sauté pan and can fry eggs without turning them to rubber. Even so, I can’t stand runny whites and can barely tolerate soft yolks.

Occasionally, my mother would make eggs for lunch or dinner (supper, as we called it then), in the same manner as she made them for breakfast, but they would become a sandwich spread with mustard. It was my favorite lunch and I still like a hard-fried egg sandwich.

My mom always fried bacon, or ham, or sausage to go with eggs for breakfast. There was always toast with real butter. And, coffee, strong enough to grow hair on your chest. We didn’t realize it, but she started me out drinking a quasi-café au lait—half coffee, half Wilson’s condensed milk from a can, and a heaping teaspoon of sugar. I have cut back on the cream and sweeten with a sugar substitute now, but my coffee still has to be deadly strong.

Sometimes, she would switch it up and make pancakes for breakfast, which would also be rubbery and solid with crispy edges. She also made buttermilk biscuits drowned in white gravy with sausage bits. I don’t even try to make pancakes and on the rare occasions I make biscuits, it’s by cracking open a can of them.

Here’s my dirty snack recipe for two hard fried egg sandwiches, updated somewhat from the kind my mother made.

Ingredients:

2 eggs

1 tbsp. sour cream

½ cup shredded pepper jack cheese

4 slices of any kind of bread, toasted

Preparation:

Heat a teaspoon of butter in a sauté pan over medium heat. Lightly beat the eggs with the sour cream. Pour the egg mixture into heated pan. Cook until the eggs start to set. Sprinkle the pepper jack over the eggs. Continue to cook until the cheese melts and the eggs are very firm. Season with salt and pepper. Spread butter on the toast if desired. Assemble the sandwiches using half the egg and cheese mixture on each.

This egg and cheese mixture can also be served in a warmed flour tortilla, topped with salsa. (Nope, my mom never heard of tortillas or salsa or sour cream…)

Dirty Snack Chili

I sort of backed into this Dirty Snack recipe. I had no idea when I started it what it would end up becoming. I bought a mega-container of grape sized tomatoes at Costco last week, which were looking kind of shrivelty this morning. So, I felt I had to use them before they went totally off. I had a small amount of hamburger leftover from making meatloaf (maybe more on that in another post) so I browned that, then tossed in the tomatoes. I let them simmer for a few minutes, then I used a potato masher to crush the tomatoes. I didn't have the sense to stop mashing them even though they each exploded with the force of a small A-bomb. I will be wiping the kitchen down for days from that! OK, so I recovered slightly from that miscalculation and seasoned the mixture with chili powder and cumin. Next, I added some kidney beans and let the chili simmer for another 30 minutes. It turned out pretty good. My husband is steering clear of it because he can actually see remnants of the tomatoes, which he hates. Why is it tomato haters always marry tomato lovers? Tomatoes are a must have in so many dishes and especially on sandwiches. We can never have BLTs. Oops, got off on a rant there. Anyway, you have to use tough love on husbands sometimes. He will eat it when he gets hungry enough.

Tomato Image by: OCAL

OMG! What Did I Eat?

I have never considered sandwiches to be dirty snacks, but the one I made for my husband today for lunch has been so named. I came home from staying overnight with my daughter around noon and my helpless husband started yammering about being hungry. I said, "What would you have done if I hadn't come home until 5:00 or later?" He said he would have just withered away. So, I started to slam together a ham sandwich, but discovered I didn't have any lettuce to put on it. Then I remembered the left over salad I had made for dinner the night before. It consisted of a little bit of romaine, onion, yellow peppers, spinach, and Parmesan cheese, so I put that on his sandwich with a good slathering of mayo. A little later he came out of his office and said, "That sandwich was really good, strange stuff on it, but it was good. I think it qualifies as a dirty snack." He did gag a little when I told him it had spinach in it, but he recovered quickly, still thinking the sandwich as a whole was good.

Graphic By Fireheartx3x3

Monday January 17 Dirty Snack

I get tired of eggs for breakfast so this morning I made a casserole dish, which qualifies as a dirty snack. It is based on another dish I make called "Alpo." Alpo is a big can of Dennison's hot chili with beans served over rice. As you can tell by the name, it belongs to a completely different category from dirty snacks. It's my husband's favorite. Actually it is his original recipe, concocted when he was a single guy in the Air Force. It's OK as comfort food, but I have to add some fresh tomatoes or sour cream to mine. But, back to the breakfast casserole. It is as follows:

1. 2 cups frozen hash browns (shredded kind) placed in the bottom of a small casserole bowl
2. top with a small can of Dennison's hot chili with beans, spread to cover the potatoes
3. Next layer, 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
4. Final layer, add 1/2 cup crushed pita chips
5. Bake at 375 about 30 minutes or until hot through.

I can't wait to hear what my husband has to say about this one.

History of the Dirty Snack

My mother was not born southern but she married at a very early age into a Kentucky family and learned to cook the way they did. We were poor, so she had to make things stretch. She would toss some of the most outlandish combinations of leftovers into a skillet and fry it. My dad called these dishes, which were nearly always pretty tasty, "dirty snacks." My mom would get so mad at him. I thought it was funny and to this day that's what I call the dinners I slam together from whatever I find in the fridge. My husband always cringes when I tell him the latest dirty snack is ready, but he dutifully eats it. He only threw up once after eating a dirty snack and I've been cooking them for most of our 30 years together.

Here's tonight's dirty snack recipe:

• Left over chicken and veggies (pearl onions, mushrooms, tiny carrots) from Sunday's coq au vin dinner
• Left over sauteed green beans, also from Sunday's coq au vin dinner
• A splash of chicken bouillon
• Shaved Parmesan cheese
• Left over basmati rice from Monday's dinner
• butter

Cut chicken and green beans into bite sized pieces

Place into a casserole dish

Top with rice

Splash 1/2 cup bouillon over all

Drop dabs of butter and sprinkle cheese over rice

Cover with aluminum foil

Bake in 375 oven for 45 minutes

45 minutes may be a bit long, but if there are any new forms of life forming in the leftovers, I want to make sure I don't eat them raw.