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Breakfast in Galveston

Photo by Lori Najvar's camera. 
Earlier this month, I was in Galveston staying at my sister and brother-in-law's beach house for the first "girlfriends weekend" I've ever hosted. This was a formidable group of women whose skills collectively include driving big trucks, directing an award-winning film, traveling to almost every continent on Earth, teaching history at the university level, and doing food writing for the likes of Gastronomica. I am blessed to know these women. We laughed, drank, colored, did each other's dishes, walked on the beach, and cooked for each other. 

I ended up making breakfast on Saturday morning. Along with baking kolaches, I wanted to do something savory that reflected my Texas-Czech heritage. Pan frying pork and garlic sausage was an easy decision, but I needed to accommodate a non-meat eater (who does eat eggs.) A search for vegan sausages at HEB rewarded me with a kielbasa-flavored product made by Tofurky. My cousin would not have to feel like she was being cheated out of anything in the meal - even her vegan sausages smacked of Central European flavors. And the package commanded (suggested?) "Just Add Polka."


Sure I could have just fried or scrambles eggs in addition, but I had run across the recipe below for scrambled eggs with tomatoes in a Czech Heritage Society cookbook. I try to incorporate vegetables into my breakfast as much as possible, since I don't seem to eat enough the rest of the day. That recipe plus some ideas from querying Texas Czechs on Facebook about mushrooms made a complete Texas-Czech(ish) breakfast. 

This lovely, peaceful photo by my cousin-in-law, Net, exemplifies the rewards of getting up early for breakfast, even when you're on vacation.



Scrambled Eggs and Tomatoes
Dr. Stanislav Makal, Praha, Czecoslovakia, submitted by Willa Mae Cervenka, in Czech Reflections: Recipes, Memories and History by the McLennan-Hill Chapter of the Czech Heritage Society, pg. 107    
1 tablespoon butter or Crisco
4 eggs
1 large tomato, sliced
Optional: small sliced onion
Pepper to taste
Salt to taste 
In skillet, sauté the onions and tomatoes in Crisco or butter. Add eggs, pepper and salt. Stir and fry until eggs are done. Serve warm.
Scrambled Eggs and Mushrooms
Dawn Orsak
1 tablespoon butter
4 eggs
1 lb. mushrooms, sliced
1/4 teaspoon caraway seeds
Pepper to taste
Salt to taste 
In a skillet, sauté the mushrooms and the caraway seeds in butter until the mushrooms begin to soften. Add the eggs, salt, and pepper. Stir until the eggs are set to your liking. Serve warm.

The recipe above was inspired by the following comments by some Facebook friends in response to a question about Texas Czechs' favorite ways to eat mushrooms:
Larry V. - We called it smazenice, onion and mushroom sauteed together with caraway seed and eggs scambled over that mixture. 
Jana R. - Mushroom, egg, knedliky in any combination. 
Donna C. - My mother's favorite memory of her dad is he went mushrooming hunting. He would fry them in butter.
I did make a pan of kolaches from this recipe I've posted before, which makes 24. This time I made apple kolaches (from dried and fresh apples with cinnamon, a little butter, and a little sugar) and cream cheese kolaches. 

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