My wife likes to describe many of my family’s recipes as having ingredients that she would consider a finished food item unto themselves. My family is also famous for using pretty much no salt or pepper (too spicy!)

As I grew older I wanted to start trying to add what other people call “flavor” to the otherwise bland dishes that have been passed down. We have a Christmas Eve tradition of eating chilli. I like hot things and have done a taste testing for a Ghost Pepper chilli recipe. I’m not the type to outman someone in a heat eating competition, but I’ve tried some extremely spicy things and enjoyed the experience. So I asked my mom what the recipe was for the family chilli. She told me it was a yellow onion, can of tomato juice, can of tomatoes, ground beef and can of chilli. Yes, a can of chilli went into the family chilli. That year I made my own chilli to go along with the family chilli. It wasn’t a hit.

There are a few recipes that I’ve added to my repitoire, like Tater Tot Casserole. It inclues not one, but two complete packaged food items, Cream of Mushroom soup and the namesake ingredient Tater Tots. The later being the inspiration for something I whipped together last week for breakfast. The other inspiration for this dish was that we had very few ingredients around the house, as you’ll see as I go through each step of making the dish. We were about to head out of town and didn’t want fresh food to sit in the fridge all weekend. I get a certain kind of pride when I’m able to make something greater out of the sum of the few parts I have available.

I started by browning the tator tots in the toaster oven. I wanted them to be crunchy at the bottom of the dish. This is something I added to the aforementioned casserole. Note: when I make this again, I’m going to double line the dish with tots. There just weren’t enough in there this time around. I also started preheating the oven to 300 degrees.

As the tots were browning, I cut up whatever I had laying around. This happened to be zucchini, onion and sweet peppers. This went well, but there would be room for bacon, ground beef or sausage in the mix. If you were feeling cheeky, you would get sausage filling. I would brown it and put a layer on top of the tots.

I’m secretly teaching you how to make the Tater Tot casserole as I’m typing this. Put ground beef browned with onions for the more famous tater tot dish.

I put salt and pepper on top of the veggies - but ideally you’d add it to the eggs and mix it all together for a more even taste. As it happened, this came out pretty good. I can’t really say how much salt and pepper I added, but do it to taste.

Next I cracked around 7 eggs (what was left in the carton), mixed them up a bit and poured them over the veggies. I didn’t add any milk, mainly because we were out of it.

After putting this concoction in the oven for about 40 minutes at 300, I took it out and grated some smoked gouda over the top (again, the only cheese we had around). It turned out to be a good choice, adding a little different taste than I originally invisioned. I’d really like to add some smoked cheddar and see how it plays out. I browned the cheese for about 5 minutes or so, took the thing out and started eating.

That’s it. It held up as a cold item better than regular eggs would. I think it’s what I’m going to bring to the next brunch I’m invited to.