CEiMB -- Spaghetti Frittata

Growing up, one of my aunts would always make a spaghetti pie for holiday dinners. It always scared me, so I never tried it. When I saw this week's recipe for Spaghetti Frittata, hosted by Marthe at Culinary Delights, it reminded me of that spaghetti pie. I knew I had to make it and finally try it out!

Since the past few weeks at work have been hectic, this was a good recipe to make because it was so straightforward and uncomplicated. While I cooked the pasta, I chopped up my onion and set it to cook, then chopped up the spinach, sundried tomatoes, and garlic to add to the pan. After combining the pasta and sauce, I added that mixture to the veggies and cooked up. Finally, I added the eggs. The recipe calls for broiling the mixture after adding cheese, but I wasn't 100% sure that my pans could handle it so I put the oven temp up as high as I knew I could. It took a bit longer, but it seemed to work.

Pre-oven:

Post-oven:

I was scared it was going to be some weird eggy pasta "thing" but it was good! I wish I had added more salt and maybe some herbs for additional flavor, but my husband liked it as it was.

CEiMB--Apple Brown Betty

So this week was my pick for Craving Ellie in My Belly--Apple Brown Betty. Even better, I was able to make this recipe over the weekend with my mom since my parents were visiting! There was quite the selection of apples at the farmers market. Even though the recipe calls for Golden Delicious apples, I decided to use Nittany apples from the market--mostly because my husband went to Penn State and is a huge PSU football fan (if I had known how poorly the game was going to go later that day, I may have chosen differently!).

This recipe was quite easy to put together. The most difficult part was thinly slicing the apples, but even that became easy once I remembered I owned a mandoline slicer (that is why my cut up apples all look different). I added the apples, apple cider (also from the farmers market and crazy delicious), some of the brown sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon to a large pan to cook up.



I was concerned that the apples wouldn't fit in my pie dish, but they cooked down nicely and fit into my pie dish without any trouble.



Since I was enjoying time with my family, I didn't realize until it was too late that I did not have any bread at home. Luckily for me, I did have some panko bread crumbs! I combined those with melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon for the topping, and popped the whole thing into the oven.



After 30 minutes, the topping was a nice, golden brown. Dessert time!



My husband surprised us by picking up some low-fat vanilla ice cream to go with the Apple Brown Betty. It was a great combination, especially since it was a pretty warm evening.



The recipe makes a lot of servings, definitely more than six unless you have pretty big portion sizes. The four of us each had some, and I actually ate the Apple Brown Betty cold later on in the week. It is delicious cold as well, even without the ice cream!

You can find the recipe on the Food Network site for Ellie's Apple Brown Betty, as well as on page 241 of So Easy.