Breakfast casserole

This has been a tremendously long Saturday.  I barely got any rest Friday night and had to be up super early today, but I did accomplish a great deal today.  This morning I worked for actual pay!   I only get to work one Saturday every other month.  The only problem is that I have to drop Bailey at my Nana's at 7:00 am in order to get to work on time.



Bailey's brain must subconsciously know when I have to work because she never fails to have difficulty sleeping the night before.  Last night was no different.  She was so stuffy she couldn't stay asleep longer than 30 minutes at a time.  I thought I was going to have to sleep in the rocking chair.  Finally, at around 2:00 am she drifted off and let me sleep until 5:20.

After work today I needed to do some grocery shopping to get us through the rest of the month.  I brought Bailey home and put her down to nap and left her with Aaron while I went shopping.  Then, when I got home I put all the groceries away and packed up the ingredients for tonight's dinner:  Breakfast casserole.

Breakfast casserole is one of Aaron's mom's favorite dinners that I make.  It's easy to make and full of flavor.  I guess the only difficult thing about it is waiting on the side of biscuits to go with it.  There are only 5 ingredients (7 if you count salt and pepper).

Breakfast Casserole

1/2 bag frozen shredded hashbrowns
1 lb breakfast sausage (or turkey breakfast sausage)
9 eggs
1/3 cup milk
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Spray a 9x9 baking dish with olive oil spray and layer the hashbrowns evenly in the dish.  Place in the preheated oven and bake for 15 minutes.  While the hashbrowns are baking, brown the sausage in a skillet on medium heat.  Whip the eggs and milk together in a medium bowl and pour over the hashbrowns.  Bake another 10 minutes.  Layer the sausage evenly over the eggs and hashbrowns, top with cheese and bake until cheese is melted and bubbly, about 10 minutes.  Let cool about 5 minutes before serving as any oil from the sausage and cheese will be extremely hot.

We serve this with homemade biscuits and gravy.  I reserve some of the sausage from the casserole to make sausage sawmill gravy.  The casserole is actually quite delicious with the gravy over top as well.

I adapted this from multiple pins I saw on Pinterest for breakfast casseroles.  I got the idea from Pinterest, but this recipe was my own creation of what I liked from the multiple pins.  Because I didn't actually follow any of the recipes I saw pinned, I cannot give you a link to an "original" version of this recipe, but I also don't think it's fair to claim credit for creating this recipe since it was inspired by so many other versions.