Bananas Foster Pancakes, Cheese N' Eggs, and Sliced Tomatoes

Breakfast is a peculiar meal. It doesn't really have any rules, although there are typically mainstay dishes. However, it really doesn't have boundaries. The ways IHOP serves pancakes and the way Waffle House serves "Steak N' Eggs", you really wouldn't be able to tell due to the sweetness or the heartiness.

With that in mind, I decided to try and pick out some of my favorite southern breakfast foods for my meal, which became more of a challenge due to my opinion of breakfast's flexibility. However, southern food is marinated in tradition, and so I decided to keep it simple and within the typical idea of breakfast food.

But that's about as far as I reigned it in. Typical pancakes and eggs don't really feel southern, and neither does a standard fruit salad on the side. So, to have fun and embrace a heavier southern influence, I decided to go with a bananas foster topping for the pancakes, go overboard with the cheese for "Cheese N' Eggs" and thought of my father's favorite side dish when we visit Tuscaloosa's traditional southern breakfast restaurant, Waysider: sliced tomatoes with salt and pepper.

BREAKFAST HISTORY

Bananas Foster and Pancakes

• Pancakes were first being prepared somewhere around 500 B.C. by the ancient Greeks. 
• The original pancakes were pretty different than what we eat today. Rather than limit themselves to sweet flavor with the fluffy discs, they used a variety of ingredients and ideas to create savory pancakes as well as sweet ones.
• The Greeks called their version "tagenias".
• Bananas Foster was invented much, much later. In 1951, an employee of Brennan's in New Orleans, LA created the original bananas foster, which is a similar sauce use in this recipe, but just over ice cream instead.
• The dish is one of the most popular in New Orleans, and it not being a particularly hard dish to make is responsible for that popularity. 
• One can learn how to make the original Brennan's recipe here.

Cheese N' Eggs

• Eggs are one of the oldest foodstuffs to be in the human diet, dating back before 7500 B.C.E.
• Cheese is nearly as old, but the earliest confirmation has been around 5500 B.C.E.

Sliced Tomatoes

• The tomato's native region is between South and Central America.
• Mesoamerican peoples were the first to start eating tomatoes, starting in 500 B.C.

Pancake Recipe 
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 ½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 egg, beaten lightly
1 ½ cups milk
2 tbsp butter, melted

Stir the flour, baking powder(or baking soda if you prefer) and salt in a bowl. In a separate bowl, mix the egg and milk, and then add it to flour mix, stirring until just smooth. Then stir in butter. Grease a griddle with butter. Heat pan on medium for about ten minutes. Pour batter to form pancakes of whatever size you like. Cook first side until bubbles form on top, about three minutes; then flip and cook other side until it, too, is brown, about two minutes. 

Bananas Foster Sauce Recipe

1/4 Cup of Melted Butter

2/3 Cup of Brown Sugar

2 Teaspoons of Rum Extract

2 Teaspoons of Vanilla Extract

1/2 Teaspoon of Ground Cinnamon

1//2 Cup of Pancake Syrup

2-4 Bananas(depends on how much banana you want)

Melt 1/4 cup of butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the brown sugar, rum extract, 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, and cinnamon. Bring to a simmer, the stir in the pecans and continue simmering for 1 minute. Stir in the pancake syrup and bananas, continue cooking until the bananas soften, about 4 minutes.

Cheese N' Eggs Recipe(Per Individual)

1/2 Tablespoon of Butter
2 Eggs

2 quarter-inch slices of cheese(Either use Kraft Singles or cut to that size with real cheese)

1/4 Cup of Milk

Heat 10-inch pan over medium heat, possibly medium-to-high heat. While heating up, beat the eggs in a bowl until the yolk is broken apart. Add 1/4 cup of milk to beaten eggs. When pan is heated and ready, drop 1/2 tablespoon of butter into it. After the butter is coated on the pan, add eggs. Cook till preference of runny, intermediate or fried. Turn heat to low and add slices of cheese. Stir until cheese is melted and all in the eggs.

Sliced Tomatoes

1 Tomato
Salt and Pepper

The most simple thing in the world. On a cutting board, slice tomatoes vertically, giving each slice about 1/2 inch in width. Plate, then add salt and pepper.

Sources:
Council, Mildred. Mama Dip's Kitchen. University of North Carolina Press, 1999.