Baked Eggs Florentine

Recipe per ramekin serving:                                           

1 slice prosciutto

1/2 cup baby spinach

1/2 cup diced tomato

1 round slice provolone

2 eggs

1/4 cup shredded mozarella

Sea salt & Cracked Pepper to taste

First you’ll need to butter or oil your ramekins, place them on a cookie sheet and then preheat oven to 350.

Then for each ramekin, tear prosciutto into small pieces and place in the bottom of ramekins. Next add baby spinach, then tomatoes. Salt & pepper, to taste. Then place the provolone in the ramekin so that it makes a table over the items below. In my ramekins, I have to cut into 4 pieces & overlap. Then crack the eggs over the top of the cheese being careful not to break yokes. Salt & pepper, to taste then cover with shredded mozarella. Place ramekins on the cookie sheet into the oven and bake for approximately 12 -14 minutes until the cheese starts to brown a little. I like my yokes to still be a little runny, so if you would prefer them a little more done you might want to bake a little longer.   Have a little fruit, some avocado slices & some coffee with it and you have a fabulous gourmet brunch! Bon Appetito!

Baked Eggs Florentine Breakfast

An Important Question About the “Most Important Meal of the Day”

If breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day, why is it so darned inconvenient to enjoy it? It seems like we have a choice between nutrition and convenience, with little in between.

Take, for example, the bagel. While it is convenient (can be eaten as is, or toasted, you can spread whatever sort of topping you want on it, and it can be eaten with one hand while you work), bagels don’t rate so high as health food. A typical grocery store bagel can have as many as 270 calories and 56 grams of carbohydrate, which isn’t so bad (if you aren’t watching carbs), but its nutritional content is relatively low.

(And watch out for the bagels being sold as a “healthy” alternative in fast food places: The multigrain bagel at Dunkin’ Donuts is 380 calories. These “gourmet” bagels may taste good, but they are also HUGE!)

A Different Kind of Bagel

The bagel conundrum vexed me until I discovered French Meadow Bakery’s Healthy Hemp Bagels at The Green Grocer in Chicago. These yeast-free, sweetener-free, organic grain (they contain several whole grains, as well as hemp) bagels are not only good for you (with 14 grams of fiber and 20 grams of protein per bagel!) but are also considerably lower in carbohydrates than most other bagels (34 grams of carbohydrate with 14 of those being fiber).

“But how do they taste?”, you may ask? Well, I think that they are delicious, but some people feel that they are too “grainy”. I do confess to a fondness for very dense, chewy, whole grain breadstuffs, so I’d be careful of you are a fluffy white bread sort of person. (They are definitely much improved by toasting, so I’d suggest trying them that way.)

The other thing that I love about these bagels is that they are super filling. I have one spread with butter or coconut oil for breakfast or lunch and it is 4-5 hours before I even start thinking about eating again!

I heartily recommend these bagels to anyone who either wants to add more whole grains to their diet or who is looking for a bagel that is compatible with a low carb diet. Yes, they are “different” from what you may be used to eating, but the differences are both nourishing and delicious. Healthy Hemp bagels can be found in gourmet markets and health food stores across the USA, as well as via mail order.