Scrambled Eggs Creole

 

It's rare that we have time to sit around and eat breakfast in the morning. Usually we are too busy getting off to work and rushing to make it on time. My husband is the grab-a-coffee-and-run type, and I'm the smoothie-on-the-commute type. So when we have a weekend morning at home, I like to make breakfast.

This recipe tasted a lot like the tomato frittata I made last week, minus the ham. It was a little easier, I guess, since it didn't have to go in the oven. But overall, it's about as much work as the frittata.

I got cute with the chicken and the eggs.

Here's how I adapted the recipe.

Ingredients:
4 eggs
1 tbsp. butter
1 small onion, chopped fine
1 c. tomatoes, chopped
1/4 c. grated cheese
1 tsp. organic sugar
salt and pepper

Instructions:

• saute onions in butter in a medium cast iron skillet until onion is transparent
• Add tomatoes, sugar, salt & pepper and cook 5 minutes
• Add eggs and cheese and cook until eggs are solid and/or cheese is melted completely. 

This was a pretty easy and tasty recipe. I made it for my husband and I, and even though Fannie says it serves 4 (she used 5 eggs), it was really just enough for the 2 of us.  Overall, it was a nice change from the scrambled eggs I usually eat, either plain or with onions and peppers. I haven't really eaten eggs with tomatoes until just recently, but now, I really like them together!

I'd make this again any day.

Avocado Appetizer

See the tiny grains of salt on the edge? I love my HTC phone camera!

This is about the simplest recipe possible. I had a few avocados leftover from when I made guacamole, so I looked in Fannie Farmer. She didn't have many recipes for avocados. Maybe they weren't very common cuisine in the 1890s!

Anyhow, this is one recipe I found. It's called "Avocados as the first course" in The Boston Cooking School cookbook.

Ingredients + cookbook.

Here's how to make it.

Cut an avocado in half.

Sprinkle with lemon juice and salt.

Fill the seed cavity with French Dressing.


And voila, a tasty little side dish, snack, or appetizer. This was the easiest 'salad' recipe ever. And delicious and healthy. Definitely will be making this again and again. Simply perfect, perfectly simple.

Spaghetti Sauce (with Meat and Vegetables)

See the noodles? No? That's because they're hiding. The sauce is the main attraction.

I have a handful of 'recipes' in my head that I know by heart and can make consistently. My sister is always frustrated because when she asks me for my recipe, I never have one. I just know it in my head, and I usually don't know where I got the recipe, I just adapted other recipes or used what I thought sounded good.

Tomatoes from my garden.

I'm pretty sure my grandpa had a secret Italian recipe for spaghetti sauce, but I've never used a recipe for it in my life. I just throw in veggies and sauce and seasonings, and I've never gone wrong yet. This time, I tried to follow Fannie's recipe, but it was very bland and I ended up deviating from it a lot.

My pretty peppers!

Here's what I did:

Start with 1 small onion, sliced thin.
Saute in a cast iron skillet with olive oil.
When onion begins to turn translucent, add 1-2 cloves garlic, minced.
Add about 1 lb. ground beef and saute until browned.
Add about 4 c. chopped tomatoes.
Add about 1 tbsp. Italian seasoning or basil and oregano.
Simmer until all veggies are cooked (Fannie says about an hour).

I like more veggies, so I also added:
A handful of kale, chopped small.
2 small green bell peppers, chopped.
A medium zucchini, sliced thin.
I also added about 1/3 of a jar of Ragu sauce, since I had it and the fresh tomatoes were a bit juicy, so my sauce wasn't thick enough. Fannie says to use a can of tomato paste, so I would use that if I had it. But this worked out well and tasted great.
 

Onions, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, and kale from my garden.

This was the first time I added kale to my spaghetti, and I wasn't sure it would turn out well. But I have a lot of kale from the garden, and it's been going to waste before I get to it, so I've been trying to use it more. So, here it was. It tasted surprisingly good in the sauce. I doused it in parmesan and loaded it on a bowl of cooked noodles. The sauce was excellent, if not exactly close to the Fannie Farmer original.

Guacamole

Okay, Fannie is usually the cooking bible when it comes to basic recipes. But sometimes, it's just not quite as good as expected.

This is one that, after making once, I will definitely revert to my old recipe. Here's Fannie's advice.

Mash avocado with silver fork.
Season with onion juice, lemon juice, salt and pepper
Mix in mayo and tomato pulp and beat until whipped-cream consistency
Optional add-in: chili powder

I'm used to my guac with a heavy dose of cilantro and garlic, which are notably absent here. After following her recipe, I tasted it and found it way too bland. So I blended in half an onion and 2 cloves of garlic, but it was still a bit bland for me. Plus, it was a really weird, not-green color.

Maybe it's because I've lived in NWA for too long, but I need my Mexican restaurant-style guac!

Honey Yogurt Salad Dressing

This recipe was for dressing, but I'm going to post the whole salad here. This dressing called for plain yogurt, honey, and lemon juice, but I had honey-lemon yogurt, so I used that. It turned out a bit sweet, and a bit sour, too, until it was on the vegetables. Then it was perfect, and the vinegar didn't taste quite so puckeringly sour.

Here's my adaptation of the Fannie Farmer recipe.

First, I put about 1/4 c. of honey-lemon yogurt in a jar.
I added about a tbsp. of apple cider vinegar.
Then I added salt and pepper and shook it all up.

And that was it. If you want to use plain yogurt, honey, and lemon juice, that will work, too. Also, you may want to use a different kind of vinegar if you have it--white or another kind. But this was good once it was all mixed up. I didn't have any lettuce, so I chopped up some tomatoes from the garden and some cucumbers my sister gave me from hers. I put the dressing on and voila! Easiest, quickest salad ever. And pretty tasty, too.

Ham and Tomato Frittata

More ham? Yes, please. I'm telling you, this thing never goes away. But I'm okay with that. Yay for leftovers. It gives me a direction to go when looking for my next recipe. This frittata didn't call for ham, but I threw it in anyway, since it goes with eggs.

Onions and garlic.

My adapted version of Fannie's Frittata
I threw a small chopped onion in the cast iron skillet with olive oil and a couple cloves of garlic, minced, and cooked until the onion was transparent/yellow.
Cut up a huge tomato from the garden and add.

I beat 4 eggs and mixed it with fresh oregano, salt and pepper, and parmesan cheese (about 1/4 c.)

Eggs and spices and cheese.

Poured it into frying pan on top of the onions and tomatoes. Covered as directed in recipe, and cooked on low heat until the edges begin to pull away from the pan. It was still juicy on top, so I put it under the broiler as suggested for 5-10 minutes until it was solid all the way across.

Everything in the pan and ready to cook.

For this recipe, I used a lot more onion than it called for--one small onion, chopped fine. I didn't have leftover cooked veggies, which Fannie recommends, so I chopped up a fresh tomato from the garden. Then I tossed in about a cup of chopped ham. I beat the eggs and added them, along with a bit of salt, pepper, and fresh oregano. I added a healthy dose of parmesan cheese, about 4 tbsp.

 It turned out pretty well. My husband really liked it. It was all pretty from the tomatoes, but I would have liked it better if I'd had some other veggies to throw in, like peppers or mushrooms. I may make another version of this soon. I can see it becoming one of those recipes that I make over and over, with slight alterations every time.

Country Style Ham Casserole with Tomatoes

I can't believe it! I made it through an entire month of recipes. I've cooked more than usual, experimented with some new recipes, revisited some old ones, and found some good stuff. My favorite so far is definitely baked peaches.

As you have no doubt noticed, I tend to make recipes according to what I have--whatever vegetables are ready in the garden (hello, cabbage), or a basic food I bought and possibly cooked and now need to find ways to use it up (rice, ham).

Potatoes and onions from my mom's garden.

Speaking of ham, I have one more recipe using the ham I made the other day. I'm telling you, never make a ham for a family of three. Not that anyone else would ever make that mistake!

Anyway, this is a recipe for a casserole, which I wouldn't have made if it hadn't cooled off this week, especially after the baked ham debacle. But since it was cool, I figured it wouldn't be so bad to light the oven.

When it came out of the oven....Not a very pretty dish, but oh so good.

See my hand? Didn't think so.

I cut the recipe some, since I had used some of the ham already. But here's what Fannie says:

Put in a casserole dish 1 slice ham, about 2 lbs/2 inches thick
Cover with 1 1/2 c. sliced potatoes
1 sliced onion
Thyme
2 c. milk

Cover and bake 1 1/2 hrs at 350.

I had some tomatoes, so I threw in a gigantic chopped tomato from our garden and omitted the milk. But otherwise, I stuck close to the recipe, altering the amounts so we wouldn't have too many leftovers, since I'm the only person in my family that eats leftovers. I did cook the potatoes and onions in a steamer for about 5 minutes first, so I didn't have to cook it quite so long. I used fresh thyme and cooked the whole thing for about an hour, uncovered, in a 350 oven.

It looked kind of weird when I took it out of the oven, and not very appealing, to be honest. And since I'd barely put anything in it, I thought it would be plain. But it was actually really good. The tomatoes helped keep the leftover ham moist, and all the flavors blended together perfectly. I ground some black pepper on top, but otherwise, the thyme did the work as far as seasonings, and the ham was salty enough to flavor the whole thing. I would definitely make this again. It was excellent.