Taters, twice!

Here's a recent harvest from the garden (BEFORE the cucumbers started cranking out like crazy - more on that later!)... This was a year that I SWORE I wouldn't bother with potatoes...they take up a lot of space for what you get, and they take that space up for a LOT of time... I had decided they weren't worth it, and I honestly not even certain, since they're cooked so much, that I can tell the difference between homegrown and storebought. And storebought potatoes are CHEAP!

Buuuuut then there was the broccolato incident, and after the broccoli heads finally stopped producing and I pulled out the broccoli "trunks", the potato plants had a little life left in them. Once they died off, it was time to harvest! Check it out - lots of Russian fingerling VOLUNTEER potatoes!


Oh, and the blueberries are doing nicely! These are all from one of the replacement plants I put in this year....it's juuuust about done for the season.


Anyhow, last week, after digging up all those taters, we had them fried up with a leek (just to experiment with), garlic and herbs. I simmered them in salted water awhile first to get the cooking started. Oh, and in the pan there's also squash (bottom right) and for the last few minutes, peas (bottom left). Brett obviously wasn't going to touch the squash, but we both really liked the "fried peas". Yum!


Turns out we didn't eat all those potatoes with dinner that night... And I've had two cartons of farm fresh eggs sitting in the fridge the last couple weeks needing to get used up, annnnnd I've a bunch of veggies coming on that Brett won't touch but I want to eat. AND I didn't have any meat thawed out... So, hm, how about FRITTATA!?!? Dig out the leftover Russian fingerlings (not shown here). Chop up some leftover baked potatoes from "steak and potatoes" the other night (upper right). Cube up some squash (lower right). Clean some chard (left) . And get some seasonings - red onion, LOTS of herbs of various sorts, and a little hot pepper (all along the bottom).


Heat up two pans with about 50/50 olive oil and butter, fry up the taters in both pans, and add the squash to mine. Toss in the chopped up chard stalks in mine. Add the onion and hot pepper to both (next time - remember to add more pepper so it's noticeable!). Stir the herbs into both pans and the ribboned chard leaves into my pan. Then dump in a mixture of eggs, heavy cream ('cause it needs used up), salt and pepper into each pan (I think I used something like 10 eggs? And three of those were double yolks!). Plop in some small cubes of cheddar while it fries a bit, then throw under the broiler to finish up!


Hmmm...maybe that could've looked a LITTLE more appealing? We had this with salad and bacon.


I tell ya what - frittata is a GREAT dish - we're finding we like it year round. It's really handy for using up lots of veggies in the summer, isn't too much work, and is great leftover. Heck, you can even take a slab of this stuff and turn it into a sandwich!