Cheese Tortellini Frittata

I have found another way to use some of the Basil Vinaigrette that I had made for the Wheatberry Salad. Wanting to use some cheese tortellini I had in the fridge, but also wanting to have eggs for dinner lead me to Google search pasta and egg dishes. Beyond carbonara, I really didn't know what ideas would be out there. I started to come across a lot of casserole or frittata type ideas. A frittata with cheese tortellini felt like the perfect idea. Adding some Basil Vinaigrette to the mix didn't seem like a bad idea either.

Cheese Tortellini Frittata
Serves 2

1 cup cheese tortellini
2 eggs
2 egg whites
2 tbsp milk
1/2 cup chopped spinach
2 tbsp Basil Vinaigrette
crumbled feta cheese

1. Cook tortellini according to package directions. Do not overcook.
2. Beat together eggs, egg whites, milk, chopped spinach, and basil vinaigrette.
3. Mix egg mixture with tortellini and pour into a greased oven-safe shallow dish (the thinner the frittata the easier it is to cook). Sprinkle with crumbed feta cheese.
4. Bake covered with foil at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes. Remove foil and allow the top to set (another 10 minutes or so).

For anyone who doubts tortellini with eggs, I recommend you make this because it will settle all your doubts. So easy to make, and would make a great addition to any breakfast/brunch or even dinner menu.

Earlier in the week there was a bake sale at a charity hockey game through school. My housemates and I each baked a lot of goodies, which resulted in a near 3 foot stack of cookie filled containers. I gave up sweets for Lent, so baking 4 batches of cookies last Sunday was no easy task. It took me about 5.5 hours in total, and using my Mom's kitchen (bigger than my own), kitchen aid mixer (much faster than my own hands), and cookie sheets (more numerous and much more clean than mine) helped tremendously.

Here are some pictures of the fruits of my labour:

Butterscotch Peanut Butter Corn Flake Clusters

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cranberry Peanut White Chocolate Chip Cookies

I also made lemon icebox cookies but I forgot to take a picture of them. They were ugly anyway.

All the recipes are from Cookie Jar Classics by Company's Coming.

There was an overload of baked goods for sale made by many of the Grad students. Everyone made such delicious looking treats!

 

There were a lot of leftovers and a few are kicking around the house here. I have a container of cookies in the freezer waiting for me when Lent is over.

Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!...and Pumpkin Spiced Cookies

Today is officially Thanksgiving so Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We had our family dinner on Sunday and it was delicious! I am actually writing some of this post ahead of time so I am still nursing quite the food baby. I know for some people Thanksgiving is all about the turkey. Not so much for me. I am all about the sides. Mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, stuffing, peas and mushrooms....drool. I look forward to these classics every year.

Thanksgiving dinner this year was at my Aunt's house in Waterloo. They live in a beautiful neighbourhood with lots of very large old trees. This makes for beautiful scenery for a Thanksgiving feast. It was so warm out so we got to sit outside. The sun was shining and there were barely clouds in the sky! Here are some pictures from our day of thanks...

I am thankful for figs.

I am thankful for those who can carve a turkey


I am thankful for my aunt and cousin for cooking all the delicious food!




I am thankful for roasted red peppers from my Tatone's garden.

I am thankful for calorie induced comas (not really actually).

I am thankful the live music at every family gathering.

I am also thankful for cookies!

We had vegan chocolate raspberry (by cousin Diana)

Oatmeal, biscotti, pizzelli (by Nonna), and pumpkin spice cookies (by me). The pumpkin spice cookies was a hybrid of two recipes. The cookie was very soft and almost muffin like. I would love to play around with the recipe some more to make a crispier cookie which I much prefer. Here is the recipe as it stands so far.

Pumpkin Spice Cookies adapted from the Voracious Vegan and Vegan by Valerie

¾ cup all purpose flour

1 cup whole-wheat flour

½ cup wheat bran

1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp nutmeg
2 Tbsp vanilla
1 cup canned pumpkin puree

1/4 cup butter
¼ cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar

granulated sugar for coating cookie

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease 2 cookie sheets.

2. Mix dry ingredients.

3. Mix wet ingredients. It is difficult to mix the butter well into the wet ingredients.

4. Mix wet ingredients into the flour mixture in two portions. Mix well until fully blended. The batter is pretty sticky and wet (kind of like cake batter). It also tastes delicious by the way.

5. Roll into 1 inch diameter balls and roll lightly in sugar. Place on cookie sheet and flatten with a fork in a crisscross pattern.

6. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Allow to cool before removing from the pan.

These cookies are chewy and soft, if you are into that sort of thing. Next time I am going to cut back on the oil and butter and see where that takes me. I will let you know how it turns out. Since I have so much leftover pumpkin puree I may just make another batch this week ;)

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving too!

Almon Half-Moon Cookies and Peanut Butter Balls

I was up until 11:30 pm last night completing these two batches of cookies. I finally got the moon cookies right!...well almost. I added more flour this time but I think I added a little too much; such a delicate balance! I also spent half and hour grinding the roasted almonds myself to get the texture and look the same. They turned out pretty good, and after a toss in some icing sugar they will be just like Nonna's!

The peanut butter balls were pretty time-consuming. I probably should have just done half a batch but I wasn't thinking clearly...clearly. I have 65 peanut butter balls in the freezer now. I hope they get eaten at the party in a week and a half. I used natural peanut butter for these which actually worked for once. The only difference is the softness of the ball when you first roll them. I refrigerated them for a bit before coating them in chocolate so they would be easy to handle but they were still a little difficult.

I used dark chocolate for the coating for most of them until I ran out, and then I used semi-sweet chocolate chips. The dark chocolate was definitely easier to temper the chocolate. It hardened much nicer and was smoother when dipping the balls. Also, it is much more delicious. Using a double broiler also made the process a little more fool-proof.

So now I just have one other batch of cookies to make to complete the cookie section of the book. I will probably make those this week so that they can be eaten at the party next weekend.

Tomorrow I will be making one of my favourite dishes. It is a lentil dish from 101cookbooks. I made some substitutions due to what I had on hand and I have been making it the same way ever since. While I normally eat it as a meal in itself, it will make a great side dish for my Mom's 49th Birthday dinner tomorrow night!

Happy Birthday Mom!

Come One, Come All

I hope everyone likes the new format of the blog! I think it is pretty. I was going to make it food related but this theme made me feel happy just looking at, so I knew I had a winner. I wish I could design every detail myself but I am no website designer and this is blogspot afterall. Maybe one day I'll get adventurous and start using wordpress. I also decided to make the blog public. I am not sure how many readers I will actually get but at least it is out there.

I have the day off today which is desperately needed. Working 3 days in a row on a weekend is exhausting! I am not used to working in general right now. I much prefer being a student and am much looking forward to September. The weather doesn't look so good in Hamilton, and I am quite certain the bike trails are extremely muddy, so I think I'll skip my planned big bike ride today. I have plenty of things to do around the house today as well as make a few batches of my Nonna's cookies! I still have a lot of baking to do for the photography for the book.

On today's agenda:

Moon Cookies - The last batch was a fail! My Nonna told me afterward that they are very tricky to make. The key I think is the texture of the ground almonds used in the recipe. Last time I used blanched ground almonds. The cookies I know and love have speckles of almond skin in them, BUT I cannot find ground almonds with skin on anywhere! I think I am going to grind them myself, even though that is going to take a lot of time and effort. It better be worth it!

Chocolate Balls - Involves a tricky process of melting chocolate to then later harden. Normally people use paraffin wax to do this but I cannot bring myself to bake with it.

I think I will also make more oatmeal cookies and almond biscotti, as those are easy to make, and will be good for my parent's 25th wedding anniversary party in two weeks.

I am unsure how far I will get on this, but I will share my results with you soon!

Something else to look forward too: I could potentially have peas and cucumbers from the garden this week!

Baking Day Successes and Failures

On June 5th, I baked all day with two friends, completing 6 batches of cookies. Some turned out better than others. These cookies were all my nonna's recipes and I was making sure the recipes were easy to follow so that I can compile them into a book for my Nonna and the Di Donato family. Here are some photos of the cookies. Don't worry, they are all in the freezer ready to be served on June 19th, where I hope to see you all.

Chocolate Biscotti (In non-traditional Biscotti form)

Half-moon Cookies, which do not look authentic at all. They taste good however and will not go to waste.

Oatmeal Cookies

Peanut Butter. I burnt these ones. Turns out you can't use natural peanut butter when making peanut butter cookies. I am really keen on still using natural peanut butter so I should probably add more flour to make up for the runnier consistency of the batter.

Almond Biscotti

Almond Cookies

I have 2 more cookies and 4 cakes to make before I have completed the collection. Wish me luck.