Archive for June, 2008

Fritttttaaaata’s!

June 27, 2008

I’ve decided that Frittatas are the easiest dish to make. Ever.

Stuck at home with nothing in your fridge? You’re sure to have eggs, a bit of milk, and some random cheeses and vegetables lying around.

What do you do?! Make a frittata! A frittata is the Italian equivalent to an omelette or even kind of like a quiche (without the crust). Made with a bunch of eggs and milk and filled with your choice of vegetables, cheeses, and meats, you mix the eggs together, add in the cheese, pour into into a skillet on the stove top and cook for just a few minutes. Rather than continuing to cook it on the stove top like the omelette, you then let it bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until it’s nice and puffy.

YUM! You should try it out,…it’s and instant breakfast, lunch, or dinner with barely any work!

I found a great recipe at Simply Recipes for a Spinach Goat Cheese Frittata. I altered it to my own liking,..really to what I had readily available in my fridge so I wouldn’t have to go out to the store!

Instead of using parmesan cheese and sun dried tomatoes, like they called for, I exchanged it for romano cheese and roasted red peppers.

And, it was delicious! On top of eating it for dinner, we also had it for breakfast the next morning! So versatile! What more could you ask for?!

Try it out… you’ll be happy you did!

Spinach Frittata Recipe

adapted from Simply Recipes

Ingredients

1 lb spinach leaves (about 2 bunches), cleaned, chopped
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped (about 1 cup)
1 large clove garlic, minced (or more like 5 cloves if you’re like me!)
9 large eggs (I only used about 6)
2 Tbsp milk
1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese (or Romano,…)
Sun-dried tomatoes, about 2 Tbsp chopped (or Roasted Red Peppers, diced and as many as you like)
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
3 oz goat cheese

Method
-Preheat oven to 400°F.

-Cook spinach in 1/4 cup of water in a covered saucepan until just wilted, a couple minutes. Drain water and set aside.

-In a mixing bowl, whisk together eggs, milk, and Parmesan cheese. Add in chopped sun-dried tomatoes, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Set aside.

-Sauté onions in olive oil in an oven-proof, stick-free skillet, until translucent, about 2 minutes on medium high heat. Add garlic and sauté a minute further. Add cooked spinach and mix in with onions and garlic.

-Spread out spinach mixture evenly on bottom of skillet. Pour egg mixture over spinach mixture. Use a spatula to lift up the spinach mixture along the sides of the pan to let egg mixture flow underneath.

-Sprinkle bits of goat cheese over the top of the frittata mixture. When the mixture is about half set, put the whole pan in the oven. Bake for 13-15 minutes, until frittata is puffy and golden. Remove from oven with oven mitts and let cool for several minutes. Although the pan may be out of the oven for a few minutes, the handle is still very hot. To keep from accidentally picking it up by the handle while hot (speaking from experience, ouch!) take a piece of ice and melt it against the pan’s handle to cool it down.

Cut into quarters to serve. Serves four.

The Wedding went well!

June 25, 2008

The East Coast wedding for my brother went well!

There were some precious moments,….

I don’t know why I love this picture so much. His hand shows how nervous and excited he must have been… it’s just so cute!

And some beautiful flowers,…

More wedding details and pictures to follow!

Angel Stationary

June 23, 2008

I’m at it again,… more stationary designs!

If the invitation thing doesn’t work out, maybe stationary will!

I’m LOVING it!

I would like to introduce you to Angel Stationary. Made for my good friend,.. yes, you guess it, named Angel.

Angel is wonderful. I have known her for almost 6 years now and she, along with her precious family, has been such a wonderful blessing in my life. She is truly someone who encompasses the idea of a “magnetic personality”. Everyone loves Angel. I can’t think of a person who could have one bad thing to say about her. Maybe it’s her name. I’m sure that has to help, but I know it is who she is, deep down, as a person.

For her birthday this year, I decided to make her personalized stationary. Everyone can use that, right? (And sorry friends, pretty much expect stationary from me, as gifts, from now on!)

I hand drew this popular pattern, seen in many places; even in the Anthropologie window display the other day (I absolutely ADORE that store, by the way!!) and then added her handwritten name for personalization.

Like always, scanned, vectorized, and adjusted in Adobe Illustrator. I’m thinking, the more I write about my adventures in vectorization and Illustrator, the more I should start posting tutorials for others who are like me….those who love art, but get intimidated by crazy, computer programs. There is so much out there to assist artists, but I think it gets overwhelming to learn.

Hmmm…..maybe that will be a next adventure. Anyone interested?

mmmm,….berries!

June 21, 2008

Fresh berries, a homemade muffin, and coffee…what more could you ask for?

Yum. We went to Costco the other day to walk around and enjoy “looking” at
“stuff”. I’ve decided that Costco is the adult equivalent of the child’s circus experience. Seriously,… at least it is for me. I’m not embarrassed to admit that I find Costco so thrilling. Free food samples, random books and clothes to sort through, large massive quantities of kalamata olives and ginormous bottles of clover honey. What more could you ask for? And nothing beats the $1.50 hotdog/soda combo.

Seriously,…

So, the other day we went to the adult equivalent circus and enjoyed walking around while we sipped on our soda and downed our hotdogs. We’re never safe there,…it seems there is always something we absolutely need to buy.

This time if was massive amounts of berries. Can two people really consume triple sized packages of strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries before they go bad?

Well, the answer people,…YES!

J and I have been eating berries all week and loving it. I even made homemade Banana Blueberry Bran muffins.

I’ve found the best bran muffin recipe for anyone that has been searching. Search no more!! It is here…. found through Recipezaar’s website. The best ever, I tell you!

So the other morning, I baked fresh muffins, cut up my strawberries and mixed them with blueberries and blackberries and poured myself a cup of Caffé Vita coffee and had a relaxing morning…

Now, how cozy does that sound?

That’s what I thought,….COZY.

Update…

June 19, 2008

I had some fun the other day, making stationary for my soon-to-be (in just a few days!) sister-in-law!

You may recognize this design, as it is the same style as S and D’s wedding invitations. It’s so fun to just go into Illustrator, take the designs you already have all set up, tweak the colors a bit, add a different name, and VOILA!! Cute Stationary!

In other news, I am in desperate need of updating my Pen and Paper site. It needs some work! Now that a lot of my large invitation jobs have come to completion, I’m excited to have some time to work on building up the more “business-y” side of Lydia’s Pen and Paper and Lydia’s Cozy Corner.

Amanda’s invitations went out with great success! I was so happy with how they turned out and it was such fun working with her.

Things have been busy. We’ve, pretty much, moved all of our things out of our Little Italy place and will soon be residing in the more, San Diego “suburbs” area.

Now, it’s off to the East Coast for my younger brothers wedding and then back to a house that will needs LOTS of unpacking.

Wish me luck! I’m gonna need it…


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