Tony got up early on Easter Sunday to surprise me by cooking brunch for us to eat up on the deck. Then he wrote this guest blog, so I would have more time today to get the rest of my work done. Sorry, ladies (and gents), he’s taken! #fullbrag #DoYouHateMeYet??

TONY: You ever wake up and realize, “Oh snap, it’s friggin’ Easter morning and I bet Annie has some kind of sweet Easter thing planned and I’m a doofus and have ABSOLUTELY jack nothing planned in return???” No flowers, no cake, no trying-to-be-cute-Tony-decorated eggs?? (As a matter of fact, we had a few eggs in the fridge… But they were three weeks expired.) Well, this jockbutt had that very realization when I woke up yesterday morning, so with my head on a swivel I thought, “What does Annie cherish most? There’s no way I’m getting her another animal, so what about DELICIOUS FOOD!?” Yes, breakfast in bed!

I didn’t really love the idea of putting on pants and going to the store, so I raced to the fridge and saw that the bacon I had bought three weeks ago to wrap around chicken apple sausage had never made it around the sausage, but was instead still in the fridge! And by the grace of the risen Christ was not expired! Also, last weekend I bought these amazing maple chicken breakfast sausages at Trader Joe’s for breakfast while we were camping and they ended up being mad taste-iferous. I then went to the pantry on the hunt for some carbs and found this box of Kodiak Cakes. You just add water to create killer additive/gluten/hormone/msg/badcrap free, nothing-but-delicious pancakes. It was on!

I just put two pans on the stove at a little over medium heat and threw the thick cut bacon and sausages in their respective pans with a little olive oil in each. The sausage is super easy, just watch ‘em for about 8 minutes, turning them so they don’t burn. The bacon is a different story. Lately I’ve been a real porker on set at School of Rock in the mornings. Crafty (the place I graze at constantly at work) has this amazing bacon in the morning that everyone calls “crack bacon.” It’s cracked pepper-encrusted bacon that’s been cooked in maple syrup. I literally can’t stop eating it whenever it’s there. I think the ‘crack’ portion of the name is attributed to its addictive quality rather then the pepper that rests upon it. But I digress! I attempted to make this ‘drug-like’ delicacy with some awesome syrup and a store-bought cracked pepper dispenser. I coated each slice of bacon with syrup and pepper. About four minutes of frying on each side gave me the perfect consistency I was looking for and…Boom! Cracked bacon was on the menu baby!

Finally, I mixed up the pancake batter. As I said before, you can use water, but feel free to use almond milk or regular milk if you want a fluffier experience. (Water was plenty for the fluffy cakes we had.) You just measure out equal amounts of powder and water (one cup for four medium sized hot cakes) to get your mix, then throw them in a pan on medium heat until you see the tiny bubbles pop up around the edges – then, flip those cakes. I used a ton of butter to grease the pan for extra chubby happiness.

{Tony made bites for the dogs because we are insane animal people}

That was it! A few lattes on ice, a nice deck to enjoy the feast and I was in the free and clear. We were both in food comas shortly thereafter.

P.S. Annie’s big surprise to me was not washing her hair or getting out of her sweats until dinner. Turns out, Easter’s not a gift-giving holiday. So, I just earned extra points, which I intend to cash in when Terminator: Genisys opens. (I mean, have you seen the trailer? Arnold’s back! #SHRED)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62E4FJTwSuc