I teach back-to-back fitness classes on Saturday morning.  By the time I stumble home around 10am, I’m so hungry I could eat my own hand.  I used to make these enormous breakfasts for myself when I’d get back to Casa Mackie.  Breakfast burritos the size of my head.  Belgian waffles the size of YOUR head.  And so it goes.

Somewhere along the way I decided to invite a few of my friends over for brunch — since I was cooking enough food to feed an army anyway.  My friends invited their friends and now I’m never quite sure who will show up.  It’s anywhere between 2-168 people, give or take a dozen.   It’s usually a fair representation of my motley crew … a bunch of rag-tag hooligans determined to eat me out of house and home.  Most of my friends like to imbibe on Friday nights, so they’ll arrive hungover.  They don’t really come alive until halfway through brunch when I serve mimosas.  It’s like giving the Tin Man a shot of oil.

Brunch is never fancy.  I make whatever sounds good to me.  And I make a shit-ton of it.  If you want to come to brunch, feel free.  But I’m not serving you and I’m sure as hell not cleaning up after your sorry ass.  You know where the silverware is, and if you don’t, find out.

A year ago, I stumbled across a recipe for this breakfast casserole.  This thing has put me on the map.  People will drive from in from Independence, MO for this particular dish.  After a lot of trial and error, I have tweaked and perfected the recipe.  And by tweaked, I mean I doubled the amount of bacon that goes in to the dish.  Mmmmm … bacon.

I also gave up coffee about a year ago.  I used to spend an exorbitant amount of money each month on exotic flavors of java beans.   Now my brunch bunch is lucky to get served something by Juan Valdez.  Lately, there has been a mutiny surrounding my coffee, so my peeps now bring their own blends.  They’ll often shove me out of they way to get the coffee maker.  And they’ve also started bringing their own accoutrements to doctor the coffee up.  I have 32 different bottles of Coffee Mate in my ‘fridge …. and another dozen cases of those annoying General Foods International Coffee flavors.  (Remember that time in France?   What WAS that waiter’s name again?)

All in all, brunch is an experience.  It brings together all of my friends in some weird kumbaya sort of way.  It’s like United Colours of Benetton meets the Hatfield and the McCoys meets the Village People meets Martha Stewart.  Don’t expect an invite … just show up.