Frittata for dinner

I told Joe we were having “Breakfast for dinner”.  I’m going through cookbooks, searching online, and racking my brain for dinner ideas.  I think I’m about to the end of my patience with this cooking thing.

We will be leaving, once again, in the next few days to be gone for who knows how long.  I have only a few days to craft and have fun and I’ve been cramming as much time in my room as I possibly can.  The pressure is on and I’ve found myself back in my “emotional eating” zone.

I’m not eating the way I should.  No more daily snacks and drinking water.  Those take up precious time in my crafting 😦  I’ve lost my mind.

Priorities are a bit upside down around my house and in my head.  I’m still working at this Glycemic Index thing.  I guess everyone goes through a difficult patch when doing something new and find excuses to not continue on the path to good health from time to time.  Why should I be any different.

Then there are those that have been waylaid by health issues.  Jann, of WhatYouMakeIt, with her pneumonia and now Lynn of Garden Pinks is down with a stomach bug.  Ladies, I’m sending healing vibes your way.

I have to have pep talks with myself and they go like this.  Leslie – put your “Big girl panties on and deal with it”!!

Okay, enough of the whining and on to what to fix for dinner when you are a bit short on time.  This meal is a quick one.  In and out in about 30 minutes.  You get your protein needs met as well as the daily fiber requirements and it tastes pretty good.

You will need a 10 inch skillet that is oven safe.  If you have a skillet with a plastic or wooden handle and are concerned about putting it in your oven I have a fix for you.

Wooden handle skillet

Tear off about two (2) feet of aluminum foil.  Fold the length in half so you have a long strip.  Take one of the narrow ends of the folded foil and begin wrapping the length around the handle of your skillet.  Make sure to cover ALL of the handle that is not heat proof.  Wind the foil around and around the handle and squish it good.

Foil covered wooden handle

The foil protects the wood or plastic from the intense heat of the broiler.  Take necessary precautions when handling because the foil will get hot, hot, hot.  And it is not permanent.  It slides right off.

Foil cover comes off

Store it away in a drawer.  That way anyone looking in the drawer for something will come across this bit of foil and ask you a bunch of questions.  Starting with “What the heck are you keeping this for?!”

Store away for the next time

Alright, now that this is out of the way and you are ready to begin.  One medium onion sliced thin and in your skillet with a bit of olive oil.  You will be cooking the onions by themselves until they begin to caramelize.

Onion sliced thin

You are going to be thinking I’ve done gone bonkers because of the amount of onion in the pan but it does cook down.

While the onion is cooking you will be doing some more chopping *groan*.  One clove of garlic smashed like a bug and chopped well.  About a cup of sliced mushrooms.  Here is where you can get adventurous or use what you have in your refrigerator or freezer.

• Bacon – 4 slices (rashers) cooked crispy and drained of grease
• 3 to 4 slices of deli meat chopped into 1/2 inch squares – or approximate squares
• Prosciutto chopped into 1/2 squares – or approximate squares
• Spinach – fresh or frozen – about 1 cup.  Drained of all water (or thawed and drained).  Pat the spinach dry with paper towels until there is no standing water.
• Asparagus chopped from tip to mid way down the stem, about 1-1/2 cup (this is what I used)
• Green, red, or yellow pepper chopped and diced

You can find several recipes online for Frittata to see what your options are.

Mushrooms, asparagus, and garlic

Four whole eggs in a bowl big enough to mix up.

4 whole eggs

You can add dry herbs, like Italian herbs, to the eggs if you so choose.

Stir your onions from time to time as they cook.  Make sure they are not burning and getting black.  When they begin to turn brown you are at the point of adding your chopped vegetables and any meat you have decided to put in the mix.

Caramalized onions

Now dump your vegetables, garlic included, into the skillet and let this all cook for about 5 minutes.  If you will be using any  hard vegetables like potatoes or carrots put them in and let them cook for about 4 to 5 minutes before adding the remaining vegetables.

Add the chopped vegetables and meats to the skillet

Turn your oven on to the “Broil” setting and get it heating up while the vegetables are cooking in your skillet.

Set oven to broil

Add one (1) tablespoon milk to the whole eggs.

One tablespoon milk

It is a bit hard for me to take a photo and pour milk at the same time.  Look, you can see me in the reflection of the measuring spoon 🙂

My reflection

Next you will whip up the eggs.  An old song was playing in my head at this point.  I don’t remember who the group was.  Devoe, Cars, Duran Duran.  “Whip it.  Whip it good.”  Crazy things that pop in my brain.

Whip the eggs

Anyway, whip up the eggs and milk until it is frothy.  You want to incorporate some air in this to make the eggs a bit fluffy.  I forgot to tell you about the benefits of a Frittata.  It has less calories than an Omelet and, purportedly, is better for you.  Still, it is an omelet of sorts.  At this point you can add your dry herbs and get them thoroughly mixed in the eggs.

Pour the eggs into your skillet over the cooked vegetables and meat.  The skillet contents do need to be cooked pretty well before you add the eggs or you will have bad results.  The water content naturally found in vegetables needs to be cooked off first before you add the eggs.

Add the eggs

Move this mixture around in the skillet a time or two.  Don’t go beating this into scrambled eggs.  Just push through the mixture to get the runny eggs on top under the skillet contents.  Leave this then to cook for a few minutes until you begin to see the very edges of the egg mixture pull away from the sides of the skillet and be dry.

Eggs are beginning to set

The eggs are beginning to set in the skillet and it is time to put this in the oven about 6 inches from the broiler element or gas fire – whichever type  you have.

Check the cooking of your Frittata in about 5 minutes.  Make sure it is not burning.

Check to make sure the Frattata is not burning

Don’t look too closely at my dirty oven.  I love my self cleaning oven because it does all the hard work for me.  It has been too flaming hot recently to clean the oven.  Sounds like a good excuse to me 🙂

When the eggs have a bit of golden color on the top and look fully cooked….this is important now.  Use a pot holder to take the skillet out of the oven.  Leave it on, don’t turn it off because we are not finished yet.  If you have foil wrapped around your skillet handle make sure to get a good grip when taking it out or you will be jumping out of the way of a hot skillet headed to your feet while you are holding on to the aluminum foil.  Experience talking here.

Eggs have cooked and are golden

Slice or shred some cheese.  Swiss is usually good.  You can use just about any cheese you like.  Put it on top of the eggs.

Add cheese

Put it back in the oven until the cheese is bubbly and golden.

Broil until cheese bubbles

The cooking is now done.  Remove the skillet from the oven.  Using a spatula or wooden spoon loosen the Frittata from the pan.  Go all around the edges and down into the middle.  It won’t fall apart on you as you are doing this if the vegetables were fully cooked before adding the eggs.

Loosen Frattata from pan

Dump this out onto a plate and cut into wedges for serving.

Dump onto a plate

Cut into wedges

Joe picked up some bagged salad.  Goody, goody.  No additional chopping for me 🙂

Bagged salad mix

Serve the Frittata with a salad, another vegetable if you wish.  We are having left over peas.  And some bread that is a whole grain.  Pumpernickel is a good bread to eat and is recommended in the Glycemic Index food list.

Soups on

Enjoy your dinner.  Cold or hot, this Frittata is good  as well as being good for you.

I’m going to squeeze in some crafting time today.  The gathering and packing process will come all too soon and I want to go play while I can.

Have a great day everyone.

Thinking about Chinese food tonight?

If you are following the Glycemic Index way of eating you have a refrigerator full of vegetables and fruit.  If you are like me you stand in front of the refrigerator with the door open trying to figure out what to do with all this stuff.  Our refrigerator has a big problem with the upper part not being cold and the bottom part (vegetable drawer) freezing so standing with the door open and trying to figure out what the heck to do with all these vegetables is not good for the food, the refrigerator, or me.

Joe came up with an idea for dinner so if this looks like something you will do for dinner then he gets the credit and not me.

Before I go much further, and totally forget this bit altogether, I got my “ears boxed” by a reader of my blog.  For some reason people leave comments in the “About Me” section of this blog and those comments get lumped into SPAM.  I don’t know who is pulling my leg, promoting their own stuff, or actually leaving a comment.  I’ve turned the feature off that allows comments in the About Me section.  Still one got through and I’m pretty sure you may be interested in what their blog has to say about Cholesterol and how to lower yours if it is high.  The blog is Cholesterol Lowering Foods and you can read the most recent article posted.

Okay, on to tonight’s dinner….or last night for me.

Meat?  Use what you have.  Chicken, sirloin, ground beef, ground turkey, even stew meat.  Stew meat will have to simmer for 1-1/2 hours before it is edible because it is so tough but it works in this dish.  How much meat?  Not more than a pound for four people.  It is going to be sliced thin or already ground.  Which ever it is you choose.

Mostly, adjust the meat to your needs.  If you find you have cooked too much just put the extra in a storage container and use it for something else later in the week.

Start with one medium sized onion peeled and cut in half and one clove of garlic chopped up fairly fine after you have “squashed it like a bug” :-).  One half of the onion will be chopped up to cook with the meat and the other half will be chunked to go in with the vegetables.

Halve an onion

One half chopped and the other cut into chunks

I have a post several days back showing how to peel and cut up garlic by mashing the fool out of it with the broad side of a kitchen knife blade.

While your  meat is cooking add the onion and garlic and cook until the onion is no longer translucent.  For those of you beginning to cook this means the onions are no longer white but kind of see through.

Add onion and garlic to cooking meat

This was stew meat I did last week to try this recipe out.  Quite a bit of this meat is now in our freezer waiting for some other experiment 🙂

While the meat is cooking the next part of this is time consuming.  Prepping lots of vegetables!!!

One carrot of a fairly good size.  Cut off the leaf end at the bottom of where they merge, and cut off the root tip a bit.  Clean your carrot under running water to get any stray dirt left behind.  Leave the peel on just get the dirt off.

Make diagonal slices on the carrot to get some good pieces.  Please be careful when doing this because the fool thing likes to roll around.

A green pepper halved and cleaned of seeds.  You can use any color pepper you wish to use.  Red or yellow would work also.  Taste is pretty much the same it is just a color thing.  Slice the pepper into strips from the top to the bottom.

A handful of mushrooms, either pre-sliced from your grocer or slice them yourself.  Doesn’t matter.

Carrots, green pepper, mushrooms

Add chunked onion

Next will be cabbage.  One quarter of the head will be more than enough.  Slice through the cabbage in about 1/2 inch slices.

1/4 head cabbage

Slice up the cabbage

When the meat is finished cooking remove it from the pan onto a plate and put aside for these next few steps.

Water chestnuts and stir fry sauce

I forgot about these guys.  Check the can of Water Chestnuts you pick up at the store.  Get the already sliced Water Chestnuts if you can.  I didn’t so I had to slice through these puppies.

Next step is to get the carrots cooking for the first 3 minutes.  Carrots take longer to cook than the other vegetables do so I put them on first.

Cook carrots first 3 minutes

Now it is time for the mass of chopped vegetables you have slaved over.  Onions, cabbage, green peppers, mushrooms, and the water chestnuts.  We picked up some Sugar Snap Peas at the grocer today so I added a handful of those also.  I love crunchy things in my Chinese food 🙂

Add your chopped vegetables

Let this mess of goodness cook for 3 minutes stirring frequently to keep them from burning.  Watch the cabbage as this is cooking.  When it wilts you are ready to add the meat back to the pan.

Add meat back into pan when cabbage wilts

The Stir Fry sauce I have purchased is 70% lower in sodium.  You will need 1/3 cup of the sauce.

1/3 cup Stir Fry sauce

Pour the Stir Fry sauce over the vegetables and stir around to coat everything in the pan.  You will know when you have accomplished that because everything will have a brown tinge to it.  Cook this for an additional 3 minutes to heat the sauce up and flavor this dish.

You are now ready to eat 🙂  Spoon this mess over rice if you choose.  There was a lengthy discussion in my house about which rice to use.  I offered to cook Joe his white rice while I cooked the wild rice mix I like.  In the end….no rice got cooked because we were both trying to please each other so I just said “Fine! No rice then.”  Temperamental person that I am 🙂

Ooof, too much food

Joe is under strict orders to not bother me this week.  I’m crafting this week since all of my paperwork is finished – WOO HOO!! – and I will get in an hour a day of housework…..maybe.

I have some snack sized baggies I purchased a long time ago at Wal-Mart.

Snack sized bags

One cup of grapes has been put in a baggie.  Yes, I slaved over the sink to get the grapes washed and taken off the stems then measured and put in the baggies.  Don’t you just feel sorry for me and all the work I do?  Ya, ya.  I know.  You feel for me but you just can’t quite reach me 🙂

One cup grapes

Snack ready for this week

Speaking of grapes, here is a photo I took in July while we were in California doing the Wal-Mart trucks from Red Bluff to Las Vegas.  This arbor is full of grapes.

Grape arbor in California

You are eating almonds aren’t you?  We are.  This is what they look like as they grow on the trees.  Once again on our trip from Red Bluff to Las Vegas we took a couple of moments to take photos.

Almonds growing in an orchard

Today I am down to 227 pounds and Joe is down to 319.  My body is changing in more ways than one.  I am not only losing the weight by eating in this healthier way I no longer crave sugar, potato chips, nor chocolate.

I have a bag of Tootsie Roll candies in my room from last year.  I ate one day before yesterday.  Before….I would eat a handful of those little guys with not even a blink of an eye.  I had not finished eating just the one day before yesterday and I was ready to spit it out.  Too sweet for me and I got a headache not long after I ate it.

I was sort of bad yesterday.  Didn’t eat breakfast because we had lots of things to do away from home and were gone most of the day.  I weighed before we left the house and the scale read 226.  I didn’t eat until after 11 a.m. and we went to a buffet type place, called Furr’s, and I had mostly vegetables with a couple chicken wings then the faux Chinese food last night.  I’ve put a pound on because of this…I think.

I felt grumpy and a bit sluggish.  How are you guys doing that are following along with this style of eating?  Do you notice anything going on with your bodies or food cravings?  I’d really love to know.  Actually, I’d like to know that I am not the only one that is having delusions 🙂

Okay, my business is done for today.  I’m off to my craft room and you may  not hear from me for a couple days.  I’m going to roll around in paper, glue, glitter, and all kinds of fun stuff 🙂

Leslie