A guide to brinner: breakfast for dinner

French toast. Hash browns. Scrambled eggs. Scones.

Breakfast food is amazing, but most people don't have the time to cook it on an everyday basis. It's usually a miracle if you have enough time to grab a bagel or banana on the way out the door in the mornings. So what do you do? Brinner is the answer: breakfast for dinner. Take as much time as needed to make all of the delicious food you're craving.

The hardest thing about making an epic brinner is timing; most things are best fresh, so having limited pans or stove space can make things trickier. Prioritize: fruit can be sliced early, pastries can be reheated and some things can be made in a microwave or oven instead of a stove. Having more than one person cooking at a time definitely helps.

Now, having cereal and bagel for dinner does not qualify as brinner. Brinner must be of epic proportions since indefinite time and resources are available by its later time slot, so plan on making a lot of entrees, even if only for a few people. All the following dishes can be made on any scale.

A list of food ideas:

Waffles or pancakes or French toast

Muffins and/or scones

Bacon or sausages (you don't need both, really)

Coffee cake

Hash browns

Fresh fruit

Quiche

Eggs

All the pastry items are best when warm, but they can be made earlier and reheated while you're making the more urgent items, like the eggs, meat and hash browns. Of course, muffins, scone and coffee cake can be baking in the oven while you work on everything else. Mixes are just as good as from scratch, especially for the busy people, so take the shortcuts where you can, no one will judge you. Make sure not to have too many bread products; yes, they're all amazingly delicious, but they fill you up and there are too many other good things to fit into your stomach.

Bacon and hash browns take forever to cook (something to remember when you're worried your breakfast order got lost back there), so consider cooking the bacon in the microwave. It's not as good as pan-fried, but still gets crunchy and delicious and takes way less time.

For eggs, scrambled is the way to go if cooking for a big or picky group. You can cook a lot of eggs at a time, they're filling and pretty much everyone likes them. They're also far from boring: just add cheese, onions or peppers to spice things up.

Fresh fruit will depend on the season, but go for melon and berries if you can, and add whipped cream for fun.

So, the order of cooking should be: slice fruit and put in fridge; mix and bake scones, muffins, coffee cake; make and set aside waffles, pancakes or French toast; bake bacon or sausage; and cook hash browns and eggs on stove.

As far as drinks go, try orange juice or fruit juice. If age-appropriate, have a mimosa (orange juice and champagne) or screwdriver (orange juice and vodka) with your brinner, something you wouldn't (or probably shouldn't) have with your everyday breakfast.