Happy Halloween! Green Frittata for Meatless Monday!

So it’s Halloween! Happy Halloween everyone! Whether you celebrate this spooky holiday or not, it’s still always a good excuse to get the creative juices flowing. I read a quote on this from Pete Wentz on twitter yesterday: “If you stopped celebrating Halloween that means you took part of your imagination off of life support and just let it die (sic).” A bit much, yes, but I think you get the point. I find it a little sad when people say they’re too old to dress up. I don’t think you’re ever too old to have fun, and isn’t getting dressed up and indulging in a little fantasy part of having fun? It’s a good way to do so, that’s for sure!

I enjoyed a couple of Halloween parties with my good friend, Josh, this year. I was a Geisha girl and he was a Rockstar.

I will post more Halloween pics either later today or tomorrow so be sure to check back!

Lily is going as a pixie so I will post pics of that later or tomorrow!

I wanted to have a cool Halloween-themed recipe for today, but although this one for a Very Green Frittata may not look ghoulish enough, I thought the greenness of it could represent ectoplasm perhaps, or you could cover it with ketchup or tomato sauce and make it a bit more “gory” for older kids. I was going to (finally) post my crock-pot tomato sauce recipe, but then thought this might be more fun, plus simpler for something last minute if any of you wanted to use this for a Meatless Monday brunch, lunch or dinner today! So, I guess I will post the tomato sauce recipe next week, and on that note, I intend to post cookie recipes once a week for the entire month of November, starting this week!!!! Yay for baked goods! They will all have healthy and traditional versions so you can decide how to make them based on your own standards, and that of whomever you may be baking for this upcoming holiday season…

Very Green Frittata

Ingredients

6 large eggs

1 cup chopped broccoli

½ cup chopped spinach

½ cup chopped kale

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese 
½ cup shredded cheddar cheese

¼ cup milk

¼ cup chopped onion

3 clove garlic, diced

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

1 tsp hot sauce (optional)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Heat the olive oil over medium-low heat in a medium skillet. Add the onion and garlic and sauté for about 5 minutes, or until slightly browned and fragrant. Add the spinach, kale and broccoli and stir-fry for another 5 minutes then remove from heat. Mix the eggs, milk, salt, pepper, cheese and hot sauce if you’re using it in a large bowl. Pour the green stir-fried vegetable mix into a 9-12” pie pan, then pour the egg mixture on top and stir around a bit so everything evens out. Alternatively, you can just stick the pan in the oven with the egg mixture poured over it if you don’t have an adequate pie dish. Top with the cheddar cheese and bake for 10-15 minutes until lightly browned on top. Serve after it cools a bit. SO GOOD!

I love frittatas! They are simple and yummy and healthy and you can make one with just about anything you have in your fridge. Frittatas are best to make when you have a bunch of left over meats or veggies you want to use up in a simple yet creative way. If you’ve never made a frittata before, some other great add-ins are:

• Peppers
• Tomatoes
• Olives
• Bacon
• Ham
• Feta
• Goat cheese
• Fennel

The possibilities are endless! If you know a great frittata recipe, add it in the comments!

Lily and Paul both love frittatas too! If your child(ren) enjoys eggs normally, give the frittata a try! It’s a way to eat eggs anytime of the day. Many babies are sensitive to eggs before 9 months, so don’t give to baby unless they are of age to try them. Lily was allergic until she was 1; she threw up twice after having a small serving of cooked egg yolk, and it was pretty icky. Eggs are an ideal food for children over 1 year old.

Eggs are a well-known health food. They are loaded with protein and a substantial amount of vitamin B, including the B vitamin choline. Choline helps to boost brain health and function andalso helps reduce inflammation. Proteins found in eggs also help promote heart health by preventing blood clots and lower cholesterol. Eggs are amazing!

And since it’s Meatless Monday, I’d like to promote the purchase of organic free range, antibiotic-free eggs. Chickens are indentured to a terrible life at most mainstream farms and corporations of confinement to a small cage or dark room for their entire life, more often than not suffering from a variety of health conditions including infections, loss of use of their legs due to confinement, and many are subjected to a variety of diseases from living in their own filth all their lives. That’s why most are injected with loads of anti-biotics and have their beaks mutilated in a way that enables them to live in close quarters with hundreds of other hens so they don’t injure each other with pecking. It sounds like a pretty horrible life.

Literally slicing off the hen's beak

Do those look like healthy hens to you?

But, then you have to ask yourself- but which eggs are best? - best for the hens, and best for consumption? Organic free-range is probably the best way to go, if you can find a trust-worthy farm. Any mainstream egg manufacturer is not going to be the most reliable source in terms of producing a truly “happy” hen; usually when they say their chickens leave a cage-free life, it only means they all live in a dark room together to roam about for a few minutes a day when not busy laying eggs. If you happen to live near a family-owned farm that sells eggs, then you probably already know that is your best bet. Although, do keep in mind that just because it’s a smaller farm than Perdue’s, it does not necessarily mean that they maintain an organic and cruelty-free farm. 

Let’s here it for Halloween and healthy hens!!!!