Meal prep for a week of busy school mornings with a tasty and nourishing breakfast casserole and only one pan to clean!
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High school…
If you’ve been around here as long as RGN has been around, you were here for her first days of kindergarten! Those very first posts here in this space were basically me getting my feet wet in a new season of motherhood – the school aged years! As I make yet another motherhood transition this fall into having a high schooler, I hope you’ll join me as I navigate this season of earlier mornings (much earlier mornings!), activities…and something that I feel passionate about making sure this next generation carries on with them…
Life skills…
Because if you are an American kid that grew up in the 80’s or 90’s, lets just be very honest…we didn’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen making food. We left for college and couldn’t feed ourselves unless it came from a box. And if you were one of the kids that did have parents that invited you to cook in the kitchen in the 80’s and 90’s, it was either low fat, full of processed ingredients, and/or majorly lacking in nutrients. We have all learned so much since then, and I think I speak for an entire generation of Gen X’ers and Millennials when I say we want our kids to grow up with food that sustains and nourishes our children’s bodies. We want our kids to know where their food comes from, and know how to prepare simple meals that will help them think and focus at school, run and play their sport well, sleep through the night, and wake up rested.
Always start with breakfast
I was recently asked in a podcast, “How do you make small steps toward eating better at home?” My answer to that question is…just start with fixing one meal per day. And I think starting with breakfast is the best bet. If we can start our day with something that nourishes our brain and organs, we’ll be set up to make great choices for the rest of the day in my experience. So, as my oldest daughter and I started game planning her Freshman year of high school, we first noticed how much earlier she will be out the door compared to her sisters, and decided we need to figure breakfast out first! In our house, we all typically sit down to breakfast together, but she will be eating earlier than all of us come this fall. And that means, we need to have some “ready to go” breakfasts that she can get out to eat before she heads out the door, even if I’m still in the shower.
My teenager…meal prepping?!
Absolutely. If you take the time to show them the steps, truly, dear momma, this meal prep could be something they do for themselves every weekend. Because this isn’t just about teaching them how to cook…even more than that, this is about teaching your teenager how to MAKE TIME to meal prep. (<–Read that part again!) Because in just 4 short years, many of these teenagers will be off to collage or away from home. If you show them NOW how to make the time to feed themselves food that nourishes them, it will be a full-blown good habit by age 18! I had my 14 year old follow this recipe start to finish, and the hands-on prep time took about 20 minutes for her. YES, it would take me MUCH less time to prep, but just watch how proud they are when they have their own breakfast made for their school week to pull from! If your teenager has a 20 minute slice of time over the weekend here and there, I would encourage you both to try! Does it have to be every week? Nope! But building the concept of this meal planning habit will be so worth it! AND you could always team up and knock it out together in even less time!
A quick note for moms with littles!
Dear kindergarten momma! This part is for you! This breakfast casserole is also made with YOU in mind! I know you don’t have time to clean a bunch of pots and pans and make fancy breakfast preps. This breakfast casserole is SO easy to prep and clean up, and once it’s made, you can pull from it all week for your little one to eat for breakfast! Please hear me when I tell you that those kinders will focus so much better for their new morning routine if we can get them to eat a breakfast that isn’t just one macronutrient. Even if your little one insists on cereal, let’s at least add an egg to the side, or maybe switch it up with this breakfast casserole and a banana!
Let’s make One Pan Breakfast Casserole with my 14 year old!
My biggest piece of advice to teenagers preparing this (or newbie cooking parents!), is to prep the ingredients before you start cooking. Once you get a little quicker/more efficient with chopping, then you can start doing more than one thing at a time. My 14 year old started by chopping the veggies, shredding the cheese, and whisking the egg mixture before she heated her pan up.
Next – cooking!
Once the ingredients are ready to go, then your teenager can pre-heat the oven and cook the components. Again – this is all done in one pan to make less clean up for you and your teenager! So use a stove top safe and oven safe casserole pan or cast iron skillet. You can brown up the sausage and cook the veggies right in the pan, add the egg mixture, and it’s ready to bake!
How to serve and store One Pan Breakfast Casserole
So you’ve prepped your egg squares for the week…now how do you serve them? I pull squares out of the fridge right onto a baking sheet, and pop them into a cold oven. You can pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees, and by the time it’s pre-heated, the egg squares will have gently warmed up so the kids can eat them hot. You may even be one of the lucky ones that has a kid or 2 that don’t mind eating them cold (2 out of 3 of mine like them right out of the fridge!). These breakfast squares really pack a nutrient dense punch, packed with both protein and healthy fats. I usually serve squares of breakfast casserole with a banana on the side (or whatever fruit is in season) to get some fiber and carbohydrates in. A side of crispy potatoes work well too. If you have a very busy athlete you could also add a smoothie or loaded yogurt bowl to the side…or quite frankly just have them eat a larger square or have 2 squares! Pictured below is a great “on-the-go” breakfast container that is light weight, not breakable, and easy to clean! Your teen (or you!) could stack these up for the whole week to pull from!
One Pan Breakfast Casserole Even Your Teen Can Meal Prep!
Ingredients
- 1 small onion diced
- 1 medium bell pepper diced
- 1 head of broccoli chopped small
- 4 cloves of garlic minced (or a good 2-3 tsp garlic powder)
- 12 eggs we use pasture raised eggs
- ½ cup milk of choice we use coconut milk but any milk will work
- 1 cup cheese of choice shredded & divided
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- ½ tsp pepper
- ½ tsp dried thyme
- 2 tbsp butter ghee, avocado oil, or olive oil
- 1 lb ground sausage of choice optional if you like meat on the side or don’t have available
Instructions
- Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees. If your teen is making this dish, I usually suggest for teens to prep all of the ingredients first, so it is all ready to go – I’ll explain how my teen did it that way here!
- Chop all of the veggies, and shred the cheese first so it’s ready to go. Before cooking, whisk the eggs, milk, ½ cup of the cheese, salt, pepper, & thyme in a medium mixing bowl and set aside.
- In a stovetop & oven safe casserole dish, melt 2 tablespoons of butter, and brown the sausage.
- Once the sausage is browned, add the onion, pepper, broccoli, and garlic, stir, and cook for 2-3 minutes over medium/high heat. If your pan doesn't have a lot of fat left from the sausage, you can add a tablespoon of butter to the bottom to keep everything from sticking before pouring the egg mixture in.
- Pour the egg mixture into the casserole dish, stir the veggies and meat into the egg mixture, and bake uncovered at 375 degrees for 40 minutes. Let the egg casserole cool for 5 minutes before cutting.
- To store and reheat the egg squares, I like to use an air-tight container to store in the fridge, and in the morning your teen can either eat the square cold, or if they want it warmed, up they can pop it on a sheet tray into a cold oven and pre-heat to 350 degrees – this will gently warm it up to a hot temperature.
Notes
- If you do not have a stovetop & oven safe casserole dish, you’ll just have to use a skillet to brown the meat and cook the veggies, and then transfer the egg mixture and meat/veg to your casserole dish. It means an extra pan to clean, which is why I tend to have my teen use my one pan method so she doesn’t have extra pans to clean!
- We use a sheep’s milk Manchego for this recipe, but cow’s milk cheeses OR if you are dairy free the Voila Life coconut-based cheeses are great! You could also leave this ingredient out if you don’t tolerate the dairy or non-dairy alternatives.
- There are a lot of sausage options. Best choice would be something pasture raised, but that is not always available for everyone. I do tend to use our ground beef meat from the grass-fed cow that we get every year, and season that with my sausage season blend. Next best choice would be to use a ground turkey or pork sausage that has minimal ingredients and no fillers/MSG, etc. The Jenny-O turkey sausage and Swaggerty’s pork sausage are something we use sometimes where I live.
- Kids not a broccoli fan? Swap it for spinach, or leave it out. You can swap the peppers for shredded carrot too. If it means them eating it more willingly, either back off on the amount of the veg (and chop it super fine), or just leave it out. I’d rather them actually eat it than grab for a bowl of cereal!
When does the second 1/2 cup of cheese go into the casserole? Maybe I’m missing it.