In the meantime, tonight I needed to make dinner, and I also needed to use about 1.5 lbs of hamburger.  I decided to throw together something similar to the above recipe, only using taco meat instead of bacon.  It turned out really good, so I thought I’d share.

I’ve provided the recipe below.  Here it is already neatly formatted in a Word document.  The taco meat seasoning is a recipe I threw together a few years ago to approximate Old El Paso taco  seasoning, without the MSG.  It’s mild but flavorful, just the way I like it.

However, if the taco meat portion of the recipe doesn’t look tasty enough for you, here is another Word document, which is a recipe for taco meat from America’s Test Kitchen (from one of their publications, Cook’s Illustrated) that takes more work but would probably have more robust flavor.

I highly recommend that you do not omit the ham.  Putting diced ham into the  casserole adds a nice richness of flavor.

I used an 8×8 baking dish for this recipe.  As you can see from the picture, that made the dish pretty full.  If you prefer to use a 9×13 dish, I would suggest adding a few more eggs so you’ll get a decent “crust”, and watch it carefully as it cooks.  You still want some uncooked egg on the top of the “crust” when you add the meat mixture, so it will mix with the meat and provide some firmness to the finished casserole.  If you forget and cook the egg crust completely, I’d suggest you scramble a couple more eggs and thoroughly stir them into the meat mixture immediately before you add it to the baking dish.

I used bacon grease to grease the baking dish, but of course you can use butter, tallow, or coconut oil just as well.  I am happy to report that hardly any of the egg crust stuck to the baking dish, and it was easy to clean up afterwards.

This recipe is easily altered to suit your tastes or available ingredients.  You can vary the seasonings to taste, of course, or use more or less hamburger or diced ham, or more cheese, or different cheese.  Ground turkey or pork (unflavored) should substitute easily for the hamburger.

I used 80/20 hamburger (20% fat) and didn’t drain the grease, and I did not find the finished dish to be greasy.  However, if you don’t like grease, and are using a fatty meat, you may want to drain the grease before adding the seasonings.

This is a very rich dish!  I was almost finished eating it before I even thought about topping it with some sour cream – which I didn’t do, because I was almost done, and it didn’t need it anyway.  However, if you would like some suggestions for toppings, here they are:   salsa, sour cream, chopped black olives, chopped tomatoes, hot sauce, and whatever else you like to eat with tacos.  The Cook’s Illustrated recipe I mentioned above has some suggestions at the end for other toppings, like avocados and onions.   If you feel the need for a low-carb side dish, I’d suggest a light salad.

I have not provided a carb count because your ingredients may differ from mine.  Eggs usually have about 1 gram carb each.  Check the packages for the cream cheese, shredded cheese, and diced ham for their carb content.  The seasonings probably add a few carbs, but not enough to worry about.

low-carb taco casserole, in an 8x8 in baking dish

Low Carb Taco Casserole

For the “crust”:

• 5-6 large eggs
• 1 tsp bacon grease

For the filling:

• 8 oz. cream cheese
• 8 oz.  shredded Mexican cheese mix, divided
• 8 oz. cooked diced ham

For the taco meat:

• 1.5 lbs hamburger
• 2 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tsp cumin powder
• 1½ tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp paprika (optional – for color)
• ¾ tsp onion powder
• dash cayenne pepper powder

1. Brown hamburger in a large pan or skillet on medium heat, breaking up the hamburger into at least bite-size consistency or smaller (whatever consistency you prefer for taco meat).
2. While the hamburger is browning, mix together all the taco seasonings.
3. After the hamburger is browned, drain grease, if desired.  Reduce heat to medium-low, add the seasonings and mix together.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
5. Add cream cheese to hamburger and cover the pan or skillet.  After the cream cheese has softened, mix it in thoroughly with the meat.  (Or you could pre-soften the cream cheese in another pan or microwave, but I prefer to use as few dishes as possible!)
6. Add the diced ham and about half of the shredded cheese to the hamburger and mix thoroughly.  Reduce heat to low and cover, checking and stirring occasionally.  (This is to keep the hamburger mixture warm until it is added to the casserole.)
7. Crack all the eggs into a single bowl and scramble them thoroughly.
8. Grease an 8×8 baking dish with the bacon grease and add scrambled eggs.  Put dish in preheated oven on middle rack, and check in 5 minutes.  Bake until the eggs are cooked on the bottom and edges of the dish, but still liquid on top.  The eggs need to be partially cooked since the cooked portion will be the “crust”.
9. Remove the eggs from the oven and add the warm meat and cheese mixture to the baking dish, on top of the egg “crust”.  The uncooked eggs should mix up somewhat with the meat and cheese; this will help hold the casserole together when done.  Try not to disturb the crust.
10. Spread the remaining shredded cheese evenly on top of the meat mixture, and return to the oven for 10 minutes.
11. Casserole is done when the eggs are completely cooked and the cheese on top has melted.
12. Let casserole cool for 5 minutes on the countertop before serving.

My breakfast consisted of:

• A glass of raw whole milk
• Egg yolks cooked soft (still runny – okay, all except one, which broke), in coconut oil, sprinkled with salt and fresh ground pepper
• Low-carb whole grain, whole wheat toast, slathered in salted butter

If you guessed the toast, you get a gold star!  The other foods are both very nutritious and safe.

• Raw whole milk (from pasture fed Jersey cows) is both safe and very nutritious.
• Egg yolks from truly free range hens are also safe and nutritious.
• Coconut oil has many health benefits.
• Salt is a necessary nutrient.
• Butter is a nutritious and health-promoting food.

The low carb bread, however, contains:

• Whole wheat whole grain flour (probably not soaked, sprouted, or fermented)
• added fiber (soy fiber and/or cellulose fiber or wheat fiber)
• Brown sugar
• soybean flour
• plus a lot of multisyllabic ingredients I didn’t feel like looking up

So geez, why did I eat the toast??  Because I like buttered toast as part of my breakfast. Eating the butter by itself just isn’t the same, and it doesn’t sop up runny egg yolk very well, compared to toast.

Today was the first time I’ve ever tried cooking just egg yolks.  I’ve never liked egg whites, but I always ate them with the yolk because, well, they come together, and whites have protein, which is good for you.  However, this article about eggs mentions that the whites aren’t necessarily good for you, which explains why I’ve never liked them.  So I have freed myself from the tyranny of the egg white!  And those yolks this morning tasted wonderful.  I am not going back to eating whites with my yolks!  If I need extra protein, I’ll eat bacon.

Can't we all just get along?

I have to admit – up until recently, I shared the unreasonable prejudice of many other people, in preferring brown eggs to white eggs.  In spite of information from presumably reliable scientists to the contrary, it just seemed to me that if more people preferred brown eggs to white, maybe there was a Good Reason, like some subtle nutritional superiority or something.

Well … then I actually started paying attention to the eggs I eat every day, the ones my husband and I get from my in-laws.  We get a mix of brown and white eggs from free-range hens (also of many colors).  To my surprise, the yolks from the white eggs are consistently a very dark, rich orange color, as you can see below.  All three eggs below came out of white shells.  I even found that often the yolks of white eggs were richer in color than yolks from brown eggs.

Three gorgeous dark orange egg yolks from white eggs

Same eggs - look at how high those yolks are standing up!

This is not to say, of course, that all white egg yolks are better than all brown egg yolks.  Obviously, there are a number of variables, feed quality and lifestyle quality of the chickens being the most influential.

And I still want to get some Marans and Welsummers, which in addition to being beautiful chickens, lay some absolutely gorgeous dark brown eggs!

But now I know the truth, and I wish to share this information with all of my readers – yes, all 10 or so of you – don’t judge an egg by its shell.  There is no Good Reason for you, the individual consumer, to prefer pretty brown eggs to plain Jane white eggs, except aesthetics.  White eggs really are just as good as brown.  And I hope that by providing this testimonial I’ve helped make your breakfast just a little more delicious, satisfying, and – well -  eggalitarian. 

The cute little fuzzballs are in a comfy box right now out in the garage with a 250 watt lamp keeping them warm (keeping them in the house with a cat and a dog was just not realistic!).  We’ll be raising them to live in the backyard, and they’ll eventually start laying eggs.  I wanted all different kinds, so we got 8 different breeds.  Seven are pullets (hens), and one is a mystery chicken – we won’t know if it is a male or female until it gets older.  I thought about getting a rooster just because they are more colorful than the hens, so I might be happy no matter what gender it is.  Hopefully if it is a rooster it will be a nice quiet gentle one so we won’t have any problems with the neighbors (whose barking dogs would probably be considered more disruptive than a rooster anyway).

In case you’re interested, the breeds we got were:  Ameraucana (Easter Egg chicken), Barred Rock, Black Australorp, Buff Laced Polish, Buff Orpington, Cinnamon Queen, New Hampshire Red, and White Leghorn.  Farm and Home orders their chicks through Cackle Hatchery, so if you’d like to read more about the breeds, you can visit their website.

And here are pictures of our chicks!  I’m amazed at how much they’ve grown in just a few days, although you really can’t tell in the pictures.  None of them (I think) were day old chicks.  I believe they all had been at Farm and Home for at least a few days, and some for a few weeks, which accounts for their various sizes.  Click on the pictures to see a bigger version, which also makes it easier to read the text identifying the breeds.

The 8 chicks, in their box on their first day home (March 27)

The chicks on March 30.

(I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist using the title “Hot chicks” for this post.  I often shock people when I refer to women as “chicks” so I wanted to use the word, for once, when I was actually referring to chickens!)

The chickens are fed a standard ration (Kent Home Fresh 27 Poultry) plus wheat that was grown on the farm, plus whatever they eat when they are outside.

Some chickens wandering around outside the hen house, which is on the left.

You can see two white specks in this picture - two chickens wandering very far afield! They are several hundred feet from the hen house.

Real eggs come in all sizes and colors!

Eggs in the skillet. Look at how upright those yolks are - very firm, and good dark color too (especially the ones in front and on the right).

Another shot of those eggs, which shows the color a bit better.

Because I’ve mentioned the farm’s gorgeous Jersey cows a few times, I thought I’d provide a few pictures as proof, taken in August 2008.

Some cows checking out my hubby and his truck.

Well, hello.

What a gorgeous cow!

The purpose of the following picture is solely to induce spring fever.  I really don’t remember the world ever being this green!!!

A view of the farm, looking north.