Everything Breakfast Sliders

Football season proper. Justin's first varsity snap was Friday night in Kearney. He went in on a third-and-eight in the second quarter, took a handoff out of an empty set, and ran for eleven yards to move the chains. The Grand Island sideline went crazy. The Kearney sideline did not. I sat in the visitor bleachers next to Dave in the same section I sat in for my own games in 1993 and I watched my son Justin Wheeler-Novak, who was 5 years old when his world ended, carry the ball in Kearney, the town where it ended, for his school in a varsity game at age 14. The universe is not symmetrical. Sometimes it is.

I did not tell Amber we were in Kearney. She did not come to the game. She had a senior-year kickoff thing at church. I did not want her to think about Kearney. She has her own reasons to think about Kearney and they are bigger than a football game. I kept the scoresheet in my jacket pocket. I did not post about the game. I wrote about the game in a private document on my laptop and I did not put it in the cookbook and I do not know yet if it will ever be in any book. Some things are just for me and Dave and Justin, and Justin does not even know what it meant. He knows he ran for eleven yards. That is what he knows. That is enough.

Drove a Salina run Tuesday. Late August Kansas looks like bronze poured over a flat skillet. Made tacos in the cab — a skillet browning of ground beef, a packet of seasoning, tortillas I bought at a Hy-Vee, a small tub of sour cream in the cooler. I ate them at a rest stop in Concordia at 8 p.m. and watched the sun go down over the Solomon River and thought, I have eaten ten thousand truck meals in my life, and this is the one I will remember tomorrow.

The cookbook is at forty-seven thousand. I am on pace. I am on pace but it is getting hard. My eyes ache. My shoulders ache. I am writing in the sunroom at 5 a.m. five days a week and in hotel rooms when I am on the road, and the writing is no longer optional, it is a job, a second job, and I have two jobs plus a family and a mother and a house and I am tired. But tired is not an argument I have ever found useful. Tired is a feature of every adult life I admire. Tired is what you push through. Tired is how you get to the book.

Gayle came Sunday. She ate tacos with us. She hates tacos. She ate tacos. She said, "These are fine." From Gayle, "fine" is a standing ovation. I know what that was. She was saying: keep writing. She was saying: your mother sees you. I kissed her cheek when she left. She patted my hand. We do not hug much. We hold each other's hands at funerals and in kitchens, and that is how the Novak women say everything.

The tacos I made in the cab that Tuesday were not fancy — they never are — but they were mine, and they were enough, and that is the whole point. When I got home and made something for the family that same week, I wanted that same feeling: something warm, something real, something that lands. These Everything Breakfast Sliders are what Gayle ate without complaining and what Justin inhaled without looking up, and if that isn’t a standing ovation, I don’t know what is. You can make them ahead, you can make them fast, and they taste like someone who loves you thought to have them ready when you walked in the door.

Prep Time: 10 min | Cook Time: 22 min | Total Time: 32 min | Servings: 12 sliders

Ingredients

1 package (12 count) Hawaiian or soft dinner slider rolls
1/2 lb ground breakfast sausage
6 large eggs
1/4 cup whole milk
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
6 slices cheddar cheese, halved
6 slices cooked bacon, halved
3 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 tsp everything bagel seasoning
1 tsp Dijon mustard

Instructions

Preheat. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish.
Cook the sausage. In a skillet over medium heat, crumble and cook the breakfast sausage until browned all the way through, about 6–8 minutes. Drain excess grease and set aside.
Scramble the eggs. In a bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, salt, and pepper. Pour into the same skillet over medium-low heat and cook, stirring gently, until just set but still slightly soft. Remove from heat immediately.
Split the rolls. Without separating the individual rolls, slice the entire slab horizontally through the middle. Place the bottom half in the prepared baking dish.
Layer the fillings. Spread the scrambled eggs evenly over the bottom rolls. Layer on the cooked sausage, then the bacon, then the cheddar cheese slices. Set the top half of the rolls in place.
Make the butter glaze. Whisk together the melted butter and Dijon mustard. Brush generously over the tops of the rolls. Sprinkle everything bagel seasoning evenly over the top.
Bake. Cover loosely with foil and bake for 10 minutes. Uncover and bake an additional 8–10 minutes, until the tops are golden and the cheese is fully melted.
Slice and serve. Use a sharp knife to cut between the rolls. Serve immediately, or wrap individually in foil for an easy on-the-go meal.

Nutrition (per serving)

Everything Breakfast Sliders — The Kind of Meal That Says You Showed Up