Back Porch Breakfast

Rise and shine, y'all, and give God the glory

because it's a beautiful morning, and I want to invite y'all to my house for breakfast

right on our very own back porch. First off, I'm going to be baking up

a batch of Granite Step Country Blueberry Coffee Cakes to go along with my famous hash browns

and then some spicy black pepper bacon and some of Ray's sausage

And it don't end there, y'all. I'm making an oyster skillet. Who says you can't have oysters for breakfast

So y'all go fill up your coffee cups and join me in your jammies

for a wonderful back porch breakfast. Isn't this just beautiful out here, y'all

I just came out to get some blueberries, and I'm cooking breakfast on the porch this morning

and I don't know if y'all have had the opportunity to see the property that Michael was born and raised on

lived all his life, and I just wanted to surprise him when he came over to check on the house

and have breakfast ready for him that I've cooked on our back porch

Okay, so y'all come up on the porch and join me because I'm going to show you a delicious, easy recipe

It's called Granite Steps Country Blueberry Coffee Cake. All right. To start making this, we're going to use the canned biscuit

They're so versatile, you can do anything with them. And this recipe was served by my friend Donna when she and her mother had the Granite Steps Mansion

It was a beautiful bed and breakfast here in Savannah. And Donna personally cooked breakfast for all of her guests

And this is one of the things that she had on her table. And Donna was very ingenious at preparing wonderful tasty dishes for her guests

And so I think y'all are just going to love this. All right, we're going to start by quartering our biscuits just like this

And I'm using buttermilk grand biscuits. Those are the great big biscuits

You see how generous these are. I mean, these turn out kind of like a cathead biscuit

They got their name because they're actually about the size of a cathead

You can see the little pieces of shortening in these biscuits. and that's what makes the biscuits so good and moist

All right, I've got my biscuits cut in quarters. I've got a half a cup of brown sugar here

that I'm going to add a half a teaspoon of cinnamon to, and we're just going to kind of toss that together

just make sure that cinnamon gets kind of equally mixed up in that brown sugar

And, you know, no coffee cake is a coffee cake without a stick of butter

So that's what I've got here. Now we're going to take our biscuits, dip them into our butter

and then dip them into our brown sugar and lay them down into our greased casserole dish

Can't get any easier than this, can you? Like I said, I think a canned biscuit is probably one of my favorite convenience foods

and I remember my grandmother did adore when they came out with a canned biscuit

She was thrilled because in spite of the fact that she was a grand cook

she never really mastered breads until she was well into her 80s

And then she took up bread making. This smells totally divine right here

All right, that's going to finish off our biscuits. Now I'm going to measure out a cup and a half of these beautiful blueberries

And I did wash these before I brought them back. All right, so we're going to put a half a cup of sugar over a cup and a half of blueberries

And we're just going to toss that together. And I'm going to put a half a cup of oatmeal, which makes this the healthy dish

Because everybody knows that oatmeal is good for you, right? I'm going to take half the blueberries and spread them around like that

and then the other half of the quick cook oatmeal over those

And then the rest on top. All right, you know, I hate to waste this butter

I think I'm just going to drizzle it on top. I don think probably Donna called for that in the recipe but I can waste that butter All right it ready to go in the oven We going to put it in a 375 preheated degree oven and we going to bake it for about 20 minutes

because everything's really done in it except for the biscuits. So we're going to stick these in here

And then I've got some potatoes over here. I'm going to show y'all the hash brown potatoes

that I used to make when I opened The Lady. So I'm going to show y'all how to do those

and then we're going to come back, and we're going to taste that coffee cake. Oh, and to go alongside of that coffee cake

y'all know I'm just a nut over savory and salty. I've got some black pepper bacon

and some of the most to die for homemade sausage from Ray's Butcher Shop on Montgomery Street here in Savannah

It's going to be so good with that coffee cake. So I'll see y'all in a minute

I'm getting this breakfast pulled together so quickly, much quicker than what I thought

And I think that our coffee cake is ready to come out

This is a little tricky. doesn't that look good? Look at those biscuits puffing up through there

All right. Now to go with this wonderful coffee cake, I've got some black pepper bacon

and I got some homemade sausage from Ray's Butcher Shop. They have the most wonderful fresh homemade sausage

that you've ever eaten and it's going to be so good to eat along with that

Now I'm going to give these a little cut and I'm going to go ahead and throw them over here on our griddle

All right, I think now I'm going to put a little bacon on right here

And I might should have sprayed this griddle, but we'll see. This is black pepper bacon

All right. Now on the other end, I'm going to put some homemade hash browns

And Dora Charles is my head cook and my soul sister at the restaurant

and she and I cooked breakfast every morning at the lady restaurant

That was the first space I ever went into. And almost every plate that went out

had our hash browns on it. And they're so easy to make

All right, we're gonna take our onion and we're gonna slice it in two

and we're just gonna paddle it. All right, and I'm gonna drop our onions right here

And this is a great recipe to use with, like, leftover baked potatoes the night before

Those make great hash browns because they've got all that seasoning in them

All right. We've got our onions going. Now we're going to add our potatoes that I've thinly sliced

And you can see that I've used my favorite potato in the whole entire world, and that's a little red potato

We're going to just put those right down there on top of our onions. and I'm gonna sprinkle them with a little house seasoning

which is our salt, pepper, and garlic powder. And then I'm gonna sprinkle them with a little paprika

And this is really just for color, to help them brown nicely

All right, let's get in here and check this bacon. I think some of our bacon is ready

Now, you can keep your bacon on as long as you like if you like it crispy. I actually like mine a little soft in places

like this one, you'll see that it's not all the way completely pressed

And these little griddles are great. All right, everything over here is doing great

and you can see those potatoes, how wonderful they're looking. And our onions are getting nice and almost kind of charred looking

They look delicious. So while that's cooking, I think it's time to taste our coffee cake

So let's see what we've got here. Oh. You can see I've got a little bowl of fresh whipped cream hiding back here behind everything for my coffee cake

This looks just heavenly. And, you know, blueberries are really so good for you

They're an antioxidant, but they say blueberries slow down the aging process

So I might need to fix this every morning. So let's see what we've got

Oh, my goodness. I feel myself getting younger, y'all. All right, I've got to quit eating that country coffee cake

and get this up before it overcooks. Look how good the sausage looks

If you live here in Savannah, I'm gonna run by Ray's butcher shop and take you some home

You gonna love it I gonna put the potatoes and everything on one platter Oh gosh those onions

Doesn't that look yummy? Now, if you were just cooking this in a skillet

and you didn't have all your bacon and sausage to give you your seasonings

you could just cook this in some bacon grease or maybe just even a little butter

or if you're worried about it, maybe just a little vegetable oil. All right, now I'm going to top these with just a little spring onion

I'm just going to take my scissors and give them a few snips. All right, I've got to take a few minutes to clean up my griddle

and when I come back, I'm going to show you girls another secret

And I'm saying girls because the next dish is oyster skillet. Now, I don't know about you girls

but I like to take every opportunity I can to feed my man oysters, even at breakfast

So y'all come back. All right, girls

Are y'all ready for that love potion breakfast recipe? We're going to start by using fresh oysters

Now, you can buy these at the grocery store, already shucked, and in the oyster liquor

Now, I'm going to drain these because they'll make our dish too soft if we don't

And I'm going to pat them dry with a paper towel. Oh, they smell so good

All right, let's see. Now I got that liquor off. Now, if I wanted to, I could actually save this liquor and make a pot of oyster stew for supper

But I think I'm going to be through with the oysters today

So we're just going to let those drain. Now I'm going to take eight eggs, and we're going to whip these up

And you'll want to make sure that your eggs are at room temperature. They make a real nice scrambled egg if they're not real, real cold

And I've got these at room temperature. All right, I'm going to spray our skillet

And I'm going to melt a half a stick of butter. And this little stove does the job

and I'm going to beat up our eight eggs and I'm going to use a whisk on them

so they can get nice and frothy and I'm going to add about a fourth of a cup of beer

Now you know a man can't resist oysters or beer and you put the two together and you know you got a winner

And I'm going to add about a tablespoon of Texas peat. Now you can add more if you like

and I'm going to add two teaspoons of garlic powder. All right, we're going to throw our onions in our butter

and I'm just going to cook them until they're kind of translucent or soft

But it won't take long because our skillet is really nice and hot

All right, now I'm going to drop our oysters in, and I'm literally going to let them cook for about 30 seconds

Oysters cook very, very quickly. Don't those look delicious down in that butter and onions

and you can see how the liquor from those oysters are cooking out

Okay. Now I'm going to take our eggs and I'm going to just pour these over our oysters

And you notice that I've opted not to put any salt in this recipe

and that's because the oyster liquor is already really salty because of the seawater

So you can always add some to it, but I prefer right this minute not to salt it

All right, to finish this up, I'm going to put about a cup of shredded cheese

and that's a Swiss cheese now that I've grated up. The Swiss cheese and the beer goes very, very well together

All right, now to finish this, I'm just going to cover it and put my temperature as low as it will go

and I'm going to let it continue cooking for about 15 minutes

maybe 20. All right, while it's cooking, I'm going to just chop us a little parsley, just strictly for color

And I think I will add some diced tomatoes on it because down south, we love a good ripe sliced tomato

All right, so I'm just going to dice up some tomato. And I'll just put it on top of our oyster skillet

And y'all can hear the racket that I'm making. I don't know if y'all noticed, but I'm on a makeshift table

The last time Aunt Peggy was over, she and Michael and I were sitting out

and she said, is that a water trough for, like, big animals

And Michael said, yes, ma'am, I got to get rid of it. And when he said that, Peggy and I both sucked in our breath and said

no you can get rid of that Michael Don let anybody take that off And you can see that it serving as my table today

All right. So I've got our tomatoes, our parsley, and I think on top of that I'll crumble up some bacon

And I'm just going to chop this bacon, and I'll put this on top of the tomatoes and the parsley

And I'm going to leave it kind of chunky, just like that

All right, let's come over here and check and see how our skillet oysters is doing

All right, I think that's got it. Now, I want to show you how you can serve this oyster skillet

You can take this skillet straight to the table and spoon it out, or you can flip it over

And I really prefer to flip it over, so let's go ahead and do that and see what we've got

Oh, look how pretty that looks. Looks just delicious, doesn't it? Mmm

Now I think I'm just going to toss it with the tomatoes and the parsley

Looks too delicious. And now I think I'm just going to top it with some bacon for garnish

Okay, this dish looks perfectly wonderful. And just a couple of minutes ago, while I was on break, my phone rang

And it was my niece, Kari, and my girlfriend-in-law, Amanda. Apparently they smelt me cooking out here, and they said, well, three of us are going

to come eat with you. So instead of Michael showing up on time, I think the girls are going to be here

So y'all come back. I'm going to spread all this food out for these three pretty girls, and I guess I'll

have to fix Michael a plate and stick it on the side, because if I don't watch them, they'll

eat it all. So y'all come on back. I've got some tips for you, and then I'll be saying adios for another day

Before we leave today, I want to talk with y'all a little bit about the benefits of fresh fruit juices and vegetable juices

you can change them around. You can change your flavors around so easily with one of these juicers

Like this morning, I'm going to fix me some orange juice and carrot juice. Now, I would never, ever

drink just carrot juice, but when I mix it with the oranges, it's going to be delicious

and I'll barely even know that I'm having carrot juice, but I'll get all the benefits from it

So, okay, here we go. That looks delicious, doesn't it

Yum. All right, now I'm going to add the oranges, which is going to turn this carrot juice into a delicious drink

This machine actually separates the rind from the juice. Alright, you can see that I decided to add a few strawberries in there

And I'm going to fill these glasses up about halfway, and I'm going to be making two different

drinks here. I'm going to be making one for the children, and one for the adults

Now for the children, I'm going to use soda water. For the adults, I'm going to use champagne

It really, really looks good. So here's to you. If you can't eat your vegetables, at least drink them

I've had a great time today out on my back porch cooking up this breakfast

and I was so glad when Kari called. And I think they're going to enjoy this Granite Steps Country Muffin something

Anyway, a blueberry coffee cake. I promise, girls, it's much easier to make than it is to pronounce the name

And I've got the oyster skillet, and I've got the black pepper bacon

and the homemade sausage that's just out of this world, and, of course, my hash browns

And while I'm introducing food, I'd like to introduce these pretty young ladies

This beautiful girl right here is my girlfriend-in-law, Amanda, and this is my niece, Kari, and this is their friend, Emily

And I heard you just had a fabulous wedding, Emily. It was great. Well, Kari said that they had a ball

Well, anyway, who's ready to eat? I am. I am too. So until next time, America, it's Paula Deen here wishing y'all best dishes, hugs, and kisses from my table to yours

All right, dig in, girls. Thank you