Alice’s Famous Breakfast Salad
I owe this recipe entirely to my college roommate and friend Alice.
Although if I am being honest, I didn’t eat a single one of these my entire time in undergrad. Alice was a collegiate tennis player, caring quite a bit about the nutritional status of her food and how it affected her performance. I, on the other hand, only had to prove any physical capability once every six months, so I didn’t really equate nutrition and performance in my every day college life. I ate like a typical cafeteria junkie.
Luckily, Alice kept this recipe in her back pocket for me.
In my first year working as a nurse, I was living in Hawaii, navigating the typical ebbs and flows of learning how to ‘adult’ before it was cool to call it that. Now safely away from the patterns of university living, I was starting to really see how the meals I would choose for a 13-hour shift in the hospital was influencing the way I felt - both during work hours and my free time.
But I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it, or what to do about it. So largely, I ignored it.
Until Alice came to visit.
Even though she wasn’t playing tennis for a college anymore, she maintained a high physical existence and was a coach at her local CrossFit gym, among other things. She maintained that to keep herself feeling energized and fueled for her lifestyle, she had to make sure she was putting in some pretty good fuel. On the third day of her visit, she made breakfast before our scheduled hike.
I know if you’d asked me what I wanted for breakfast at that point, a giant bowl of lettuce was decidedly not the answer you were going to get. But y’all, this giant bowl of greens was basically magical.
It is tangy, it is rich, it is filling, and it is most certainly breakfast.
I can easily say that in the last decade, I have eaten a variation of this salad 1,000 times.
Ingredients
1 Egg
Lots O’ Greens (I usually opt for Spring Mix)
Mushrooms
Bell Peppers (any color!)
Jalapeno
Cherry Tomatoes
Feta Cheese
Balsamic Vinegar
Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper
One note - choose true balsamic vinegar for the tang, not a vinaigrette dressing!
Hand shred your greens into a large bowl, adding the feta cheese (I usually use about a palm’s worth). Dice your cherry tomatoes and toss them in cold.
Over a small drizzle of olive oil, cook your peppers, mushrooms, and jalapeños together until they are softened but not mushy (3-5 minutes) and sprinkle a bit of pepper and Ghost Pepper Seasoning if you like a little extra heat. Throw your new mixture together with your greens mixture to cool while you get started on your egg. In the same pan, crack an egg. You want to wait until the bottom and edges are cooked and the egg can move easily enough to be flipped.
One of the best parts to this recipe is when the yolk breaks over the salad, so try to keep your egg intact on the flip (2-5 minutes on each side depending on personal preference of egg done-ness).
When all your egg’s white is solid but your yolk is still a bit jiggly, transfer that bad boy onto the top of your beautiful bowl of veggies. Drizzle 1-2 tsp of balsamic vinegar over the whole thing, sprinkle with just the slightest shake of salt, and split your yolk so it drips down and coats the whole thing.
Toss that beast of a breakfast all together and get to chowing!
The best part about this salad is that is is so easily tailored to what you have in your kitchen on hand at any time. Add some beans or egg whites for extra protein, throw in different vegetables each time, add some cooked quinoa for a little extra density, throw in avocado for some extra healthy fats, crank up the heat level with some hot sauce - whatever your heart desires that day.
Even though I often am the bud of the joke when I have a brunch at my house and serve this salad (“You would. Only you would!”), there is rarely a plate that hasn’t been licked clean after.
