frittata experiment

So after a long hiatus, I am returning to the food-blogginess. I have a few lined up to eventually be added here, but for now I'll start with tonight's dinner. Let me lay out my day:

In the AM I was motivated about work, but then lost that motivation. On my way out the door, my landlady was moving out and had several boxes of old LPs and offered to let me search through them and take any I wanted. SCORE! She had amazing stuff, and I even made her keep the original MJ Thriller and Beatles records, you can't toss that stuff. Definitely a mood booster. ...Then I got to lab. BOOORRING plus stupid people. My friend mentioned wanting to go shopping, which I've had in my mind for a while now but I don't like shopping by myself. So post boring crappy stupid-people labness on a saturday, this was the rest of my day: shopping. home. dinner. wine. old movie. AWESOMENESS.

So lets talk about dinner. First of all, the important stuff:

Wine accompaniment: Chardonnay Steel American Table Wine by Gouveia Vineyards
local winery in Wallingford, CT, SUPER CUTE, had a lovely picnic there a few weeks back.


Movie accompaniment: Noble House, starring Pierce Brosnan
Based on the book by James Clavell anything by him is AMAZZZZINGGG. I've read everything except Whirlwind. Best book: Shogun, first-book recommendation: Taipan.

Okay, so now for dinner: my experiment at spinach frittata, a la the following basic recipe: Spinach Frittata Simply Recipes

I love both this website (simply recipes) and Smitten Kitchen for most of my starter recipes.

Basically I approached this as "what veggies do I have?" + eggs/cheese.
#1: veggies
I had spinach (obviously), mushrooms, and tomatoes (you choose if its a veggie/fruit), also the requisite onion and garlic. I love both onion and garlic, by the way. This has been a total discovery in this past year,but they are SO DELICIOUS. o.m.g.
The rest was eggs, milk, I used gouda cheese and since i didn't have a grater, I cut it into small pieces and melted it for 30 seconds in the microwave.

So I think the three-way prep that the recipe mentions is important. Separetly, prep:
#1: cook spinach in 1/4 cup water until its

wilted, take it off the heat and drain, set aside.
#2: (for me melt the cheese cubes and then..) mix cheese, eggs, and milk, and add salt and pepper to taste. set aside.
#3: In a baking pan (I don't have a skillet that is oven-safe) I sauted the onions, then added the garlic for one minute, then the mushrooms and wilted spinach for a few more minutes, and lastly the tomatoes for a

bit.
After your veggies are patially cooked (depending on how well done yo

u want them in the end), then add the cheese mixture and smoothen everything out. Let this cook a little while on the stove until partially solidified. Then, magic!


Move it into the oven, preheated at 400. Let this go for 15 minutes, then take it out and let it cool. When done, the cheese/egg covering should have the same consistency as scr

ambled eggs.


Apologies for my crappy pictures due to crappy lighting in my kitchen. But still, a lovely ending: