OMG It’s Snowing, in Chicago, in March!

That’s sarcasm in case you didn’t pick up on it.

Seems everyone is home with their kids today. Well, at least that is what Twitter is telling me. In MY day, schools didn’t close for 3 to 5 inches, to my dismay and probably my parent’s delight. I’m not being a curmudgeon, they didn’t.  Maybe it was a Catholic school thing, because I swear kids in public school got WAY more snow days than me.  Maybe the nuns thought it would be good for our constitution, hehe. I remember putting on my uniform, maybe tossing sweatpants over my knee socks so I didn’t get frostbite on my mostly bare legs, and trudging through snow several blocks to get to the bus pickup, and that was it.  No big deal…

Nowadays, seems the weather folks say “OMG stock up on provisions and close the schools we’re getting anywhere between 3 and 17 inches!!!!”. That’s about the spread I’ve heard for IL, because c’mon, they don’t actually know until it hits us, and even then they could get it wrong as to what it CURRENTLY doing depending on your zipcode. It’s Chicago! And then we get MAYBE 3-5 inches spread slowly across an entire day.  And because it’s CHICAGO and you know, we’ve all been here before, the snowplows go to it, everyone goes on with their day, they (hopefully) drive more cautiously and put on an extra layer. Except for the Snowpocalypse of 2011, I can’t even remember a snowfall that has truly impressed me in the last 9 years or so.  I say 9 years because that’s how long I’ve been in Oak Park, and we can get significantly different amounts of precipitation than where I used to live way out in the Western suburbs. So I reset my snow-OMG meter.

Nonetheless, I was working from home today, so I raised the blinds to watch the Winter Wonderland unfold, kept the front walk ways shoveled for pedestrians (including my neighbor’s sidewalk cause she has a small baby and I’m awesome like that).  I left the back yard alone so I could get a nice stream of pictures as the snow built up…might regret that later, LOL. There is a pergola but it’s not covered, so it might have a bit less snow on it than the ground, but it is close. I’ll update this later with more pics as the snow builds up.

This was at 9:30am. The chair seat is a good gage of depth:

 

At about 10:30am, finally starting to build:

 

Noon. I had some homemade chili, then shoveled the front walkways and stairs at this point.  Maybe 3 inches deep,  4 in a few places, so not too bad. But since the snow is wet and heavy I plan to shovel multiple times, I don’t need to mess up my back any more than it already is. Still leaving the back for later so I can get good pictures! My husband will love me for that, ha!

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And at 1:30pm. Not a snowpocalypse by any stretch yet.

And at 2:30pm, it started picking up a bit again. Roads are still clear as far as I can see, thankfully.

3:45pm – definitely a good 5 to 6 inches there now. And it’s a bit sheltered, so I’d say it’s maybe another inch deeper in front.

And lastly at 5PM, and it’s coming down pretty furiously now.

 

And this is what it looked like in the back yard after my 3rd sidewalk shoveling shift, around 6:30pm, and it has finally stopped snowing, for the meantime.

Not yet impressed, but I am furtively raising one eyebrow in case this keeps up all night.

Don’t get me wrong, people are completely entitled to bitch and moan about the weather. The weather that Chicago has for 4-6 months out of every year, and has for the history of everything ever. Lord knows my husband does, LOL. I just don’t get all the fuss. It’s not tornadoes, or tsunamis, we’ll all be back to normal by tomorrow night most likely.  If not, we’ll survive, as we did the blizzard of 2011. It’s mostly just inconvenient right now, and really beautiful. 

I live for heavy snows. And to me, if the worse thing that happens to me today is that I am forced to stay home from work (I can work from home which helps) and have a snow day with my family, well then I’m pretty lucky. Sadly, my husband is NOT working from home, so I have to frolick outside alone.  So go make a snowman, or stay in and enjoy a hot cocoa under a blanket, or both! I plan to.

Cooking is a Craft Right? Fast & Easy Low Carb Breakfast Frittata!

It’s been a LONG time since I posted and I know, I owe my readers a lot of update posts on my craft attic, but those are going to be long and involved so I will continue to procrastinate, it’s what I do best. The urge struck me to blog tonight because I just made something that I couldn’t stop stealing bites of when it was done, it was so freaking good.  Here’s the story…

So my husband and I have been drastically reducing our carbs and breakfast was always a tough one. Who doesn’t love bagels, toast, pancakes, yum!  So we turned to eggs and veggies, and so long as I could get up super early, we always had time for a nice, healthy breakfast free of “bad carbs” in the morning.  To save time, I would sometimes scramble a LOT of eggs and fry up veggies on Sunday and we could reheat them throughout the week, but it was never really very tasty. The veggies always got mushy.  Then I scrambled the eggs and veggies together, much better.  Then I graduated to mini egg muffins.  I tried a lot of recipes I ran across on Pinterest and they were always kind of meh. Either rubbery, or fell apart when we tried to take them out of the pan, any 6 muffins only lasted a couple of days.  Then I discovered the frittata at my favorite local café and it was love at first bite <3

I started asking around and was referred to this great recipe on Food Network that looked a) easy, b) allows for substitutions/customizations, c) reheats well and is d) fast.  All requirements for me when I cook. I am not super creative and I don’t want to spend a lot of time if I don’t have to.  And I want things to be AMAZING! Typical right?  Well, this one fit the bill.  So feel free to follow the recipe as-is but here is what I did a bit differently, so it might give you some ideas as to how flexible it is…

First, I used different veggies, basically what I had on hand.  Instead of asparagus, I used:

• 1/2 a small zucchini, cubed
• 2 baby bella mushrooms, sliced thinly
• 1/4 orange pepper, cubed
• 1/4 cub chopped onion
• 1/2 cub chopped broccoli
• 1/2 cup pearl tomatoes, sliced in halves

Next, I don’t have a 9.5 inch non-stick skillet that wouldn’t combust in the oven so I used my 12 inch cast iron skillet.  Since it was a bigger pan I increased my egg count to 8 eggs, and the equivalent of 3 egg whites (liquid kind).  Wasn’t sure how this would effect things at first, but managed to have it still turn out really well. I think I got lucky. and maybe I inherited some instincts from my mom when it comes to these kinds of things.

For the record, I totally just paused mid-blog and grabbed another little hunk and ate it, it is SO GOOD!

I also didn’t have heavy cream laying around, who does?  I substituted 2 tablespoons of sour cream and a tablespoon of soy creamer. What, soy creamer you say? I know it sounds gross.  It wasn’t flavored creamer, and was more or less the density that I needed. And it ended up working great :: SHRUGS::

So here is what the skillet looked like after sautéing the veggies as per instructions (so everything but tomatoes and mushrooms for the last 2 minutes)  and pouring the egg mixture over it in the pan. It had sit for 4 minutes on med-high and was just starting to set. The recipe says 3 minutes, but again, bigger pan and more eggs:

I waited for them to be mostly “set”, so firm on the sides, bubbling in the center but still runny on top.  For me this was right around 7 minutes later on medium.  Then I sprinkled it with a 3 cheese blend (which just happened to including fontina), and popped it in the oven. Looked like this:

You’ll have to excuse the photo quality, I was sending these to my husband to show off my culinary prowess, not planning to post them to a blog, so they’re not great.  My first screw-up was using the “Hi” setting on my broiler, it’s electric and old and apparently hi = nuclear. After 2.5 minutes it was browned to the point of almost being too dark and so I removed it. Behold:

It was still beautiful and looked utterly delicious, but I poked around and noted that it looked a wee bit undercooked. Well, even undercooked enough that reheating would barely make it done. I didn’t want to put it back in yet because it’s a cast iron skillet right? That thing stays HOT. Another part of the issue is I probably went overboard with the eggs, I think 8 total would have been enough, this frittata was a bit thick, adding to the undercookedness. What? That’s a word!

So I let it sit for 2 minutes, and tried running a spatula under it to free it from the pan. NOT HAPPENNING. Well, it finally started to give a little, but being undercooked didn’t help it.  I eventually got it loosened up, and had to do some fancy finagling to get it out of the pan. Things don’t easily slide out of cast iron with those deep sides. It broke apart a little getting onto the flat cookie sheet, so I rectified this by sprinkling some mozzarella on top. I then popped it back into the oven with the broiler on “lo” for 2 minutes.  That seemed to do the trick.  The cheese melted beautifully and the eggs firmed up.

You can see the little edge missing at about 2 o’clock there.  By now it more likely resembles PacMan, I can’t stop stealing bites!  With veggie chopping, cooking, finagling, more cooking, it was probably 25 minutes tops.  If not for the extra baking on the cookie sheet, it would have dirtied exactly 6 things: cutting board, knife, mixing bowl, whisk, spatula and skillet.

It is delicious, cheap to make, relatively quick & easy, and it will definitely last us the rest of the week!