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Easy Recipe Vegetable Frittata for 2

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Easy Veg Frittata

Easy Veg Frittata

This is an easy recipe for a vegetable frittata that would be great for a brunch, lunch or dinner. This frittata goes together quickly and if you plan for it, you can even use up any leftover vegetables you might have from last night’s dinner.  This recipe is great for beginning cooks as it tastes terrific and (the way we made it) is actually a twist on a simple plate of scrambled eggs.  As always, our ingredients came from Trader Joe’s!

We got this idea from Mark Bittman’s Food Matters book. He actually calls the recipe “More-. Vegetables-Than Egg Frittata and it is on page 170.  We read his recipe and then modified it slightly for the items we had in the refrigerator today. We also modified the dish to be more like “scrambled eggs with lots of goodies” instead of a classic frittata which come out more like an eggy “cake” that you can serve in wedges or slices. We actually prefer the scrambled egg style, so that is what we created.

Mark notes that you can use cooked or raw vegetable when you make this frittata and that is what we did. We had some leftover zucchini from dinner a couple of nights ago, and then added in some fresh vegetables. We used slightly less vegetables then the original recipe called for, and would plan to use more next time.

Ingredients (serves 2):

  • Olive oil (for the pan)
  • ½ small sweet onion, sliced or diced
  • 2 -3 cups sliced cooked and raw vegetables (we used spinach, zucchini slices, cherry tomatoes and mushrooms) (the original recipe called for 4 to 6 cups of veggies)
  • ¼ cup fresh basil leafs (we did not have any fresh basil and used a spoonful of pesto in the egg mixture instead and that worked perfectly)
  • 1/3 -1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese (he says optional, but we say use it!)
  • 2-3 eggs (we used 3 eggs for the two of us)

Lets Cook!

1. Heat the skillet (non-stick) over medium heat, and add a spoonful of oil.  Now add the onions and cook for about 5 minutes while you get all the other vegetables ready.

2. Add the chopped up vegetables (except any tender leaf like spinach or the basil leafs) and continue to cook until they are cooked and heated through the way you like them. We like our vegetables “crisp-tender” so that you can stick a fork into the vegetables and it goes in easy, but the vegetables are not “mushy”. When the veggies are ready, season them lightly with salt and pepper

3. While the vegetables are cooking, crack 3 eggs into a bowl and whisk together. Add some salt and pepper and the cheese (and pesto if you are using it).

4. When all the vegetables are ready, add the leafy vegetables (the spinach) and stir them around the pan for a minute. When they start to wilt, add the egg mixture to the pan and stir around the pan and continue to cook like you would for regular scrambled eggs. The eggs will cook, the cheese will melt and in a few minutes you will have a great frittata.

We are sorry to admit that this dish smelled so good that we just FORGOT to take a picture to show you the end result. Sorry. Next time we will try to control ourselves better and take a second to snap a photo.

We hope you try this recipe. We enjoyed making and eating this recipe so much that we are planning to make it again soon. We thought this recipe was easy and tasted GREAT.

If you are just learning to cook, are starting to cook more at home and/ or have joined the Food Revolution, this recipe would be a great one to master as it is very flexible and forgiving. You can use any kind combination of vegetables and cheese you have on hand, and this is also a great way to use up leftovers at any time during the week.

We recommend you “plan” to have some vegetables handy for the next time you are planning on serving eggs at your house.

Hey, did you make this frittata? What combination of vegetables and cheese did you use? Please take a minute to leave us a comment and let us know.

THANKS!

Easy Recipe Bean Dip

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Easy Recipe Bean Dip

Easy Recipe Bean Dip

Here is a simple recipe that you can quickly make when you need to bring an item to some kind of gathering. OR, we will admit, this is a great item to snack on while you are watching a game or a movie some night… We were planning to bring some food to a meeting on Tuesday and we thought a bean dip would be just the item!  We also thought you might be interested in learning how to make one of these dips from scratch as well.  Are you reading the Food Revolution and looking for easy recipes to cook? Here is a good one!

Not only is Easy Recipe Bean Dip delicious, it is a great recipe for beginners because there are not that many main ingredients. Also, it is not hard to make (heat, stir & chill). Finally, it is flexible- you can make it a day or two before you need to serve it or it can be ready just an hour before hand.

Even better…. This recipe is very flexible and easily modified so  you can easily add more or less of an ingredient to make it “your Special Recipe Bean Dip” that everyone will ask you to bring etc.. They might even want you to Pass It On to them! Nice!!

By the way, all the main ingredients for this recipe you can easily find in your local Trader Joe’s or your favorite grocery store:

Main Ingredients:

  • 1 can  re-fried beans (pinto or black –use what you like)
  • 1 jar salsa (your favorite- we like Trader Joe’s Salsa Authentica)
  • Shredded cheese in a package (we like to use a “Mexican Blend” but Colby or Jack is also good)
  • Taco chips for dipping

Optional Ingredients:

  • Taco seasoning
  • Sliced olives
  • Sour cream
  • Sliced Avocados

Lets Cook!

Heat the refried beans in a pan on the stove.  When warm, stir in some of your favorite salsa. We add about 1/3 of a cup of salsa to the beans. Then add ½ a cup of your shredded cheese to the pan. If you are using the taco seasoning, add about a spoonful of that too.

Stir all this together, until everything is warm and blended.

Heat beans, salsa & cheese

Beans, salsa & cheese

Pour the hot bean mixture into a serving pan (we like to use a glass pie pan) and let cool. At this point you can let it cool in the refrigerator overnight and finish it in the morning.

Easy Bean Dip

Easy Bean Dip

When cool, you can spread a thin layer of sour cream on top, and then sprinkle some of that cheese on top of the sour cream.

Bean Dip

Bean Dip

At this point, you can add olives or avocado to the top of the dip if you are using these items.

Ta-da! That’s it! You are finished … and ready to eat!

Dig into this dip with some taco chips and enjoy.

Have fun with this recipe. The next time you make it, you can tweak it a little and make it your own signature dip….Use hotter salsa, more cheese, less cheese, more taco seasoning, sliced green onions or even jalapenos on top! (eeks!) Use whatever stuff you like.

That is the great part about cooking from scratch; you are able to add your own personal creativity to your recipes.

Enjoy!

Hey drop us a note to tell us what changes you made to this recipe to make it more your own…

5 Easy Ways to join the Food Revolution

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Are you interested in joining the Food Revolution but don’t know where to start?  Here are 5 easy ways to start to incorporate the ideas behind Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution in to your life and your kitchen. Remember the Food Revolution is designed to be easy and to help you cook more meals from scratch. This might seem hard in the beginning, yet after a few weeks, you will become more adventurous and ready to try new cooking challenges.

OK ready to start? Here you go:

1. Cook 1 meal from scratch this week.

Food Revolution time is here, what are you going to cook?  It is time to reach for the Food Revolution cook book, or your favorite cookbook or check out the Food Revolution Recipes on this website for some ideas on what to cook.  We recommend the Broccoli and Pesto Tagliatelle (pg. 46) because cooking pasta is a great easy meal for beginners and it only uses one pan so it is easy clean up too. We also like this recipe because you chop all the veggies up and cook them in the water that you are also cooking the past in. Then drain everything, and return it all to the same pan. Then add your sauce and mix it all up.  Yum!  AND you have cooked your first meal from scratch in your kitchen. Congratulations!

2. Taste 2 new spices

Do you have some spices that you don’t use regularly in your kitchen? Do you know what they even taste like? I know we have some spices that get pushed into the back of the cupboard and then are never used… Well it is time to take them out and check them out. OR maybe you need to purchase some new spices to jazz up your meals at home?

Either way when dealing with spices that you are unfamiliar with, we suggest the following to become “friends” with the spices: Taste ‘em. What we like to do is spoon out a small amount onto a plate, and then dip a little bit of food into the spice and then taste both the spice and the food. You can taste the spices by themselves, but we think that when you taste the spices with some food (like cheese or carrots or cucumbers or a bit of mayo) you will get a better sense of how the spice will taste when you are cooking.  (Hey you can get your family or friends involved with this taste test, and see which spices become favorites)

Some good dry spices to try this experiment on: cumin, curry powder, sweet paprika, smoked paprika, cinnamon, oregano, basil, any spice “mixture” like Old Bay or Mrs. Dash or Italian herbs. This list is based spices that we use regularly and love to cook with. Have some fun and enjoy trying a bunch of new tastes!  (If you have a Health Food Store near you, check and see if they have bulk spices. Many stores allow you to purchase a small amount of dry spices so you can give them a try before spending a lot of $$)

Also, don’t forget about all the spices that you can try out at Trader Joe’s. These are two that we use on a regular basis to season up/flavor all kinds of foods from vegetables to fish and chicken and shrimps. Remember too that if you don’t like one of the items that you bought, Trader Joe’s will gladly refund your $$ so there is never really a risk to trying anything.

Trader Joe's seasoning

Trader Joe's seasoning

3. Tell 3 friends

Tell some friends what you are up to. Maybe some of your friends can help? OR maybe they will be interested in joining you on your cooking adventures? Maybe you can get together on a random Tuesday night and cook together?  What about a Saturday afternoon potluck where everyone brings a dish and the recipe? An important part of the Food Revolution is for you to Pass It On – all these great skills that you are developing in the kitchen. Start thinking about your group now… You never know who will be interested until you ask.

4. Spend 4 minutes cleaning

This part is the scariest…. In order to cook dinner on a regular basis, you really must know what you have to work with. This means everything from plates and cups to pots, pans, spoons and spices. This also means that you need to set aside some cupboard space for a small pantry of items that will ready to help you cook any night of the week. Basic pantry items might be beans, rice, dry pasta, canned tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. More adventurous items could include pesto, coconut milk and curry paste.

But for now just spend a few minutes cleaning out old stuff, checking out what you have and getting all these things organized. We love it when the cupboard with all the plastic containers is organized and no longer falls out when we open the door. Too bad that *#$$* area just can’t stay organized, right?

5. Take 5 to plan

This is perhaps the most important part for success in any project, but especially the Food Revolution. Plan out what you are going to eat when you cook at home.  We suggest starting with only one or two meals at a time.  Maybe one meal you will make from fresh ingredients, and the second, you purchase frozen stuff, so that you will have it in “reserve” just in case you plans change- or maybe you want to purchase a couple of meals to have ready to cook at home to help you with that last minute urge to go out?

We timed it once, and we could have pasta on the table in the time it took to drive to our favorite restaurant, let alone park, stand in the line and finally get table.  OR even worse, drive to our favorite fast food restaurant, order food then inch around the drive through, pay, and then pick up the food and drive home. Frequently in the fast food scenario, the food would be cold by the time we returned to the house. YUCK!

So we urge you to plan ahead for a few minutes and have an easy meal ready in your mind, the next time that fast food is calling. You might find that you enjoy eating at home a lot better! We hope that these easy 5 will get you motivated to try the Food Revolution this week and see how easy it can be to cook from scratch at home.

Join the Food Revolution

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Jamie's Food Revolution

Jamie's Food Revolution

What do we mean by the Food Revolution?

We are talking about the latest book by Chef Jamie Oliver (the Food Network’s Naked Chef ) called Jamie’s Food Revolution: Rediscover how to cook simple, delicious, affordable meals that is at the heart of the Food Revolution.  This time instead of a cookbook that focuses on simply great food, this cookbook has a goal: To reduce high obesity rates and general poor health by cooking from scratch at home. Jamie plans to tackle this goal with a two part plan:

1. First Part: Get cooking!

It is Jamie’s quest to get folks back into their kitchens and cooking on a regular basis. He is serious about changing everyone’s health for the better. He notes that less than 1/3 of Americans cook their dinners from scratch anymore– this book is here to help change that number.

Now we just love this message. I know we are all busy and have to go in about a million places each day, but the idea of taking five minutes to plan, and actually spending time cooking at home and then relaxing at the dinner table and being able to re-connect as a family, to us is just wonderful.

We understand that many readers may not be gourmet chefs, or even confident cooks in the kitchen. Don’t worry…we all had to start from someplace, right?

This book, Food Revolution, is going to help you learn to cook.  Unlike most other cookbooks that just jump right in to each section, this book is different. Food Revolution takes the time to explain kitchen equipment that you will need as well as makes suggestions on items to purchase to stock the cupboard (or panty). Jamie writes that with a well stocked pantry when you purchase a nice piece of fish or chicken for example, you can “take it to Spain, Italy, Morocco or China just by using certain herbs or spices from your cupboards. That’s what’s so exciting about cooking”.  We agree 100% with Jamie. The fact that you can totally change the flavor of a meal from your first thought: “Italian chicken and tomatoes” to a second thought: “Spanish chicken and tomatoes” by switching up the herbs and spices or rice and chickpeas to us is as close to magic as you can get at 5:30pm on a Tuesday night.

2. The second part: Share!

The second goal of this book is just as awesome as the first: To help each other learn to cook better at home. Yep, that’s right, Jamie wants us to share our favorite recipes with one another (once we get a few that is ). He calls this part “Pass It On”.

The Pass It On Pledge

OK so the Pass it on pledge is that everyone has to get involved with changing all of our eating habits and for the better of everyone (Eeks! For the Greater Good?) Anyway, Jamie wants everyone to pledge to learn one recipe from each chapter in this book. Next “Master” the recipe by making it at home a couple of times, and then Pass It On! This happens when you teach the recipe to at least 2 (hopefully 4) friends by having a cooking party. Then hopefully your friends will teach two more and so on, and so on….

It is Jamie’s goal to really start a Food Revolution with people cooking and teaching others to cook on a regular basis.  Now don’t get all overwhelmed and think that you just can’t do this. Jamie is not asking you to cook huge complicated menus for twenty five people on your first night cooking or ever, really. This book is here to help you with nice, clear pictures and simple recipes to help everyone start to cook more at home.

One statistic that was included in the introduction to this cookbook was the fact that Americans spent more on fast food in 2007 than they did on education.  Eeks! We are not sure how to take this, but think this could be a wake-up call to notice how much fast food we are eating and make the effort to include a few more homemade meals into the mix each week. Soon we will be eating more and more meals at home and becoming healthier as a nation as a result. So what do you say? Lets turn our fast food into brain food!

We are going to pledge to help Jamie and his Food Revolution any way we can. We pledge to include more step-by-step recipes here on Living Trader Joe’s.com to help all our readers learn to cook, or learn some new easy recipes.

Please let us know what cooking help you would like us to share, so that we can Pass It On here! You can email us, or leave a comment below. THANKS!