The Buckaroo’s Breakfast

Breakfast, I believe, is my husband’s favorite meal. He loves the way I cook lunch and supper, but breakfast is what gets his day going and sets his pace. So what does this buckaroo eat every morning to get his day started? Well, according to diet fanatics, it’s a meal that will terrify cardiologist and the low fat fanatics.

First off, I do not cook breakfast. In fact, since I got pregnant I hardly ever eat breakfast with my husband anymore, since he typically is out the door before I start to stir. Sean doesn’t wake up extremely early (usually about 6am) it’s just I don’t like to wake up early anymore since I’m up about 3-4 times a night having to go to the bathroom since the baby loves to punch my bladder. Either way, in Sean’s family the man always gets up and cooks breakfast. This is such a relief for me because it’s one less meal I have to worry about.

Sean starts off his morning by putting on a kettle of water for his morning coffee. He really loves his coffee and it is truly a sacrifice for him not to have his warm cup of goodness every morning to kick-start his day.

Next he pulls out two of our handy-dandy skillets. Our egg skillet literally never gets washed. It has an absolutely beautiful seasoning on it that has been developed over the years of cooking with it, nothing sticks and it gives the eggs a fabulous flavor. The second skillet is what he uses to cook his bacon or sausage on, which we faithfully has everyday, unless we forget to thaw it out the day before. This skillet gets washed every now and then because the bacon will get little chard pieces and cause the pan to stick. Also, I cook in this pan different things like ground beef and tomato based things and that can cause the seasoning to come off and needs to be washed… We are working on making it a better seasoned pan 🙂

When we cook our eggs, we use what most people would consider a heart attack waiting to happen… Lard or butter. We love lard. Every year when we butcher a pig for our family we take the fat off the pig and render it into useable lard for cooking. God gave us beautiful animal fat for a reason and it wasn’t to clog our arteries  despite what popular science says, but lard, butter and other animal fats used to be apart of everyone’s diet since it was what was readily available. In fact we go as far to say that we believe that vegetable oils (yes, that does include canola oil, which for some reason people think is good for you) are extremely dangerous and something we don’t even allow in the house. Just butter, lard, olive oil, coconut oil and other animal fats. That’s it.

So before I went on my tangent… Sean will take a big scoop of lard and place it on the skillet and cook his eggs in it. The eggs come from our chickens that are moved around and have plenty of bugs, non-GMO feed and grass to eat. The yolks are a deep hugh of orange, it’s unlike any other egg you have ever eaten. We typically eat our eggs over easy but sometimes Sean will make himself an omelet in the morning and use about 3-4 eggs.

While he is preparing his eggs he will either make sausage patties or bacon. Once again, we raise our own pigs for our family once a year and have started learning how to render our own ham, bacon and sausage. The sausage is just ground sausage (we would love to learn how to make sausage links) which is basically all the trimmings from the pig, lard and seasonings all thrown together through a grinder, it’s a mastery of flavors in your mouth. The bacon was Sean speciality this last year. After using a wet-brine to cure the bacon he then made a smokehouse out of an old freezer and cut up some applewood and smoked the bacon for several hours. Most of our bacon is homemade, applewood smoked bacon and it is a quite the treat to eat.

 

Essentially Sean’s buckaroo breakfast is fairly simple. Just 3-4 eggs, 2-3 slices of bacon and a big cup of coffee. However, it would’ve been boring to have just said it like that 😉

On days that we forget to thaw out the bacon or sausage ahead of time we revert back to Sean’s childhood meal, which is oatmeal. If I remember or know that we are going to have oatmeal in the morning I try to soak it overnight in water and either yogurt or lemon juice. This helps break the oatmeal down and allows it to be digested easier, especially for me because I get a really bubbly stomach if I just eat oatmeal without soaking it prior to eating. Sean just cooks the oatmeal then adds milk, molasses or sucrant and raisins and he is happy as he takes a stroll down comfort food lane.

Sundays is our big breakfast day. I’m glad we don’t do a big breakfast everyday, because it’s just a lot of work, and having a big Sunday breakfast always makes the day so special. What we eat for Sunday breakfast is totally determined by what’s available around the house. If I have left-over bread from the week we will probably have french toast, if I made butter the day before and I have buttermilk left over it’s buttermilk pancakes and if their sour cream that needs to be used, it’s sour cream pancakes. Then we have our typical eggs and sausage or bacon, coffee and some fruit if we have any. We try to all work together to make it a big happy family meal as we celebrate the start of the Lord’s day.

Breakfast is the cornerstone of our day on the ranch, without a good breakfast it’s hard to get started on the right foot. Sean burns several thousand calories a day just doing basic ranch work so it is important that he has something that is going to stick and give him plenty of energy to get through… till lunch 🙂