Roasted Vegetable Frittata

Ever on the quest for good lunches, and recently on the quest for less bready/pasta-y options, this roasted vegetable frittata has become a favorite.  It is basically like a baked, goat-cheesy version of ratatouille, and if anything has a baked goat-cheesy version, I feel that it is always a good option. This recipe is from Bon Appétit, but it has been very adapted. Adapted, because some of us do not have spacious kitchens, double ovens, infinite cookie sheets, fresh thyme on hand, dishwashers, or the time to wash a millions separate bowls and roast and then peel the peppers and tomatoes.  It has also been adapted to transform it from a quiche to a frittata, and to remove the fennel, because it weirds me out to eat fennel too much as it is a vegetable that tastes like licorice.

Roasted Vegetable Frittata

1 green pepper and 1 red pepper, cut into 1 inch chunks

1 eggplant cut into 1 inch chunks

1 sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks

5 plum tomatoes, cut into 4 chunks each

1 medium union, thinly sliced

olive oil

sea salt

pepper

balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp dried thyme

4 oz goat cheese

2 eggs

¾ cup heavy cream (or buttermilk, or regular milk if you have neither)

1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. Line one medium cookie sheet and two small ones with foil. Lightly spray foil with nonstick spray.
3. Toss pepper chunks in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dash of salt. Spread peppers on small cookie sheet and roast approximately 30 minutes or until tender. Go ahead and just keep on using the same big bowl to toss everything.
4. Toss eggplant and sweet potatoes in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Roast until tender on medium cookie sheet, approximately 40 minutes.
5. Toss tomatoes in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, dash of salt. Roast until tender on other small sheet, approximately 20 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, sauté onions  in olive oil until tender.
7. In 9×9 inch glass or ceramic dish, layer onions, eggplant, potatoes, and peppers. Scatter thyme and crumble goat cheese over top. Whisk eggs with cream and pour mixture over.
8. Bake at 450 until set, approximately 50 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before eating. 

Valentine’s Recap: Burgers, Pictures, and Old Quotes about Love

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and I am pleased to say that the significant others of 1109 made sure that today all the different tables boasted flowers. James and I celebrated our four-year anniversary last week with a fancy dinner out, so we decided that what we really wanted for Valentine’s Day was a burger. We love burgers. I think I have mentioned before, but we are slowly working our way around to all the DC burger joints conducting very thorough research. Thus, while couples all across the city whispered sweet nothings, we discussed the intense burger joint evaluation rubric that we need to design and reveled over the difference a wider straw makes when enjoying a milkshake.

We also thought back over our 4 Valentine’s Day dates together:

Year 1: Taco Bell eaten while sitting shivering in my car in the snow beside Lake Bawbese. Hey, we had just started dating and Taco Bell is one of the best parts of Hillsdale, MI. The fact that it is attached to a gas station matters not. I think there were also flowers, and I made him cookies, but mostly what I remember is that it was almost hard to eat because it was so cold and my cheeks were still sore from smiling nonstop for the preceding 5 days.

Year 2: Dinner and concert in Ann Arbor to complete “James and Hannah’s Week of Awesome Dates and Delicious Dinners,” so dubbed as we reveled in out one-year anniversary, Valentine’s Day, and the bitterly cold winter that necessitated lots of homemade chicken potpie.

Year 3: I was in Paris, He was in Michigan, but I got a bunch of the most beautiful yellow roses and a box full of crunchy peanut butter, Reeses, and boxed mac n’ cheese.

Year 4: Flowers sent to me in KY and then a fancy dinner out at Bistro Bis (same place we went the day we got engaged) when I came to DC the following weekend.

Looking over this list reminds me that it really doesn’t matter what we do on Valentine’s Day – they have all been perfect. I made James a card this year with a conglomeration of stickers, sappy stuff, and a quote from La Bruyère’s Les Caractères that I read last semester. Though written over 400 years ago, the passage I pulled out still describes perfectly what Valentine’s Day should feel like:

“To be with the one you love, that is enough.”

And it is, and has been every year, and will be for the rest of the years.

We just got our engagement pictures back last weekend and I am SO excited to share a couple of my favorites. They were done by the amazing Alumbra Photography (If you live in the DC area and every need any photos, you should check her site out!), and you can see some more by clicking here.

Occupy DC

Though not as in the news as other big cities, DC has it’s share of devoted Occupiers, holding out for the 99%. Liz has had to cover them for the paper a couple times and she confirms that there is in fact a hierarchy among the occupiers, with the more organized official protesters inhabiting better tents and enjoying more benefits while the stragglers, late joiners, and less polished people suffer more for the cause. I guess this means that the former are in fact the 1% of the 99%. Must feel good to triumph over the masses.

Yet the occupying that affects my daily basis is of another nature. We have only a 2 car sized patch of dirt/grass behind our house that Sarah and I park over. For a while I have been noticing a smell when I went out the back door. The mystery was solved when we opened the backdoor and saw multiple cats sitting in a row on the edge of the grass match. Apparently all the neighborhood cats have decided that our parking places provide the ultimate communal litter box.

I have spent a lot of time zoning out in the metro imagining how to deter the cats from this occupancy. Please understand that I do not desire to hurt the cats (Remember the kitten fostering project? I love the felines.) But I do want them to leave. Desperately. Because it smells. A lot.  Any ideas for non-hazardous ways to drive away a posse of tough cats that have decided that nothing says posh communal bathroom like the sandy patch under two Hondas?

Out of Control Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

My pre-wedding/New Year eating resolve was to try out the Primal Diet, which basically means try to eat like a cave [wo]man, aka no processed stuff, no grains, no refined sugar, no delicious pasta, bread etc. But hey, lots of kale.  I will openly admit that I only eat primal 80 70 percent of the time. But even that much really does make me feel awesome.

These cookies are NOT primal. But they are flowerless, so that should count for something. And they are quite possibly the best peanut butter cookies ever.  I first had them when Amanda threw a party for all my former students so we could squeal over engagement stuff. And in comparison with the copious amounts of pizza rolls, mini cupcakes, and cheesy dip that I consumed, these cookies were practically primal.

Out of Control Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

1 cup peanut butter, smooth or chunky/crunchy

1 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp vanilla

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional—mini, regular size, or chocolate chunks)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredients (except chocolate chips) together well. Last, add chocolate chips (if desired) and mix well. Grease or moisten hands slightly and form dough into 1-inch balls. Place balls on ungreased cookie sheet. (DO NOT press down as in some traditional recipes.) Bake 8 – 10 minutes or until golden brown and cookies look “set,” but not done. Do not overcook. Then allow cookies to sit on cookie sheet for at least 5 minutes. (This step is very important, because cookies finish cooking during this time and totally set up. They also taste much better when the have re-solidified and are really great a couple hours later.) Remove cookies for cooling. Makes about 24 – 30 cookies.

The Resurrection Flower

I never thought I would say this but I actually miss winter. Last year spoiled me. It erased some of the pain of 4 long Michigan winters, and taught me that winter meant lots of snow days, BBC marathons, and cozy food.  This year winter mostly skipped DC. Perhaps I am speaking too soon, and I will pay for it with a harsh in-like-a-lion sort of March. But for now, I almost feel that it was frivolous to buy my wonderful new down lined winter coat. Almost.

Maybe the early spring is behind what I am terming the Resurrection Flower. When I first moved in a friend gave me a lovely orchid plant as a housewarming gift.  After about a month – and an unfortunate encounter at a party – my orchid was sadly bare of all its beautiful flowers. Susannah told me that if I just kept putting ice cubes on it (which sounds ridiculous) it would eventually re-bloom. I have dutifully ice-cubed that plant since October.

I re-iterate: I have ceremoniously placed ice cubes on a bloomless dead plant for 4 months.

Our poor sad orchid moved around the house decorating different surfaces, offering itself as the hipster Christmas tree (trees were only cool till everyone got one), and enduring snide comments of disbelief from less believing roommates.

And then one day right after I got back from break I saw a bud, then another. Our orchid is currently greeting the early spring with bold blooms. 

Lullaby in the city

Over Christmas break I substituted a couple days at the school I taught at last year. Substituting, in small doses, gives all the joy of teaching and non of the prep work. With the seniors we read this poem by W.H. Auden. I remembered reading a while ago, but I had forgotten how lovely it was. In the notes she left for me, Amanda described it as a “night song for a godless world,” which for whatever reason made me think of this photo that I snapped recently of the pure moon rise over the perpetual DC construction.

 “Lullaby”- WH Auden

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:

To lovers as they lie upon

Her tolerant enchanted slope

In their ordinary swoon,

Grave the vision Venus sends

Of supernatural sympathy,

Universal love and hope;

While an abstract insight wakes

Among the glaciers and the rocks

The hermit’s carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity

On the stroke of midnight pass

Like vibrations of a bell,

And fashionable madmen raise

Their pedantic boring cry:

Every farthing of the cost,

All the dreaded cards foretell,

Shall be paid, but from this night

Not a whisper, not a thought,

Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

Let the winds of dawn that blow

Softly round your dreaming head

Such a day of welcome show

Eye and knocking heart may bless,

Find the mortal world enough;

Noons of dryness find you fed

By the involuntary powers,

Nights of insult let you pass

Watched by every human love.

A couple resolutions

I have written before about how incredibly awful I am at maintaining resolutions, thus my annual renewing of my vow to floss daily. But this year I decided to try to at least make a couple resolutions beyond my yearly re-commitment to increased dental hygiene. Call it ambition, or optimism about the coming year, but I am feeling up to making a few resolutions (even if a month late). I think there are two major types of New Year’s Resolutions.  First, the “New You” resolutions. These are the weight loss goals, the organic eating goals, the spend-less, sleep more, exercise more, etc. goals. I personally find these very hard to keep, as they are generally unpleasant to accomplish. Second, there are what I think of as the “Better You” resolutions. These are about spending more time with family, reading better books, finally travelling to new places, etc.

This year, I am making some resolutions of the second variety, because I think that improving the quality of our life in general, not just our person, is a good goal for every year. So here is my short list.

1. Read Brothers Karamozov. Pretty sure that that I have made this goal about 5 times before, but I never get so far as buying the book. I feel that possession of the resolution tool will make all the difference. It was the key in ultimately getting me to floss.
2. Go to New York. Never been. Always wanted to go.
3. Find the best French bakery in DC.  This is slightly in conflict with my “New Me” resolution of trying the primal blueprint, but exceptions must be made.
4. Spend lots of quality time with my family this summer.
5. Get to know DC better.

That last resolution is one of the biggest. Before I moved out here, I did lots of fun DC stuff when I visited James. But since moving out here I have let grad school consume my life and I take advantage of little that this city has to offer beyond pretty runs through Eastern Market and the occasional dinner out. These past two weekends I have started out on this new resolution. Last weekend I trekked out to Georgetown to visit a wonderful little French bakery with my friend Kim before heading in to the National Portraiture Gallery. I spent the middle part of the day sketching. Here are two of the quick sketches.

Yesterday Liz and James and I took advantage of some Groupons to go see the Newseum. (While I am horrible about getting out and doing fun things in the city, Liz is pretty much a pro, so I am hoping to benefit from her expertise.)  If you told me that I got to go to a museum about the news and look at lots of old papers, I would not exactly appear thrilled. But the Newseum was truly amazing, with historic front pages, amazing exhibits about the presidential personal photographers, 9/11, Berlin wall, and Pulitzer prize winning photographs.  It was moving actually, seeing some of the stories and images that have occupied our public fascination over the years. And it convicted me of the need to soak in all that I can as long as I am blessed to be here.

On the terrace of the Newseum.

James, disgruntled at the construction that is marring the Mall.