Cheesy Black Bean Salsa Verde Egg Bake + An EGGstravaganza Adventure

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Cheesy Black Bean Salsa Verde Egg Bake has Southwestern flavors that mix together with spinach, egg, black beans, cheese, green onions, cilantro and salsa verde. This is perfect for breakfast, brunch or even a lunch. 

Today we are talking all things eggs. Of course that beautiful Cheesy Black Bean Salsa Verde Egg Bake, but also about my recent trip to Columbus, Ohio with the Ohio Poultry Association. It was a packed three days where we ate eggs, learned about eggs, and ate more eggs. If you are an egg lover you would have been in heaven!

I learned so much about eggs.

Did you know that eggs have many essential nutrients in varying amounts, including high-quality protein, choline, folate, iron and zinc. That is a powerful little egg right there.

Or that one egg has about 75 calories, making it a perfectly portion controlled snack?

Our trip started with a progressive dinner in Columbus with appetizers at the original Max & Erma’s Restaurant. I felt right at home with the delicious German food including soft pretzels and German beer. Our meal continued at Lindey’s, which is a beautiful restaurant in Germany Village. If you get a chance to stop by that place, I highly suggest doing brunch there. We enjoyed the Egg Lindey’s, two petite filets and poached eggs on english muffins with tasso ham hollandaise. Yes, heavenly.

Saturday morning we headed to the Bob Evan’s headquarters and enjoyed a tour, breakfast and learning a lot of information about eggs and Bob Evan’s.  We learned that Bob Evan’s is focusing more on fresh ingredients and striving to provide healthier options on their menu, which is great!

Chef David Eisel is the Executive chef at Bob Evan’s and we were lucky enough to have him prepare our breakfast and of course learn lots from him!

We got a tour of their kitchen which was huge, beautiful and pretty much would allow me more than enough space to create some serious egg dishes. What do you think?

We also talked to the supplier of Bob Evan’s eggs, Hertzfeld Poultry Farms who supplies over 1 million eggs every single week to Bob Evan’s restaurants.  That is a whole lot of eggs!

After our amazing tour of Bob Evan’s we headed to Franklin Park Conservatory.  My sister, who lives in Columbus, has talked about how beautiful it is and I couldn’t wait to see it for myself.  I sure wasn’t disappointed. The gardens were amazing with beds and beds of vegetables. It definitely put my garden to shame.

And look at this scene. I can imagine hosting the perfect dinner under the stars at that table right there.

Franklin Park Conservatory has so much to see in their gardens and greenhouses but they also have art. And very impressive art. This is part of the Chihuly Collection which was just breathtaking.

Then for lunch we headed to this beautiful kitchen where Jim Chakeres showed up how to make a variety of deviled eggs {and by variety I mean Bloody Mary and Chocolate Deviled Eggs}.

Crazy, right? I love the Bloody Mary Deviled Eggs and can’t wait to make them at home.

We concluded the second day of fun with a beautiful dinner on  Jorgensen Farms, a certified organic farm in New Albany, OH. I mean the setting at the farm was perfection.  We started by a warm fire talking and learning and eating delicious appetizers.

It was so fun getting to know my fellow food bloggers, too!

I could imagine a beautiful wedding in this barn or a really fancy rehearsal dinner. The setting was magical and the food hit the spot.

The special touches, like these flowers, made the setting even more beautiful.

On a side note, this Pumpkin Brûlée was to die for!

At dinner I had the opportunity to talk to the egg farmers and learned all that goes into raising chickens. Here are a few things that I learned and made me happy that I thought I would share:

• Hormones are not fed to poultry in the U.S.
• Shell color {brown vs. white} has no effect on an egg’s nutrient content, flavor or any cooking characteristics.  Feed determines nutrient content.  Brown hens are slightly larger than white hens and require more food-which is why brown eggs are slightly more expensive.
• According to the USDA, eggs are not a genetically modified, or bioengineered food.

Before we headed home we had one more brunch to attend. The grand finale.  We went to a restaurant called The Guild House. It is an elegant, warm place that would be perfect for a Sunday brunch.  They served us some of the best food I have eaten, including baked doughnuts to die for and a smoked chicken, poblano and egg dish with salsa verde.

Can’t you just picture yourself right there enjoying a cup of coffee and a plate of delicious food?

You can’t leave the restaurant without trying their freshly baked doughnuts…mouthwatering.

I loved having the opportunity to learn more about eggs from the Ohio Poultry Association.  As an Ohioan it was nice to also learn about Ohio farmers and all that they are doing.  These statistics impressed me…

• Ohio’s egg, chicken and turkey farms create more than 14,071 jobs generating $427 million in earning to the state’s economy.
• Ohio ranked 2nd in the nation for egg production with nearly 8 billion eggs produced in 2013. That is A LOT of eggs!
• In 2013, Ohio produced more than 406 million pounds of chicken.

And now I won’t say very much about today’s Cheesy Black Bean Salsa Verde Egg Bake other than it is packed with good stuff including spinach, black beans, cheese, salsa verde and freshly chopped green onion and cilantro.  This dish makes a nice, healthy and hearty breakfast during the week and something you can have waiting in the fridge to grab on your way out the door. If you are an egg lover than this is the dish for you!

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Thanks to the Ohio Poultry Association for inviting me on their three day EGGstravaganza. As always, all opinions are 100% my own.