BKFST: Spinach & Egg Panini

One of the first things my personal trainer, Lisa, told me was that it's super important to eat a carb and a protein at every meal.

HALLELUJAH! MEAT IS ALLOWED!

Not going to lie, I was freakin' scared to death that with this being a women's gym, the trainers were going to be all Adkins diet on me and force me to become vegetarian, which would in turn force me to get my money back, because that sure ain't happening.

It's a little hard for me to wake up early enough in the mornings to make myself a breakfast that contains a protein and a carbohydrate, but this is a recipe I "created" for the mornings when I do find myself up in time to eat and shower before work.

(Sidenote: By "created" I kind of mean invented from the contents of my sadly empty fridge.)

It's got protein from eggs and bacon and carbs from the bread and cheese. The spinach is a "freebie" according to Lisa, which is excellent because I love spinach. It's one of about three vegetables I will willingly eat a lot of.

SPINACH & EGG PANINI

Ingredients:

• Bread, preferably whole wheat or honey wheat
• Baby spinach
• 1 egg
• 1 slice of bacon (If you want to be super healthy, go with a turkey bacon, but personally I think calling any other kind of stomach cut "bacon" and it not being pork is weird)
• 1 slice lowfat provolone cheese

To Make-a Da Paninis:

1. Plug in the good ole George Foreman. If you don't have one of these, heating it up on a regular pan with a spatula to press down works just fine, too.
2. While the pan/GF is heating up, go ahead and put a skillet on medium-high heat. Spray it with an olive oil spray (juuust a little bit) and then throw in the bacon and spinach. Spinach wilts when you cook it, so if you're like me and like a lot of it, wait until what you first toss in cooks down and then add some more leaves to it.
3. Put the bread on a plate and top one slice with cheese.
4. Once your bacon is a golden brown (Note: If using turkey bacon, this will happen pretty quickly since there's less fat) and the spinach sufficiently wilted, dump that out of the pan and onto the cheese side of the sandwich.
5. Crack your egg in the pan and fry it. There's no need to respray the pan since you'll be cooking it in the oil/bacon grease combo. Adding more spray will increase the fat content of the sandwich, which is no bueno. Now, the first time I made this like, Sunday was the first time in my life I'd ever fried an egg. I waited until it was not so gelatinous and then veeeery carefully flipped it. I cooked it until the yolk was almost cooked all the way through. Why?
6. BECAUSE after it's done and topped on top of the spinach/bacon/cheese, you put the top slice of bread on and transfer the sandwich to your hot pan or George Foreman and grill it. With beef you don't want to press down on burgers or steaks because it'll let the juices out, but with a sandwich like this the beauty is in the grill marks you can only get by applying a little pressure. And when you do that you squish your egg yolk and it makes the sandwich full of ooey, gooey deliciousness.

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.