Veggie and Sausage Frittata

I hope I didn’t lure anyone here under false pretenses. “Diana’s Daily Dish” is seldom daily (and probably never will be) and has yet to feature a dish as in “a particular item of prepared food” or “a container for holding or serving food”. I meant dish in the “idle talk; gossip” sense of the word, though in searching for “official” definitions on the internet, it could also refer to “a good-looking person, especially an attractive woman”, hmm. So sorry if you were expecting posts about my daily pottery pieces or something like that but it's basically for my "idle talk" about life and "Diana’s Daily Dish" was alliterative and catchy, oh and my name is Diana, if you didn't catch that. I do love to cook so I’ll try to include some more cooking and recipe posts (hint hint, like this one).

Last week I started a pantry/freezer clean out and while I made some progress they are both still pretty full. In an effort to finish up a few more food items hogging space in the fridge and freezer and to make something for breakfast this week, this frittata recipe was born. Frittatas are super easy to make and are great for using up whatever you may have on hand. In the past, I’ve made these in cupcake pans for individual servings but I wasn't in the mood to scrub the baked on egg mixture out of 12 cupcake holes, something I’ve yet to avoid, so this was baked in small, shallow baking dish… and the frittata is thin enough I can throw it between some bread or a bagel to eat on the go. Feel free to substitute your favorite ingredients.

Warning: I'm one of those cooks that eyeballs everything, so amounts and time may vary! 

Ingredients:  

1 TBS olive oil

1/2 cup frozen chopped bell pepper (from my garden, defrosted)

2/3 cup frozen shredded potatoes (defrosted)

1 Italian chicken sausage, chopped

1/4 cup onion, chopped

1/2 cup frozen chopped spinach (defrosted and drained)

Cooking spray

4 eggs

1/4 cup skim milk

Salt, pepper, garlic powder, chili powder, etc. (any of your favorite spices)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 ºF. Add olive oil to hot pan, add peppers, potatoes, sausage and onion. Stir and cook 5-7 minutes or until ingredients begin to brown. Add spinach and your favorite spices, stir to combine, remove from heat and let cool. In separate bowl, combine eggs and milk, whisk to combine. After vegetable/sausage mixture has cooled for a few minutes (basically you don't want to start cooking your eggs by adding them to super hot veggies), add to greased baking dish. Pour egg mixture over vegetables/sausage. You may need to stir it a bit to combine. Bake 20-30 minutes until eggs begin to brown in the center (will depend on the size/depth of your pan). Makes approximately 4 (generous) servings.

While I’m saving it for breakfast this week, I took a small bite and it was delicious. I plan on adding some cheese and maybe a bagel thin to make a breakfast sandwich very similar to the Dunkin’ Donuts turkey sausage/veggie flat bread.

Oh and here was my dinner I threw together as the egg dish was baking.

(It's kind of hard to take an appetizing picture of sausage)

Leftover frozen veggies in cheese sauce (I added black pepper and chili powder) and Italian chicken sausage on a slice of Sourdough Italian bread with Italian cheese blend and BBQ sauce (it worked, trust me).

Fill in the Blank Friday

I caught this on Meagan's Blog and it looks like fun!

 Check it out here: Fill In the Blank Friday


 

1.   If my house was on fire and I could only grab 3 things I would grab  Harris (the cat), my purse and my laptop.

2.  A smell I really like is  camping ( a mixture of pine needles, wood smoke and tent nylon).

3.  Something you might not know about me is  I once held my school's track and field record in the 55M dash and the 300M run. These are exclusive to indoor track and I was on our school's first indoor track team, I was the first person to run these races, thus establishing the school record, I'm sure they have since been broken.

4.  Some of my favorite websites to putter about on are   Apartment Therapy, various message boards, the dreaded Facebook, All Over Albany, etc .

5.  This weekend I will be hanging around Albany and maybe hosting my mom for a night!.

6. Nothing makes me happier than  discovering a great new band or artist, especially if it happens when I'm seeing them live for the first time.

7.  A bad habit I have is  what I'm calling overwhelmed procrastination (when it takes forever to get a certain something done because I'm doing multiple somethings at once)   .

Happy Friday!!

Stylish Blogger Award

Well thank you very much, though I'm not sure how stylish I'd consider my blog to be considering my most visited post is mostly about mud but... thanks Jillian and Kate!

                                   

The rules:

1. Post and link back to the person who awarded you this award Thank you Jillian and Kate!
2. Share 7 things about yourself 

3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers
4. Contact these bloggers and tell them they’ve won!

So 7 things about me:

1. I have an argyle fixation.
2. I catch a lot of live music.
3. When I don't have enough going on, I become an extreme procrastinator.
4. I'll take salty over sweet any day.
5. I'm fiercely independent.
6. I make hypocritical food choices. Organic, garden grown veggies one day, fast food the next. (I'm working on it).
7. I'm an infrequent blogger (trying to work on that).

Many of my favorite blogger friends have already received this award so  I'll try to shake things up a bit.

So some blogs I'm digging these days...

http://www.healthytippingpoint.com/

http://smartprettyandawkward.com/

http://jackfit.blogspot.com/

http://catalogliving.net/

http://www.epbot.com/

http://graphjam.memebase.com/

http://www.jimspancakes.com/

http://www.nataliedee.com/

http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/

Sorry that's all I've got for now!

Garden Recap

(I just noticed this post was deleted, so I'm reposting it, sorry if you got it again!)

While facing below zero temps today, let’s reflect on and look forward to warm temperatures and sunshine! (BTW, this is a modified repost from the first blog I started and abandoned.)

In the summer of 2010 I decided to go out on a limb and start a garden. Living in a small apartment with an even smaller porch this required a little help from the lovely folks at Capitol District Community Gardens. For $20 and a little work, I was granted a 15'' x 15'' plot in the Rensselaer Family Garden. It's located in a quiet residential neighborhood with about 14 garden plots. It's a nice and small community of gardeners ranging from young inexperienced gardeners (like me) to retired couples with time and experience to share.

The pictures are taken just about a month apart from May 12 - August 7th. Over Memorial Day weekend and beyond I planted peppers (bell, Italian, pablano), tomatoes, eggplant, lettuce, basil, cilantro, spaghetti squash, patty pan squash, sunflowers, gladiolas, and marigolds. It was an amazing learning experience and I've loved almost every minute of it! Even better, the rewards were tasty!

It was a great year for peppers and they are one of my favorite things to eat. They were still blooming and fruiting when I tore them up in November. Eggplants were slow to start and then really took off in the hot weather of July. My squashes died from powdery mildew from summer humidity; I did my best to treat it but with everyone in the garden having it, there was little I could do. But randomly a zucchini popped up and gave me a few squashes so it wasn’t a total loss on the squash front. The herbs (cilantro and basil) were amazing. There is nothing like picking fresh herbs and running home to add them to your dinner. Tomatoes were abundant as well, I gave plenty away and make a few batches of tomato sauce that would make an Italian grandmother proud.

So for 2011, what’s the plan? Garden sign ups start next week so first things first, I’ll have to sign up for a plot again. I’m not sure if I can switch plots yet, but I’d one closer to the water source and one that gets a bit more sun. I want to plant some things that I can harvest early so I want to look into planting some peas, lettuce, etc that will be ready early, aka more instant satisfaction. I want to plant sauce tomatoes (plum or roma) so I can make even better tomato sauce. I’ll look into canning as well so I can enjoy it all year long. I can probably get away with planting fewer pepper plants, 20+ is probably a bit much for one person. I want to be better about staggering my herb plantings, every two-three weeks should be good and keep me from getting overwhelmed with herbs and then left with nothing. Otherwise it will just be fun to get back out there. It got to be a little much last October and November, but hey, a garden that just won’t quit is a great problem to have.