What We Ate: a seasonal reminder of dinner at our house.

Hi there - it's been a couple... The quarantine (excuse me, #saferathome orders) sort of took over our lives in March as we began to deal with the very real threat of COVID -19, a novel coronavirus. But we haven't stopped cooking, in fact, if anything we're probably cooking more than ever so I'll try to get back into the blogging habit too. First up - Frittata This is an excellent (you guessed it) clean out the fridge meal. You can put darn near anything into a frittata and it will be delicious. I usually make two because our family has, ahem, differing tastes. So the first one has potato, onion, mushroom, yellow pepper, cauliflower, kale and then salt, pepper and red pepper flakes.  (cooked in that order - longest cooking time to shortest - lots of olive oil for those potatoes so they don't stick). Do NOT skimp on the salt. It look like this before the egg  Then I added a generous pat of butter (a tablespoon or more) into the middle to coat the bottom...

It's as good as it sounds. It's so good that I never got around to taking a picture of it (photo below from my stock kitchen photos). Ingredients: 4 or 5 slices of bacon 1 onion chopped (I used a sweet onion but I've also used a yellow onion) 2 cloves of garlic (in the picture below it's two heads but they are very, very small) 14 oz of some sort of processed tomato 8-12 oz of linguine 1/2 t dried basil 1/2 dried oregano a glug (1/4 c?) of the red wine that's turning to vinegar in the fridge (or actual red wine vinegar that you bought in the store) salt and pepper to taste fresh parsley to taste parmesean to taste Cook the bacon till crispy, take out of the pan and chop into tiny pieces Add the chopped onion and minced garlic to the bacon fat (remove some bacon fat if it's too much - I'll let you decide how much is too much). Cook until tender. Add the tomatoes and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes (or until you've finished the wo...

Noodle bowls came into our repertoire a year or two ago, probably about this time of year because we're all longing for something crisp and fresh and the egg rolls (which are crisp) and the herbs (which are as fresh as it gets in February) really hit the spot. While I have a recipe card for this (note to self, it's an actual CARD in the recipe box), I follow about half of it so here's the more accurate version.  Ingredients: (all of the vegetables are optional but you'll want at least two) -- Chop these into tiny pieces one carrot one cucumber one green onion 1/3 or a red or orange pepper two bok choy leaves with stems Roughly chop these --  an handful of each: mint, parsley, cilantro, basil Mix this all together: 1 T brown sugar or cane sugar 1/2 T red chili paste 4 T of water 1 T soy sauce (for your non meat eating friends) OR  1 T of fish sauce (or a little of both if you forgot to read this recipe all the way thro...

Well, actually there were about 7: spaghetti, meatloaf, shake and bake chicken, lasagna, mac and cheese and, the infamous, Baked Potato. As a meal. With steamed broccoli, butter and shredded cheddar. We had this meal so often that my siblings and I still comment on it. And, to the best of my knowledge, none of us make baked potatoes on a regular basis, however,  every once in a while, in the winter, we'll do baked potatoes with all the veg on the side. It's kind of perfect if you'd prefer to spend Sunday afternoon hiking in the state park rather than going to the grocery store and all you have left is a lot of slightly past their prime vegetables (I know this description is showing up in this blog with alarming regularity, please don't judge. I buy a lot of vegetables. More than we can usually eat in a week which means that 'clean out the fridge' means stir fry, roasted veg, veg lasagna... you get the idea. And who am I kidding - judge all you want. I would!) ...