The South Padre Island Flip Flop Foodie: Breakfast Tacos With a New Product...new to me anyway!

When planning for our week-end meals, I try to at least make a family breakfast one of those mornings. We all get up at different times, so making breakfast falls to the individual wanting to eat at that particular moment. This Sunday morning, I nibbled a banana with my coffee and waited for my husband to get up. The teen had already eaten (but with a teen-age appetite, I figured he would likely accept an offer of a second, late morning breakfast).

This week-end I wanted to try a product that I saw on the shelves before Christmas but had not tried. I went looking for it, and found another "new to me" product available. That product was Jimmy Dean fully-cooked seasoned Turkey Sausage Crumbles.

I grew up a Texan girl with the regular week-end breakfasts including either Jimmy Dean or Owen's Country Sausage and/or bacon with eggs - fried, scrambled, baked...never an omelette....never a frittata. Basic Southern fare...sometimes sausage gravy and biscuits, sometimes fried pork chops...it was the base of my cholesterol problems of today. I love that food.

However, if I can find something that tastes good and is somewhat better for my innards, I'm willing to give it a whirl. The front of the package touts 60% less fat than pork sausage. I decided to give it a go this week-end in our breakfast tacos.

Breakfast tacos are everywhere now...but when I was younger, you only found them in Tex-Mex venues and were often called breakfast burritos. You sure never found them at the local McDonald's or other fast-food restaurant. I think I became aware of them in the early 80's...maybe the late 70's. They almost always had chorizo, potato, and egg with some muy caliente salsa ...and sometimes cheese.

As they evolved to common availability in Texas, in our household they became a staple breakfast for when we had overnight company...you can basically cook them up in one pan, slap the ingredients onto a tortilla, sprinkle some cheese and breakfast is done. You can offer salsa, guacamole, and sour cream on the side for individualization. I don't make them as often...for some reason the teen didn't like them. Now, however, the teen has definitely acquired the taste for them - preferably bacon and egg wrapped in a tortilla and nothing else.

This morning I made the breakfast tacos with egg, green onion, Jimmy Dean turkey sausage crumbles, grated Monterrey Jack cheese, avocado, and salsa. The teen had one with just egg, green onion, and sausage...and loved it. Came back for more (after everything was all gone) and I was telling him how easy they were to fix...and that he could make one himself if he wanted more. When he saw the words Turkey Sausage I thought he was going to gag. Funny how the mind plays tricks on you. He has the idea that he wouldn't like turkey sausage and had to wrap his brain around the fact that it was good. He didn't make another one so we'll see how this all shakes out in the future.

It is so easy to make - I whisked some eggs with green onion slices, a dash of cream, and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

I scrambled them in a pan prepped with a small amount of butter.

I added the sausage when they were almost done just to bring the sausage to temperature.

I warmed the tortillas in my microwave for 45 seconds, laid down a line of egg ingredients on one of those warm tortillas, quickly sprinkled with cheese so it would melt, and topped with avocado slices. Served with a side of chunky jarred salsa that I had on hand.