Egg Salad with Cucumber

I love egg salad. Love love love. I always have. And while it is usually seen in a sandwich, I honestly prefer it by itself. Seriously- not just because I'm giving wheat free a try, but I always have. When I was in elementary school, the teachers told my mom that I wasn't eating my lunch. They had seen me throwing away my sandwiches, or so they thought. Turns out I was just gobbling up the delicious insides and throwing the bread out.

The only thing that bothers me about egg salad is that I think it gets eaten up way too quickly. I wanted to find a way to make it last a bit longer and make it, can I say, heartier? more refreshing? crunchier? It fits all those bills.

chopped English cucumber 

 I will admit that my egg salad is pretty basic. I do not add mustard to it (eek. no thanks) or vinegar or really anything other than mayo, eggs, green onions and some seasonings. You can make your egg salad however you please and add the cucumbers as you are mixing it all up!

Now I'm wondering how I can add to tuna salad as well! Any other ideas?

Egg Salad 

ingredients

5 boiled eggs, peeled and chopped
1/3 cup mayonnaise, add more or less to taste
1 green onion, chopped
1/2 English cucumber, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces (English cucumbers do not need to be peeled)
salt and pepper to taste

Boil eggs, peel and chop into bite size pieces in a medium bowl. Add the mayonnaise, cucumber and green onion and mix.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy!
-m

Leftovers Frittata: Staying Sane and Eating Well

I just hung up Christmas stockings. I went Christmas shopping at the Bazaar Bizarre in San Francisco, an amazing Etsy-licious craft fair. I bought some of my favorite gifts last year and I got some more fabulous handmade goodies this year. I can feel that holiday stress creeping up, but I honestly enjoy this time of year and revel in thinking about gifts to give and food stuffs to make. There is nothing that I enjoy more than giving people things that I hope will make them smile- and this time of year that is totally socially acceptable! Lovely! And all my goofy cooking experiments go up a notch with cookies and cinnamon rolls and the like. It's a messy fun time. 

leftovers heating up the night

But, the evenings can get weary. My students know the holiday energy is in the air and they get a little cooky. I come home exhausted frequently and I pour a good chunk of my energy into everything other than my daily meals, so this meal is a perfect thing to have on my weekly meal plan. In fact, it's on the plan almost every single week. Every Thursday, I take a bunch of the leftovers and make an easy, delicious frittata (or I make a soup, depending on if our meals were veggie heavy or pasta heavy).

The thing I love about this frittata is that it is so easily adaptable to what you have on hand and what you are craving.

It has just a few basic steps:

spinach, broccoli, potatoes, sausage and some seasonings/herbs added in for fun

Heat up some of your leftovers in a skillet that can handle the heat of the oven. I've often used leftover pasta dishes here- ones with a sauce are especially delicious. I also use any vegetables from the week (broccoli here, I chopped it up pretty small) and I just love adding spinach to the mix. I find it so satisfying to throw in a huge bunch of spinach and watch it shrink down. Add any seasonings you like as well as salt and pepper- I use trader joes '21 seasoning salute' that has a combination of the best stuff like onions, thyme, etc.

Next, mix 6-7 eggs with a bit of milk and pour it over the leftover mixture.

Cook it on medium, letting the edges get solid and then doing this thing here- drag the cooked parts to the center and let the ooey gooey parts fill in the empty void. I go around the edges and do this once, then it's time for the cheese. Maybe you know a better way to do this, but this works fabulously every time so this is how I like to roll, frittata style.

Grate some cheese of your choice, I used jack and cheddar here (I love mozzarella when I use pasta with a marinara sauce and sometimes I splurge and use goat cheese) and sprinkle it around the top of the frittata. Place the skillet in the oven, preheated to 350 degrees, for about 10-15 minutes or until the eggs have set (resist the temptation to get it 'golden' or 'crispy' unless you like overcooked eggs!)

Let it cool for a few minutes before you slice it up and serve it. Pair it with a little salad, a slice of homemade bread, whatever you please!

Leftovers Frittata 
print this recipe

ingredients

leftover pasta, meats, potatoes, vegetables- whatever you have in the fridge
any fresh vegetables you want to add
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper (to taste)
6-7 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup grated cheese (of your choice)


Preheat your oven to 350. Heat up the olive oil and your leftovers in a skillet that can handle the heat of the oven. I've often used leftover pasta dishes here- ones with a sauce are especially delicious. I also use any vegetables from the week and I just love adding spinach to the mix. I find it so satisfying to throw in a huge bunch of spinach and watch it shrink down.


Next, mix 6-7 eggs with a bit of milk and pour it over the leftover mixture.


Cook it on medium, letting the edges get solid and then doing this- drag the cooked parts to the center and let the ooey gooey parts fill in the empty void. I go around the edges and do this once, then it's time for the cheese.


Grate some cheese of your choice, I used jack and cheddar here (I love mozzarella when I use pasta with a marinara sauce and sometimes I splurge and use goat cheese) and sprinkle it around the top of the frittata. Place the skillet in the oven for about 10-15 minutes or until the eggs have set (resist the temptation to get it 'golden' or 'crispy' unless you like overcooked eggs!).

Let it cool for a few minutes before you slice it up and serve it. Pair it with a little salad, a slice of homemade bread, whatever you please!

Enjoy!
-m

Sounded so good

Have you ever been over a friends house to eat, and the food just ain't no good?

Well, this was sort of like that. Except, all my friends seem to cook wonderfully and I was at home cooking for myself.

I saw these on a food blog and instantly wanted to try them. I love caprese salad, and I love eggs, and it sounded like a great way to make an easy dinner/lunch/brunch.

And they were easy to make! Oh, so easy, and kinda pretty too.

It seemed so harmless, that fresh mozzarella

But somewhere along the line things went oh, so bad. The use of fresh mozzarella was not a good choice, it made the end result watery and gross. The eggs baked too long and the cheese didn't melt the way I thought it should.

All in all, not a success. Super failure. Not making these again (I also wasn't a big fan of the basil/egg combo) but I might try it with other stuff like ham, cheddar cheese and spinach.

Now I have this song stuck in my head, so I must share.
Enjoy!
-m

Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn!

Lots of Learning

Learn from my mistakes.



Don't get so excited about your long run that you bring two different, left shoes with you. Ruining your plans for waking up early and going for a good, lonely, cool eight mile run. Making it so you have to drive back home, grab the right shoe, curse the heavens and go for a mildly cool, but very packed (people everywhere! what the heck!) eight mile run.

Don't forget to charge your gps watch the night before a run. When you think you're making land-speed records and your only way of proving such a point stops working no one will believe you. Your evidence is shattered.

Don't forget you are wearing your ridiculous, large, not-atheltic-in-the-slightest sunglasses and run two miles before you realize you have them on. They will slip down your sweaty nose the whole time and make you look a fool.


this is not 'good food'

Don't leave your gatorade in the now-very-hot car and try to swig it when you return from your packed, warm, long run only to spit that hot crap out. When you get home and put it on ice, it will look futuristic, weird and unholy. It might even scare you silly, seeing how unnatural it looks.



Don't forget to check that the batteries for your camera are actually charged, not some sort of tricky fake charged where the light is green but the camera fails to power on as you are making fabulous bacon bourbon brownies. (New battery time? I think so..) Making it so you have to once again take pictures with your phone..which leads you to playing with the photos as the brownies bake..


Shelby, our extremely optimistic rhodesian ridgeback


For years it has been a dream of mine to pour bacon grease into brownie batter!

But do, do do do make garlic butter and marscarpone scrambled eggs for breakfast (or dinner! no one is watching!). I had them twice this week.


This picture hardly does them justice, they are creamy and fluffy and addictive.


Garlic Herb Butter and Marscarpone Scrambled Eggs
serves 1

Ingredients

1/2 tablespoon garlic herb butter
2-3 eggs (depending on how hungry you are)
1 tablespoon of milk
1 tablespoon marscarpone
pinch of salt and pepper

Melt the garlic herb butter in a nonstick skillet over medium heat. Try not to lick it off the pan, it will seriously burn your tongue.

In a small bowl, crack all the eggs and beat the eggs and milk together.

When the butter is melted and makes your kitchen smell lovely, pour the eggs in and begin slowly stirring with a wooden spoon. Keep the eggs moving, letting them get slightly cooked on the pan then quickly moving them around. Sounds silly, but they get so fluffy.

When the eggs are about 80% cooked, still slightly runny, drop the marscarpone in. Break it up with the spoon and spread it around fairly evenly. There will be chunks of it here and there, and you so want that. The eggs should be just a little undercooked by now- take them off the heat before they become tough. They will still be shiny but not runny. Season with salt and pepper.

Enjoy!
-m