Kids Make Mushroom Omelets

Omelets made on the cassette feu

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

This was our last week of food appreciation classes for the current school year. How tragic is that? It's also our final week in France on our virtual world culinary tour, so I picked something simple but classic to make with the kids: omelets.

I brought my cassette feu--or portable butane burner--to class so we could make the omelets at our usual work table, rather than at the stove, which is at the other end of the kitchen area. The work surface is also lower, which makes it easier for the kids to actually test their skill at making the omelets--meaning scraping around the edges of the eggs as they cook, tilting the pan to run the uncooked egg onto the surface of the pan, folding the omelet in half.

You don't want the pan too hot or the eggs will cook too quickly, brown too much, and possibly even burn. You also need to work fairly quickly so that you can add your filling--in our case sauteed onions and mushrooms--before the eggs are completely cooked. They should be still wet when you fold the omelet. The omelet will seal itself as it finishes cooking. I usually place a lid over the pan and lower the heat to assist in the process.

Preparing mushrooms for the saute

As always, the challenge is finding enough work for the kids to do. I had them slice cremini mushrooms and dice onions for the fillings. Half of a medium onion, cut into medium dice, plus a couple of handfuls of cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced, is enough for three omelets. We sauteed the onions and mushrooms together in some extra-virgin olive oil. Season with salt to draw out the liquid.

The kids also get to crack and whisk the eggs, one of their favorite kitchen tasks. They always leap at a chance to crack eggs. We added Roquefort cheese to our omelets, which works well with caramelized onions and presents an opportunity to talk about French cheese making and beneficial molds. After that, it's simply a matter of standing back and watching the kids gobble up the omelets.

This is one of those dishes that kids either love or hate. Some don't want the mushrooms. Others swoon over mushrooms. My own daughter won't eat eggs. But making omelets is one of her favorite kitchen activities. You just never know how kids are going to react to different foods. But I'd rank omelet making high on my list of essential kitchen skills.

What's for Breakfast: Sausage and Egg Sandwich

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Kids seem to like these egg and sausage sandwiches. Finally, I broke down and tried one myself.

I've noticed before, the breakfast sausage is bland and spicy at the same time. Meaning, there's not much seasoning except what seems to be red pepper flakes. I'm surprised the kids aren't put off by it.

These days the eggs are not scrambled in a factory hundreds of miles away and shipped frozen. They're scrambled in the school kitchen from liquid eggs. They could use a little more salt. But the future of school food is no salt. In fact, even the USDA is at a loss to figure how schools will cut the salt in cafeteria food by half over the next 10 years. Does that mean school food will be healthier but flavorless?

Fitting perfectly in that category is this English muffin. It has no flavor at all. None.

What's for Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs on a Muffin

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

A year ago this egg/muffin sandwich probably would have been made in a factory and sent to the school frozen, where the kitchen crew would have heated it in a steamer still wrapped in plastic.

Things are a bit different now since Jeffrey Mills arrived on the scene as the new food services director for D.C. Public Schools. He retooled the Chartwells menu item by item, replacing most of those highly processed frozen convenience foods with meals made from actual ingredients.

That means our lunch ladies are actually cooking from scratch in many cases. To make this breakfast, for instance, they scramble the eggs using liquid eggs that arrive in cartons. Okay, they're not whole, farm-fresh eggs from chickens raised on pasture. This is still school food we're talking about, made on a tight budget.

Also, most elementary schools wouldn't see breakfast served like this. They're eating breakfast in the classroom, which substantially increases participation for all those kids who might not be getting a good meal at home first thing in the morning and brings in extra reimbursement dollars from the federal government to help fund the program.

I've tasted this egg sandwich and the muffin is pretty bland. Imagine what the food will be like if they remove half the salt. That's what the USDA proposes schools do over the next 10 years in its new meal guidelines.

Some kids aren't interested in all that bread. This is how they eat the eggs--with their fingers.

Kids Make Classic Spanish Toritilla

Is it a tortilla, or an omelet?

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

I always wondered why Spaniards called something that was obviously an omelet a tortilla. Turns out tortilla simply means a "flat cake" in Spanish. The extremely flat corn or wheat tortilla we know from Mexican cuisine would be just one example. In Spain, a tortilla is made from eggs. It looks like an omelet, but the cooking process is different.

I admit, this was my first egg tortilla making experience. So I'm learning along with the kids. I'm used to making an omelet the French way, by messing around the edges, tilting the pan, doing whatever might be necessary to get the runny eggs onto the hot surface of the pan so they can cook. Then you fold it in half.

A Spanish omelet, by contrast, is simply left to cook in the pan. At the appropriate moment, you invert it onto a plate and slide it back into the pan so that both sides are browned.

What I had a hard time grasping was how the eggs could cook completely through without the bottom getting burned. I may have cheated by covering the pan to speed up the cooking process. In any case, I think our first attempt came out pretty well, that being a classic tapas-style tortilla stuffed with potatoes and onion.

In another departure, rather than cooking sliced raw potatoes in the pan with oil as prescribed in the original recipe, I boiled them ahead of time. Otherwise we wouldn't have enough time in our class to complete the dish. The kids peeled the cooked potatoes and sliced them into small pieces. But first, they diced an onion and we cooked that in olive oil over moderate heat. When the onions were soft, we added the potatoes and warmed them through.

Kids are wild for potato tortilla

If this were a French omelet, we would have poured beaten eggs into the pan with the onion and potatoes. But Spaniards instead scrape the warm onions and potatoes into a bowl of six beaten eggs and mix everything together. Add a little more oil to the pan, swish it around, then pour the egg, potato and onion mix into the pan to cook. The pan should be hot at first, but as the tortilla cooks lower the heat and, if you follow my advice, cover the pan to trap some of the heat.

Check the bottom of the tortilla to make sure it doesn't burn. When the eggs were almost cooked through, but still wet on top, we inverted the tortilla onto a plate and slid it back into the pan to brown on the other side.

Finally, slide the tortilla onto a cutting board and cut into wedges. At a tapas bar, you'd want to eat this with a glass of cold, white wine. The kids loved it with0ut the wine, and passersby couldn't help being drawn in by the aroma of onions and potatoes.

That's our version of a Spanish tortilla as we bid adieu to our baking classes and resume our virtual world culinary tour. In case you hadn't noticed, we are now is Spain and will be working our way through Europe.

What's for Breakfast: Bagel & Egg

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

A growing scientific consensus finds that the real culprit behind our modern dietary problems is not fat, but carbohydrates. Americans eat way to many of them, especially sugar, refined grains and potatoes.

Of course, those just happen to be the things kids like most to eat, which helps explain why we find ourselves in the middle of a childhood obesity epidemic. So where does that leave a breakfast bagel like this one, chock full of carbs, or even the fruit juice? Guidelines for the national school meal program require lots of grains, just like the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

It seems our guidelines are years behind the current science. They haven't even caught up to where the science was years ago. And here's another problem: carbs are cheap, making them a much easier fit in school meals. Healthy proteins and fats are more expensive. But then, healthier food in general is more expensive.

Does that mean school food has to be unhealthy?

I've tried this bagel and egg sandwich. It's actually not bad. These days the eggs are scrambled from liquid eggs, rather than buying pre-made, frozen egg patties. And the oranges, conveniently cut into wedges, are fresh. The string cheese is a nice add this year.

What's for Breakfast: Bagel & Egg

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

I've spent less time lately hunting down the packaging labels that would indicate the ingredients in items like this whole wheat bagel. So unfortunately, until I do find the label or until the D.C. schools post the ingredients as required under the Healthy Schools Act passed earlier this year, I can't tell you what's in it. You can expect that it was shipped frozen from a factory somewhere and thawed in the school kitchen.

The egg patty in this sandwich also would have been processed and purchased frozen for re-heating under last year's food service scheme. But this year, our kitchen ladies are making egg dishes from scratch using pre-packaged liquid eggs.





This is what the sandwich looks like on the inside. Most of the calories are in the bagel, which also delivers a truckload of carbs.

What's for Breakfast: Bagel Egg and Cheese

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

The grated cheddar cheese on this egg sandwich doesn't look particularly appealing after it's been in the oven.



But I wanted to draw your attention to the egg. In the past, the schools have used a processed, frozen egg patty from a factory for this. But this egg patty was made from scratch in the school kitchen, poured into a stainless pain, cooked and then cut into rounds.

We are seeing much more food like that this year, since the D.C. schools revamped their menu--more thought put into the food, more things cooked from scratch.

What's for Breakfast: Vegetable Omelette

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells was calling this egg dish a "skillet." It contains fresh zucchini, tomato and red bell pepper. It was made with eggs and vegetables poured into a stainless pan greased with Pam, then baked in the oven and cut into squares. I seemed to be the only one eating it in the cafeteria. The kids all went for the alternate, which was the muffin, cottage cheese and orange wedges.

Don't wedges seem like a better idea than serving a whole orange, much of which often ends up in the trash? It would be great if all fruit servings could be geared to elementary school appetites to avoid waste.

I liked the eggs, even though they could have used a little more salt. Cottage cheese seems like a much better way to work calcium into the menu compared to flavored milk, which D.C. schools have stopped serving this year. I just wish I knew where the muffin can from. It definitely is not Otis Spunkmeyer.

What's for Breakfast: Egg & Sausage Sandwich

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells at its menu website called this "toasty turkey ham and egg sandwich on a whole wheat English muffin." Looks more like turkey sausage to me, and obviously this little girl wasn't swayed. She took one bite out of the sandwich and removed the sausage. She's now turned her attention to the "chilled pineapple cup" that came with this breakfast.

I can report that the egg patty comes frozen from Michael Foods, Inc., in Minnetonka, Minn., which bills itself as "the world's largest egg processing company." We've written about Michael Foods before. They make a dubious "breakfast quesadilla" that was served in D.C. schools last year, heated and served in its plastic wrapper, as well as the infamous scrambled eggs that are cooked at the factory and arrive at schools frozen.

This year, Chartwells has taken a different approach. Rather than serving processed and packaged breakfast items like the aforementioned quessadilla, they are composing a breakfast entree from separate components. While the egg patty comes from Minnesota, the English muffin is made by Bake Crafters in Collegedale, Tenn. (We wrote about Bake Crafters yesterday and their whole grain bagel.)

I know you are dying to learn the ingredients in this package. Here's what's in the egg patty, according to the shipping container from Michael Foods:

"Whole eggs, water, soybean oil, modified food starch, whey solids, salt, non-fat dried milk and citric acid."

And here's what's in the English muffin, according to a shipping label from Bake Crafters:

"Whole wheat flour, enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, yeast, wheat gluten. Contains less than 2% of each of the following: soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup, salt, calcium propionate, fumaric acid, baking soda, monocalcium phosphate, calcium sulfate, ammonium sulfate. Percentage of whole grain is 80%."

What's for Breakfast: Egg Sandwich

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells on its menu website called for a "toasty egg patty sandwich with cheddar on a whole wheat bagel." This certainly comes close, although the bagel looks more like an English mufin. The egg patties and muffins would have arrived frozen, but I have not seen the ingredients or cooking instructions for these items. Chartwells also called for an apple to accompnay the sandwich, but at my daughter's school they served a peach.


Here's another view of the sandwich.

And here's how one girl was eating eat. I asked her if it was good, and she nodded her head vigorously. I guess that constitutes a thumbs up. Or even two thumbs up.

What's for Breakfast: Quesadilla Inc.

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

I'll bet you hadn't guessed that this "breakfast quesadilla" is made by the same company that makes the infamous "scrambled eggs" that travel 1,100 miles pre-cooked and frozen from a factory in Minnesota to schools in the District of Columbia.

That's right, Michael Foods, Inc., of Minnetonka, MN, bills itself as "the world's largest egg processing company." Besides frozen scrambled eggs and frozen "breakfast quesadillas," the company sells an array of egg products you probably never heard of--and others you have no doubt seen on your grocer's shelves.

"From our plants in the U.S. and Canada, we offer a complete line of Easy Eggs® Extended Shelf Life refrigerated liquid, frozen liquids, dried powders, pre-cooked, and other value-added specialty egg products," reads the company website. "Our brands of Papetti's®, M.G. Waldbaum and Inovatech Egg Products have a long history throughout the foodservice/catering, commercial baking, retail and food processing industries as providing leadership roles in the development of egg-based products to meet the needs of the modern operator."

Apparently, one of those "modern operators" would be D.C. Public Schools, or its hired food contractor, Chartwells-Thompson.

From Michael Foods, "modern operators" can purchase a whole line of liquid eggs, frozen eggs, dried eggs and something called "extended shelf life eggs." The "breakfast quesadillas," shipped frozen, then re-heated in a steamer while still in their plastic wrappers, are sold under the Pappetti's "Table Ready" brand. (Sorry, no clue who or what "Pappetti" is.)


This is what the quesadilla looks like fresh out of its plastic wrapper. In the background you can see one with wrapper.

Last year Michael Foods posted gross earnings of more than $1 billion. It's being sold by current owners Thomas H. Lee Partners, an investment group, to a division of Goldman Sachs--GS Capital Partners--for $1.7 billion.

That's a lot of eggs.

In case you were wondering what's in those quesadillas, here's the ingredient list from the box they came in. Each 3.24-ounce portion contains:

"Tortilla, enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin, mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, vegetable shortening (partially hydrogenated soybean and or cottonseed oils), contains 2% or less of the following: baking powder *sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, corn starch and monocalcium phosphate), salt, calcium propionate (organic acid and calcium salt), distilled mono and diglycerides, sorbic acid and baking soda. Filling: whole eggs, cooked turkey sausage (mechanically separated turkey, water, textured vegetable protein concentrate, caramel color), salt, spices, paprika, flavoring), pasteurized process low fat mozzarella cheese (culture milk, water, skim milk, sodium phosphates, salt, sorbic acid (preservative), enzymes, Vitamin A Palmitate), pasteurized process reduced fat cheddar cheese (cultured milk, water, skim milk, sodium phosphates, salt, annatto color, sorbic acid (preservative), enzymes, Vitamin A palmitate). Contains 2% or less of the following: modified corn starch, salt, citric acid, xanthan gum.

What's for Breakfast: Egg & Cheese

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Here's something I had not seen before: an egg patty, smeared with processed cheese, served alongside a bagel.

Presumably, the egg patty is supposed to be sandwiched between the bagel slices.

I wondered if the egg patty came from the same place as the scrambled eggs served at my daughter's elementary school. Those are cooked with about 11 other food industry ingredients in a factory in Minnesota and shipped frozen. Well, just about everything served in the school cafeterias in the District of Columbia is made in a factory somewhere and shipped frozen.

From what I saw, the kids approached this breakfast tentatively. They seemed more interested in the bagel than the egg. They just didn't like the looks of that cheese. Can you blame them?