Skier, Snowboarder Bodacious Breakfast

Here's a best kept secret about skiing and snowboarding.. the pros recommend a high carb breakfast to give you the energy to play this hard all day long. (You'll burn 1,700+ calories and you won't even notice.)

Think about it! Just how often in our healthy-eating-obsessed US of A do we get permission to dive headfirst into a high carb meal??

Well, today you get to do just that! Provided you can prove you bought yourself a lift ticket.

Ski Bum Bodacious Breakfast:
* This is a great 'weekender' breakfast for house guests, prior to hitting the slopes. Serves 8 normal people or 4 Lindsey Vonn wannabes.

• 4 cups, uncooked, hash browns*
• 8 eggs
• 2 cups chopped ham, or cooked bacon, crumbled
• 1/2 cup skim milk
• 1 cup lite sour cream
• 1 cup extra sharp cheddar cheese 
• Add a little oomph with 1/2 c. cheddar and 1/2 c. pepper jack cheese.
• 1/2 cup chopped shallots 
• 2 chopped green onions, tops and all
• 3 tablespoons butter
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• Rounded bottom glass or coffee cup. (More on that, later.)

How To:
*Sighs heard 'round the world* With this recipe, you really do have to follow directions.

1. Spray a 9 x 13 baking dish, press a very thin layer of hash browns (about 1 cup) into the dish.
2. Bake @ 350 (F) for about 10 minutes, until the hash browns are crisp. (This is your crust. :)
3. Melt the butter, brown the shallots, turn off the heat. If you use a very large pan, this warm pan can double as your mixing bowl when you stir up the rest of the goodies. 
4. Mix in hash browns, ham, milk, sour cream, green onions and cheese. 
5. Pour this mixture over the crispy hash browns in your baking dish.
6. Grab that rounded bottom drinking glass and make 8 depressions into this delightful mess. Crack 1 fresh egg into each of the 8 depressions.
7. Pop it in the oven. Bake @ 350 F for 30-40 minutes.

1 full ski day burns 1700 calories!

Hash Browns:
I use the refrigerated grocery store brands, to save time. Shredding your own is great. Buying dehydrated or frozen works okay, too. Refrigerated or shredding your own, of course, provides the most nutritional value.

Ham and Bacon:
There is much ado these days about nitrate-free meats. A BETTER BET is to simply purchase low sodium products.
~ No bacon or ham brand is nitrite-free, no matter what the label suggests. (Sorry to burst your bubble, but this also includes Whole Paycheck Whole Foods.)
~ Nitrite is toxic to microbes, including the bacteria that causes botulism, so it's an important preservative that hasn't caused a true health risk since the 1970's (after which nitrate levels were drastically re-formulated.)

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