Don't Give Up on Me!

August was an insanely hectic month.  I changed jobs, spent a week in Washington state at a wedding and got caught up in other responsibilities here and there.  I've been wholesale terrible at internet-ing, except for Facebook, which I use with a frequency that alarms my better self.

I made good food, too.  I wish I'd told you about it. Angel hair with fresh tomatoes, garlic and basil with garlic knots for the happy couple a few days before their wedding.  A huge pot of chili (with supremely spicy "murder sauce" on the side) for an old friend and her three daughters, who graciously braved husky fur tumbleweeds and unapologetic Paula Deen-esque quantities of butter in my cornbread to spend an evening at my place.

And the pizza!  Can't forget the pizza, though it was back in the beginning of this venture before I had any business slacking off. I did pizza with a Greek yogurt crust, topped with caramelized onions, roasted tomatoes, fresh mozz, ham and a quick truffle cream sauce.

("A quick truffle cream sauce"- look at me, I'm so fancy.)

In any case, rest assured that I (and my loved ones) have been well-fed since the last update. I'm not going to promise not to lapse again, but I will promise to try my best.

Salud!

~Beans

Help with embedding instagram photos?

Hey Jess readers!

Any idea why my embedded instagram photos are not showing up???

My First Frittata

I'm not really sure how it happened exactly, but somehow I managed to live over 31 years without every having made a frittata.  I've eaten plenty of them, to be sure.  My grandma made them all the time. A cheap, easy nutritious way to use leftovers,  suitable for everything from breakfast to midnight snack.

It took me a long time to even appreciate them, honestly.  I'm not much of an egg person (I believe they exist in breakfast scenarios only to hold up the Taylor ham and cheese) so it would never occur to me to seek out a giant omelette-type-thing in the first place. With the passing years, though, I realized the unmistakable scent of potatoes, peppers and eggs brought back (in the way that smells so often do) a nostalgia powerful enough it seemed my grandparents were sitting right at the table with me. And since that hasn't happened nearly enough lately I thought it'd be a great fit with what I'm trying to do here with this blog.

What you see below is a dozen eggs (poetically, also a gift from a mobile food pantry I volunteered with a little bit ago.  I won't tell you how long, because you'll probably judge me for eating them), two onions and a pepper (from the garden), and two questionable potatoes I dug out of the recesses of the fridge (please see prior parenthetical comments above)

Half-cooked #frittata #foodislove #beansinthekitchen Beansinthekitchen.blogspot.com

A photo posted by Celia Grace (@ceeeceeebeanz) on Jul 23, 2015 at 8:42am PDT

This was halfway through the cooking, because I lacked the foresight and/or patience to take any pictures further along in the process.  It ended up too thin to flip, especially given my gracelessness with a spatula, so I finished it in the oven and was rewarded with this:

#hazardsofcooking #beansinthekitchen

A photo posted by Celia Grace (@ceeeceeebeanz) on Jul 23, 2015 at 9:04am PDT

I ended up throwing a ludicrous amount of velveeta cheese over the top, because despite my burgeoning sentimentality I still don't really like eggs all that much, then plopping the whole deal on toast and covering it with sriracha.  I've gotten two meals out of it already with a third still in the fridge, plus my mom had some the first night. Not a bad deal considering how often all of these ingredients might ordinarily end up in the trash.*

I should mention that the same night I made the frittata I also dealt with the corn. Specifically, I grabbed an ear from the fridge like a wild animal, shucked it, and ate it uncooked while standing over the kitchen counter.  This is what happens to people like me when we do silly things like eat yogurt for lunch.


*It feels risky to admit here that I DON'T EVEN COMPOST.  Can you BE a food blogger and not compost?  Is that allowed???

First Post- on friends, tiny plums and doing the work

Hello World!

Looks like I've lived my way into another virtual adventure.  And it's all Amarilys Olivo's fault.  She's hooked me up with free produce and it's got my brain whirring with ideas for how to take full advantage of my good fortune.

And because the only thing I love as much as food is words, I'm thinking the answer is a blog.

The plan is to use the stuff I get each week from the farmer's market to make recipes I've never tried before, then review them here. There will be pictures.  There will be impromptu dinner invites.   Mostly, I hope there will be opportunities to share friendship and memories through the language as food...because growing up Italian American, it's truly is my first language.

This week's haul was three ears of corn, two onions, five tiny plums, three peaches and two onions. I can't even tell you how excited I was to get them home. There's something about knowing my friend tended them with her own hands that made them seem like that much more of a gift.

And given that tremendous responsibility, and the alarming rate at which one of the peaches was beginning to fade, I thought it best to address the matter with some sense of urgency.

So I made this, minus a half cup of sugar.  I started at around 9:45 and the finished product (which did not break, not even a little bit, while I was removing it from the pan) was sitting out to cool by 1 am.  Given that anything made in a bundt pan tends to take approximately 45 lifetimes to finish incinerating on top while the center remains liquid  baking, I considered that a rousing success.  This recipe was SUCH a keeper.  The grease-and-sugar method for the pan is a thousand times better than grease-and-flour...more effective, not drying, and adds an extra layer of texture and flavor to boot.  I brought the finished product to work and everyone who tried it enjoyed it.  The decreased sugar is noticeable but not in a bad way.  I'd definitely make this again, and will utilize the sugared pan method for and similar cake from now on.