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The Balanced Kitchen

Time for food. Time for Life.

Arugula and Radish Mini-Frittatas

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A while back I shared about my realization that one of my sons really, really needs protein in the morning in order to make it through until lunchtime and I shared some of my protein-packed breakfast items that were fitting the bill. That list has served us well, plus a good deal of eggs/egg sandwiches, breakfast sausages, and bacon. But I wanted to throw something new into the mix as we launch into the summer when the protein will be important for those active camp days… these arugula and radish mini frittatas are perfect!

I want to be honest with you, a year ago these frittatas would likely not have been a success in my house because both of my boys were very skeptical of radishes, but this year they have discovered the joys of a crunchy, fresh radish, which has made salad-making a lot more fun recently and has made these frittatas an easier sell. So, if you’ve got a kiddo who is giving you a rough time about the seasonal produce that you are so excited about, all I can say is stick with it, keep introducing it in different ways, without pressure, and one day you may turn around to discover a little person crunching on a radish they plucked from the dinner salad as they were setting the table. Miracles do happen!


The main reason I am really loving these mini-frittatas, though, is that they are the perfect make-life-easier cooking project. They are quick and easy to make, freeze well, include another dose of vegetables, and can be used for any meal—serve with toast and you’ve got a quick breakfast, add some breakfast potatoes and you’ve got brunch, serve with a side salad or grain salad and you’ve got lunch or dinner. So, please, while arugula and radishes are at their peak (now!), make a batch or three of these to stash in your freezer for your next crazy morning or what-am-I-going-to-make-for-dinner-tonight?! evening. You will be so glad you did.


Arugula and Radish Mini-Frittatas
 
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Recipe type: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Brunch
Serves: 12
Ingredients
  • 3 radishes, diced
  • ¼ yellow onion, diced
  • 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 cups arugula, roughly chopped
  • 8 large eggs
  • ⅓ cup feta, crumbled
  • ¼ cup milk
  • ½ teaspoon dried basil
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • ¼-½ teaspoon black pepper
Instructions
  1. Preheat the oven to 375 and grease or spray a muffin tin.
  2. Dice your onion and radishes.
  3. Heat the olive oil in a medium-sized skillet over a medium-high heat. When the oil is shimmering, but not smoking, add the onion and radishes and sauté, stirring occasionally, until the onions and radishes are starting to brown, around 5 minutes.
  4. While the onions and radishes are sautéing, wash and roughly chop your arugula.
  5. Crack the eggs into a large bowl and whisk until well combined. Stir in the feta, milk, basil, salt, and pepper.
  6. When the onions and radishes are ready, add them to the egg mixture, along with the arugula, and mix well.
  7. Divide the mixture up evenly in the muffin tin, a little less than ¼ cup per cup.
  8. Bake for 20-22 minutes, or until they are slightly firm to the touch. Remove from the oven and let them cool for 5 minutes. Run a small knife around the outside of each frittata and remove gently to cool on a plate or cooling rack or serve right away.

 

My Favorite Summer Picnic Recipes

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This morning, as I was driving home after dropping my kids off at school, I heard an interview with Samin Nosrat who just wrote a book called Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat*, which I am SUPER excited to read (just got it for my birthday, woo hoo!). In the interview she was recounting a memory from her childhood in San Diego of coming out of the ocean after hours of swimming, ravenous and then greeted by her mother’s perfect beach snack—cucumbers and feta wrapped in lavash bread with frozen grapes or watermelon slices on the side. As I listened to her recount this wonderful, summer memory, I was myself taken back to my own favorite beach meal memories from childhood. How amazing those sandwiches my parents made tasted, even with the sand mixed in, how sweet and juicy the fruit seemed to be, and also how those meals shared over a towel on the sand always felt so special.

So in honor of Memorial Day Weekend and the official start of summer, I thought I would share some of my favorite summer picnic foods:


Flexible Granola Bar

Simple Grain Salad

Savory Zucchini-Corn Muffins

Simple Roasted Chicken and Vegetable Medley Sandwiches

Smoke Salmon Frittata

Roasted Summer Vegetable Dip

*This page contains an affiliate link. If you purchase a product through these links, your cost will be the same but I will receive a small commission to help with operating costs of this blog. I only link to products I personally use, trust, and love. Thanks for your support!

Recipe Roundup: April Edition

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This month is kind of a wacky month for my recipe roundup because three of these recipes come from one cookbook: Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem: A Cookbook*. I have a complicated relationship with this cookbook. I love it because everything that I make from it comes out so well, the pictures are beyond beautiful, and the recipes are truly inspiring, but I also find it challenging because many of the recipes include obscure ingredients that, truthfully, I am not willing to drop lots of money on to possibly use just once before they go bad. So I have started adapting when I use the book and so far that has worked out pretty well!…

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Potato Skin Crisps and 4 Easy Ways to Reduce Food Waste

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This month’s The Recipe Redux challenge is one that is near and dear to my heart (and actually a topic that you may have heard me talk about before):

In honor of Earth Day on April 22, we’re challenging ReDux members to show how they reduce food waste. Whatever you would normally toss, use it up. Share tips for reducing food waste in meal planning, prep or using up scraps.

There are so many reasons, from environmental to financial, why reducing food waste is a great goal and if I am being totally honest, it is an area that is still a work in progress for me. While I almost never let cooked food go to waste, I struggle with what to do with all of my vegetable scraps since I don’t have a yard big enough for a compost bin. Some of them I store in gallon-sized freezer bags to use when I make vegetable or chicken broth, but often times those bags (yes, there is more than one) reach capacity and so then I end up tossing peels, ends, and cores—and feeling guilty about it every time. Not very productive, I know.


So, if you are like me and throwing food away makes you crazy, here are some ways to at least start reducing food waste that have worked for me. And, please, please, please share your tips and tricks in the comments so we all can benefit!…

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Waffleritos: And How to Use Up the Food You Already Have in Your House

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I’ve got an awesome, super simple, extra flexible recipe for you guys this week! Waffleritos. Yup, you guessed it, a combination of waffles and burritos, and what could be better than that? But first, some practical tips on how to cook with what you’ve got. The inspiration for the recipe and this post comes from this month’s challenge from The Recipe Redux:

Spring Clean the Kitchen. Cook with at least 3 ingredients that are actually in your refrigerator or pantry right now. Try not to go to the store to buy anything new. Give tips on how to make a healthy dish out of whatever you have on-hand.

This topic is near and dear to my heart and is tied to one of the complaints I hear from people over and over again—that they struggle with food waste—vegetables go bad before they can use them all up, meat is forgotten and goes off, and they are reluctant to buy recipe-specific ingredients because they aren’t sure how they will use the remainders in other recipes. I have even spoken with people who have decided that they’d rather order out instead of grocery shop and cook because the food waste stresses them out so much. I am very sympathetic to this struggle as it is one that I experienced for years when I was first becoming comfortable with cooking. I vividly remember going into my produce drawer and finding slimy green things that made my stomach turn. I also remember struggling with what to do with leftover ingredients from new recipes I had tried (I used to avoid buying cabbage and bok choy at all costs for this reason). Over time, though, as I became more comfortable with cooking and improvising, I found this source of stress started to dissipate and I developed a couple of tricks that were really helpful in avoiding food waste….


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Lasagna Soup

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A few years ago I was really desperate to find ways to get vegetables into my younger son. I had tried the battles, I had tried the pleading, and now I was trying to use the division of responsibility approach, which meant that I would choose what foods were offered but that he then would have the freedom to choose what he ate out of what was on the table and there would be no special meals or negotiations. What that meant for our family was that some nights I made a dinner that had vegetables on the side, which he almost never ate, and some nights I made a one-pot meal that included the vegetables in the dish. Often times he would pick around the vegetables, but sometimes I would find a dish that he loved so much that he would plow right through, not even noticing the vegetables.

There were two types of one-pot meals that tended to work for us. Soups and baked pastas. The kid loved (and still loves) pureed vegetables soups, which was very helpful when I felt like I was going to lose my mind. And while he would sometimes pick around the vegetables in a baked pasta, some strays would make it into his mouth and he was always cheerful when pasta was involved. Win-win. So when I discovered lasagna soup I knew I had to give it a go….

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The 8 Steps to Healthy-ish

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One of my favorite parts of my day is going through my newsfeeds and seeing what strikes me—new articles, new recipes, new perspectives. I love being challenged to see a different perspective and being inspired by a new flavor combination or cooking technique. But every once in a while I come across an article or a trend that I think is damaging or dangerous when it comes to having a healthy relationship with food. This week that happened and so I wanted to share my thoughts on the term “healthy-ish.”…

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Simple Roasted Chicken and Vegetable Medley Sandwiches

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I received free samples of Sabra Spreads mentioned in this post. By posting this recipe I am entering a recipe contest sponsored by Sabra and am eligible to win prizes associated with the contest. I was not compensated for my time.


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It is funny the things we can get excited about sometimes. For me, an unexpected moment of excitement has been around this Sabra Spread contest that I was invited to join through The Recipe Redux. To be honest, I was totally psyched to have reached the stage in my food blogging journey where I get to receive samples and create a recipe around a new product that I feel good about sharing with you. It was super cool to receive the FedEx box with an insulated bag inside filled with samples. And it was equally cool to be able to take my first taste of all three of the different spreads, Garlic Herb, Sea Salt & Cracked Pepper, and Honey Mustard, and know right away that I was excited to start playing around with them in the kitchen. When these small pleasures happen I think it is important to savor them and take the time to relish in them, after all shouldn’t life be about the simple and unexpected pleasures?!


So in the spirit of sharing simple pleasures, I wanted to share with you one of our family’s go-to sandwiches these days. Despite my best efforts, my boys have been giving me a run for my money on lunches recently. My 8-year-old in particular has been less than enthusiastic about a lot of the options that I normally offer, so coming up with this simple lunch option to throw into the rotation has been a life saver! I wanted something that he would be excited about, that I could feel good about, that wouldn’t take too long to prepare, and that wouldn’t break the bank. This Simple Roasted Chicken and Vegetable Medley Sandwich has hit all the marks!…

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5 Summer Dinners for when it is Too Hot to Cook

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As I was driving today I looked down and saw the thermometer telling me that the temperature outside was 100 degrees. Brutal.

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When it is as hot as this it can be incredibly hard to motivate to cook. Afterall, who wants to stand in front of a hot stove, turn on the oven, or even be out near a grill on a day/evening like this?! So I wanted to share five of my favorite easy-to-make meals that require little-to-no cooking.


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  1. Chef’s Salad. The thing that I love most about this meal is that it can be made up of pretty much whatever you have in the house. Start with a base of greens (lettuce, baby spinach, arugula, etc.), add chopped vegetables (carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, avocados, etc.), add some protein(s) (cheese pieces, deli meat cut up, leftover meat cut up, tofu cubes, hard-boiled eggs, chickpeas, beans, etc.), toss in any leftover cooked vegetables you have on hand, and top with your favorite dressing. Serve with some crusty bread, or even toast, and you are done!
  2. Gazpacho. A classic summer soup full of great vegetables. This is a fantastic version developed by my friend Aviva.
  3. Sandwiches. Use some fancy bread to make it feel more special, if you want. Stack on the vegetables—cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, and avocados are all great additions. If you’ve got it, some pesto can be a nice change of pace. No matter what, though, there is no shame in sandwiches for dinner!
  4. Brazilian-style fried rice. Cooking is done in 5 minutes and you can use whatever you have knocking around in your fridge. Perfect.
  5. Leftovers. If you need to supplement, add a salad and dinner is done. Couldn’t be easier!

We’ll be having leftovers for dinner tonight. What about you? Any favorite summertime dinners that help to keep things cool?

Baked Chimichangas

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I don’t know about you, but getting meals on the table during the summer can be a bit of a challenge. I always think that the summer is going to be slower and more relaxed, and in some ways it is, but then suddenly, because of that relaxation and lack of routine, it is 6pm, I’ve got starving kids, and I haven’t even started thinking about dinner yet! Panic!

That is where quick and easy dinners save the day and I have been depending a lot on quick pastas, egg dishes, and rice bowls of various sorts. These are all great, but we all need something new from time to time… or at least I do.

Enter the baked chimichanga. Now, I know that this is not even close to a traditional chimichanga, especially since they aren’t deep fried, but to be totally honest, calling them chimichangas was quite a selling point with my kids. They thought it was fun to say and if it is fun to say, then maybe it is fun to eat, and then suddenly I have two boys who are in love with a new dish to the point where one declares that he loves chimichangas more than hot dogs (true story!). So maybe I could call them baked-delicious-pockets-of-goodness, but it just doesn’t quite roll off the tongue in the same way….


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