Over the weekend, I went on a fun filled get away with the family to Toronto.  What started off as a simple family vacation ended up turning into an epic food weekend filled with  poutine, gravy and all of the other delicious cuisine that Canada has to offer.  Seriously though, I gained ten pounds in five days.  I feel as though modern science has not yet developed the technology to explain I could have possibly pulled that one off.  However I did it, I’m assuming the process took about eleven months off of my life.  But you know what?  I’m perfectly OK with that.  You’re about to see why.

Every morning at 8:00 AM we found ourselves at Starbucks so my father could get his daily fix.  Somehow Starbucks has managed to turn a man who didn’t even drink coffee to a Gold Card carrying full blown addict.  After he drank three or four white chocolate mochas we headed to Over Easy, which I can honestly say is one of the best breakfast joints I have ever stepped foot in to.  You find out right away that Over Easy isn’t playing games.  The first thing on their menu, before any of the food options, are Drinks.  I’m talking Mimosas, screwdrivers and any other alcoholic beverage a drunk could dream of.  I personally don’t partake in alcohol this early in the morning, but if you’re one of those people that really likes to take the edge off of.. well, just waking up in the morning, then Over Easy is for you my drunk, hopeless friend.

My favorite thing about Over Easy, other than the fact that they’re trying to get people drunk at breakfast, is the menu selection.  Eggs Benedict, you say?  How about eight different types of Eggs Benedict.  French toast?  An entire section of the menu dedicated to creating as many varieties of it as possible.   These aren’t just your regular, ordinary menu items either. For instance, they have Cajun Chicken Eggs Benedict:

Before you start thinking that’s the best thing available, take a look at the French Toast with Caramel and Bananas:

So right now you’re probably like, “Holy shit John, you ate there twice”?  To which I would respond with no, I did not eat there twice.  I ate there three times.  On my third visit I came across a dish that epitomizes what I look for in the perfect breakfast.  Not only did this make me tear up as I gazed upon the description in the menu, it also gave me the worst fat man sweats I have ever had.

Ladies and Gentlemen I give you Breakfast Poutine.  Hollandaise sauce, two poaches eggs, bacon, ham and cheese curds all on top of a pile of home fries.  It’s the kind of meal that leaves you breathless, which is the result of the simple beauty or the grease clogging your arteries.  I like to think it’s a combination of both.

Over Easy Restaurant – Toronto, ON
overeasyrestaurants.com/
Over Easy @ Foodspotting
@OverEasy – Twitter

On February 21st, 2009 I attempted the Bomber Breakfast for the first time and failed miserably.  It was an embarrassing moment for me.  The waitresses laughed at me, and the bus boy made me bus my own table.  As I was pulling out of the parking lot, customers began throwing eggs at my car.  I required many hours of intense therapy to get over the pain, and three car washes to clean the eggs off.

After my rehabilitation period, I began training for the moment when I was ready to go back and prove to these people that I am not the “skinny little bitch” that they claimed I was.  That breakfast could fit in my stomach, I just went about it wrong!  I should have eaten the hash browns first!  With this in mind, I decided to go full Rocky 4 style and travel to Russia for some old school training.  This included jumping rope, running through the snow, doing sit-ups in a barn, and other activities that don’t involve performance enhancing drugs or running on a treadmill on a ridiculous incline.

With my mind, body and spirit in the right place I returned to the Bomber to reclaim my self respect.  I ordered my breakfast and the waitress brought it to me with a giant smirk on her face.  Little did she know, I was about to blow her mind.

If you’re not familiar with the bomber breakfast, it is one pound of hash browns, ten strips of bacon, four eggs, and two slices of toast.  Observe:

My plan going in was to smother the hash browns with ketchup and Red Hot so they would go down easier.  The first time I attempted this I ate the bacon first then moved onto the hash browns.  This ended up being a terrible idea.  The real challenge of getting through this breakfast is the hash browns.  The taste gets old real fast and your stomach becomes full if you don’t get them down fast enough.  My plan worked beautifully, and the potatoes were gone from the plate within five minutes.  It was a moral victory me just to get those things down.

After getting through the hash browns, it was all down hill from there.  Bacon and over easy eggs are two of my favorite things in the entire world, so this wasn’t even much of a challenge anymore.  The bacon was a little crispy, but it went down fast.  No problems here.  I did see the waitress walk by a few times with a worried look on here face.  Boom.

With the bacon and hash browns gone, victory was in sight.  All I had to do was smash through four eggs and a couple pieces of toast.  I considered this more of a victory lap than a final stretch.  I broke the yolks with my first two pieces of toast and used the dip method, ate the whites with my fork, then cleaned the plate with my final two pieces of toast.  Victory was mine.

If you will notice, I decided to devour that stupid orange garnish just to prove a point.  After finishing, I threw my plate across the restaurant and walked out without paying my bill.  Who’s laughing now?

I would like to point out that everything written above is false.  No one made any ill comments towards me, threw eggs at my car, or made any faces at me.  I also did not travel to Russia.  I did, however, destroy the Bomber Breakfast and the orange that came with it.  Boo yah, bitches.

Sometimes I actually do love my readers.

Over the weekend I was contacted by a young lady by the name of Varta, whose hobbies include making some of the most incredibly gluttonous food I have ever seen.  Apparently thisiswhyyourefat.com(no link here a-holes) has decided to not post good content anymore, because they completely neglected her submissions.  I felt it was the right thing to do to get her gluttonous cooking up here as quickly as possible, because that’s what Epic Portions is all about.  The right thing to do.  You can always count on us… Anyways…

The first thing I want to share with you is this a hard boiled egg wrapped in bacon, surrounded by cheese, and “cuddled” in spicy sausage.  This literally makes me want to do naughty things to my monitor.

Thanks to Varta for allowing me to share this with you, and actually making this thing.  This took a lot of genius.

The other day everyone’s favorite historian, Chris Bacon, turned my attention to a certain menu item at an Ann Arbor eating establishment that got my interest.  If you don’t know Mr. Bacon, here he is wearing a neck accessory:

At TK WU on E. Liberty in Ann Arbor, they are selling a dish called Congee with 1000 year Egg & Pork. A thousand year old egg?  How is this possible?

Thankfully, my possibly inaccurate friends over at Wikipedia had me covered:

Century egg, also known as preserved egg, hundred-year egg, thousand-year egg, and thousand-year-old egg, is a Chinese cuisine ingredient made by preserving duck, chicken, or quail in mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice straw for several weeks to several months, depending on the method of processing. After the process is completed, the yolk becomes a dark green, cream-like substance with a strong odor of sulfur and ammonia, while the white becomes a dark brown, transparent jelly with little flavor or taste. The transforming agent in the century egg is its alkaline  material, which gradually raises the pH of the egg from around 9 to 12 or more. This chemical process breaks down some of the complex, flavorless proteins and fats, which produces a variety of smaller flavorful compounds.

Here’s what one of these bad boys looks like cut in half:

I’m pretty sure you will see me eat one of these in the near future.  The whole thing seems absolutely disgusting, but I’m just not one to let the opportunity to eat a spoiled egg that is considered a delicacy slip away.  It’s right down the road!