Potato Cup Things With Eggs & Veg

Earlier today, this recipe quite literally landed on my doorstep, as part of today's newspaper.  They call the recipe Potato Nest Frittatas, but to me a frittata is more of an egg pie/cake sort of thing.  This is more like eggs in a nest.

So, I gave the recipe a bit of a spin for supper, except that I substituted a bit (and by a bit, I mean a lot).  I only made 5 egg-potato cups, just for reference.

I didn't have any russet potatoes, and the recipe calls for baking them in the oven and then letting them chill overnight.  I think this animated gif sums up my feelings this instruction:

I instead scrubbed two medium yellow potatoes (and one sweet potato, just to see how it would fare in the recipe) and microwaved them until they were cooked.  Then I stuck them in the freezer for 5 minutes, until they were cool enough to handle.  I probably should have left them in the freezer longer, as I discovered a few rogue pockets of steam while grating them.

The sweet potato was not as firm as the regular potatoes, so it was more half grated-half mashed, but they still made nice potato cups (I got 2 sweet potato cups and 3 yellow potato in total).

I put finely minced red onion, mushrooms, yellow sweet pepper and cream cheese in the potato cup, before cracking the egg in.  They only just fit in my standard size muffin tin.

Getting them out once they were done baking was a bit of an adventure.  I definitely did not grease the sides of the muffin tin cups enough, and the bottoms were still a little soft.  So, definitely check that your muffin tin is very well greased.

In the end though, they turned out to be delicious.  They went really well with buns and spinach salad for dinner.  Even munchkin gobbled her share right up.

Garden Update: July 2014

Now that we're in July, I thought I'd do a quick update on the garden - especially since I got my first serious haul of produce into the house the other night (as opposed to the little smaller bunches of stuff that I've grabbed).

Sugar Snap Peas, French Breakfast Radishes and a mess of green beans!

I have pulled up quite a few radishes & eaten a lot of sugar snap peas before this photo - these are just the ones that have largely made it into the house unscathed.  The peas especially are lucky to have made it this far - I find them extra delicious right off the vine.

Here's the main veggie patch.  

I know that it largely looks like a big green mess, but from left to right, you can make out: potatoes, in a light beige pot, sweet peppers, in the plastic terra cotta looking pot, broccoli (the dark green leafy thing behind the peppers), snap peas, carrots & dill all mushed together behind the broccoli,  the cherry tomato in the pink cage in the centre, the white rectangular pot of lettuces, celery, radishes & beans to the right of the cherry tomato, and in the last tomato cage, the beefsteak tomato plant.  Also, lots and lots of weeds . . .

The beefsteak tomato is not loving life this summer.  Most other things at this end of the garden seem to be doing okay though.

Here's the left side garden.  The blasted daylillies are taking over again.  However, the white patch in the front is my lovely thyme, all in bloom.  The chives are also doing really well. The oregano is still struggling along in the middle of the patch.  The far end is where the sunflowers ended up, and so far, so good with them.  We'll see what happens when we finally get some flower heads - especially when they get seeds.  I suspect I will have it out with the neighbourhood squirrels again.

  

The right side garden.  The daylillies on this side are largely containing themselves.  Between these guys and the hostas you see in the background, the strawberries are doing okay - they did not fruit very well this summer, but they are everbearing varieties, so I may get a better crop in August.  The onions seem to be going along alright, as is the nasturtium I got.  The spearmint from last year escaped its pot and somehow got into this patch, so, that will be a forever struggle to keep it under control.  

Finally, the deck pots.  I have two of the rectangular pots - the other is just out of frame.  They both contain the watermelon radish seeds, and neither is doing well.  Too much rain, and the squirrels have been digging in them.  Rosemary and lavender are also performing decently.  The cinnamon basil (the dark green pot) however is also not loving life.  I can't figure out why.  On the upside, at least it is giving me (and the bees) a decent amount of flowers to look at.

The globe basil to the left is doing awesome.  I love it.  Really, you have no idea how excited I am for pesto making.

That concludes today's tour.  How are your gardens growing?  Have you harvested anything yet?

The Garden 2014: A Start

The raised planter and some of the pots.  There are so many seedlings in this photo!

Gardening - it is a thing that I do sometimes.  I'm pretty lazy, so I don't always weed when I should, or remember to water consistently, and I have a toddler 'helper', so it is generally not worthy of a magazine photoshoot.  However, it is something that brings me pleasure, especially the bit where the food parts ripen and I get to eat them.  Plus, the toddler seems to enjoy being outside with her little gardening tools, digging holes and yelling "I help! I do it!"

I've planted stuff out back in the last few weekends, laughing (carefully, while knocking on wood, just in case) at the prospect of a late frost.  As gardens are always a work in progress, especially when you inherit a space, we're still working out some placement issues.  This means that there are still seed packets on my kitchen table, and empty pots in the shed.

Here is a little list of what is already in the ground (most seeds and seedlings I purchased from Urban Harvest, although a few seedlings came from one of the convenience stores near my home).

• Broccoli
• Celery
• Mountain Princess Tomato (it is a determinate, so it is in a pot.  We'll see how it goes)
• Isis Candy Cherry Tomato (isn't that a great name?  Apparently, the individual tomatoes ripen in all different colours. Whee!)
• a rainbow pack of carrot seeds (including: Atomic Red, Cosmic Purple, Lunar White, Scarlet Nantes and Solar Yellow)
• Six Week Bush Beans
• Sugar Daddy Sugar Snap Peas
• French Breakfast Radishes
• Watermelon Radishes (not yet planted, but these are neat.  They are green inside instead of white, so they look like little watermelons)
• Lipstick Sweet Red Pepper
• Onions - I planted Evergreen Bunching Onion seeds, but something dug up that patch, so I planted yellow onion seedlings in the same area.  Hopefully, I'll get both!
• A 'Lucious Lettuce' variety seed pack of lettuces
• Dwarf Nasturtium
• potatoes, that I took from our produce delivery box
• French fingerling potatoes 
• A new second blueberry plant (one of the two I planted last year got attacked by local wildlife and did not survive)
• Two new strawberry plants (about half the existing strawberry patch did not survive the winter)
• A sunflower mix (not yet planted)

I also added to the herbs.  The chives, oregano, thyme and lavender all survived the winter.  New is:

• garden sage
• spicy globe basil
• dark opal basil
• cinnamon basil (what can I say? I'm apparently a sucker for basil) 
• and an additional bit of lavender.

Are you planting anything this season?