Warm is a Must

It's May 11th. Why doesn't the weather reflect that? I'm baking today, mostly so I had a reason to turn on the oven and warm up the kitchen. Warm things are most necessary tonight for supper.

I had made a roasted veggie frittata not long before starting this blog, but since it was prior to its inception, no recipe or description had made it here. That's being corrected tonight.

I had thought about making an eggplant parmesan lasagna for supper, but have NO room in my fridge for leftovers. So, in the spirit of getting rid of some veggies at least, tonight's meal was born.

I roasted a bunch of veggies I have on hand - a small quartered sweet onion, a zucchini and a yellow summer squash, an orange bell pepper and a handful of garlic cloves, on a baking sheet lined with foil and sprayed. They roasted at 425 for about 25 minutes. When I brought them out, the pepper went into a zip lock baggie to make it easier to peel. When everything had cooled down I chopped it up to bite-size and set them aside.

The egg portion was to be 8 eggs, but I used up the Eggbeaters I had thawed, and they amounted to six eggs, and I used 2 "real" eggs for the remainder. I whisked those together, put in the veggies to stir it up and put it into a greased (well, sprayed) cake pan. at 350 degrees for 50 minutes. At the end of that time, I let it sit out for 5 minutes to set up.

Dessert came about from my attempts to make whole grain French baguettes. The baguettes themselves came out ok, I think they could be better. But I had more than enough of them to use up one baton in bread pudding.

I cut up the bread into bite-sized pieces, about 5 cups of it all told. In a seperate bowl I whisked 2 eggs and 2 cups milk, 1 tsp vanilla extract and grated some fresh nutmeg on top. Poured the egg & milk mixture over the bread and let it soak for about an hour. Just before baking, I stirred in about a cup of caramel chips I picked up at a party/cake decorating store.

That baked for 45 minutes at 350. I had done that before supper went in, so when the frittata exited the oven and made its way towards our dinner plates, I shut off the oven and put the dessert back in to warm up. When it came out, I topped it with a spoonful of the Honduran cream I've spoken of in earlier blog postings.

Delicious!!