I love the holidays. All the kids are home, they bring extras and their dogs… It’s usually snowing outside but warm inside from the baking of cookies – or in my case, the burning of the cookies…

A bunch of years ago when this happened, our new fire alarm went off and I couldn’t figure out how to turn it off. We have really high ceilings and there was no way to reach the smoke detector. A neighbor called the 9-1-1, and a sheriff came to the door. He looked a little rumpled and a lot overworked, but he smiled when he saw the burnt cookies.

“My wife does that a lot,” he said with obvious warmth and love.

Note to self: remind Alpha Man he’s supposed to be amused by me…

Anyway, ever since then, in order to avoid a wash and repeat, Alpha Man has done the bulk of the holiday cooking. He’s actually a really great cook. He won’t bake but he will make his famed kick-ass breakfast casserole that never fails to bring everyone running. He makes it for sports tournaments, every major holiday, and birthdays by special request. People come out of the woodworks for this dish, I’m telling you.

This year, as we’ve done for several years now, he’ll make two huge batches of it. One for us, and one to giveaway to a family in need. It doesn’t alleviate any of the massive calories but it does remind everyone here in the Shalvis abode how lucky we are to have each other and a house that we can all fit in and love each other. Okay, so we don’t quite fit, we’re bulging at the seams actually, and we don’t always get along. But hey, what’s a holiday without some bickering alongside the love, right?

Alpha Man’s Kick Ass Breakfast Casserole by Jill Shalvis
Ingredients

1 layer of tater tots
1 layer of ham or sausage cubes (or crumbled bacon, whatever makes your skirt blow up)
1 layer of grated cheddar cheese (there’s no such thing as too much cheese in Kick-Ass breakfast)
Pour this over the layer:
6 beaten eggs
1/2 tsp. salt (or more, if no one’s looking)
1/2 tsp. pepper
1 tsp. dry mustard
1/2 cup of chopped onion
3 cups of milk
2 tsp. Worchestershire sauce
Instructions

Preheat oven to 350
Use a 9×13 casserole dish
Pour 1/2 cup of melted butter over top of the layers
Bake uncovered 1 hour

– Originally published by Scandalicious