Tag: spinach

Spinach, ham, and cheese omelet

a certain baconlike quality

spinach ham and cheese omeletj
The American Egg Board omelet LOOKS much better than mine.

As I’ve noted several times, I don’t think of myself as much of a cook. My wife is much better. But I prepared food for myself many times when I was single. During the COVID lockdown, when I was retired, but my wife (teacher) and daughter (student) were doing education remotely, I often prepared lunch during the week. It was a good way to get me out of my office, frankly.

Recently, I made a spinach, ham, and cheese omelet. My wife RAVED about it. I thought it was fine. There are a couple of secrets, though, that enhanced the flavor.

Take one or two ounces of fresh spinach. That’s quite a bit, BTW. Put it in the frying pan with 1/4 cup of water per ounce of spinach until it reduces as it cooks. Put the spinach in a small bowl, and dump the water.

Spray the pan with non-stick whatever. Put three slices of deli ham in the pan at medium-high heat until it begins to carmelize, then flip them over and heat them. Take them out of the pan; I put them in the same bowl as the spinach.

Make an omelet. I used five eggs – two for me, two for her, and one for the pan, as my father would say – and about 1/4 cup of milk. As the eggs are beginning to cook, add the spinach – I use a fork – and the ham – you could cut it, but I tear the slices.

Clean-up is fast

When it’s almost cooked, turn down the heat to medium-low and tear up (or cut up) one slice of cheese. I used low-fat Swiss cheese but use what you like. Cover the omelet until the cheese melts, which happens very quickly.

This is extremely easy. The keys are using fresh spinach rather than frozen. (Canned spinach, BTW, is an abomination.) And frying the ham. It takes on a bacony flavor, which is good in my book. I suppose you could use butter or olive oil on the pan.

In any case, it’s easy, fast, and went over well with the better cook in my house. There aren’t many things to clean up – a small bowl and the pan, besides the eating utensils and plates.

Small Lid Stuck in Larger Pan

This happened to me recently. I put a too-small lid on the pan to melt the cheese. It vacuumed shut.  

This site suggests placing the pan in the freezer. If that doesn’t work, then try tapping the pan with a wooden spoon.  Repeat as necessary.

Only then did it recommend what I found in this video, which is to heat the pan. It may be counterintuitive, but it worked!

Fresh, frozen or canned vegetables?

There’s always room for JELL-O.

When I was growing up in the 1960s, I associate most lunch and dinner food we ate as coming from cans. Campbell’s soup. Fruit juice, usually DelMonte or a store brand. Canned fruit, ditto.

Carnation evaporated milk, which my late great aunt Deana put in her tea. My sisters swear she said she poured it until the drink was as light as she was. For a black woman, she WAS quite fair.

And canned vegetables. The corn and peas weren’t too bad. I would eat spinach because Popeye cartoons had indoctrinated me. But other veggies went from tolerable to inedible. In the latter category, beets. They were vile. I would – seriously – put mustard on them just to kill the taste.

In the 1970s, I was off to college and beyond. My vegetables of choice were generally frozen. They were SO much better than the boring canned varieties. And even better than the Swanson frozen TV dinners we occasionally had in the previous decade.

It wasn’t until the 1980s that I actually discovered fresh vegetables to a large degree. It was A Whole New Dimension in dining. In the last couple of years, I happened to try canned spinach, though I don’t recall the brand. It was terrible! How did I eat that stuff?

Sauté

I was thinking about this because I tend to be the person who cooks the eggs in our household. Usually, when I’m making an omelet, I’ll sauté onions and spinach beforehand. I’ll add mushrooms only if my daughter isn’t eating them. I use Olivio because my nutritionist says it’s better for me than using butter. It cooks the same and works better than most butter/margarine substitutes.

Recently, my wife offered me thawed, chopped, frozen spinach to use. My instincts said this would not work for me. How does one know when frozen spinach is sautéd? When fresh spinach/mushrooms/onions start to wilt, that’s my visual cue. Frozen spinach offers me no visual cue. And it didn’t taste as good.

Now, thawed frozen spinach is great for dips at parties. Remember parties? In pre-COVID days, I used to attend those. [Sigh]

Those ever-shrinking cans of tuna fish – freshwater – are good to have on hand. Do they still also come in oil?

And canned fruit is useful when you put it in JELL-O. Which reminds me, I haven’t had JELL-O since I was sick a few years back. Suddenly, I have a hankering for JELL-O with mixed fruit, topped by Cool Whip. What the heck is in Cool Whip anyway?

Spelling tip: If you write sauté, you only need the D to make it sautéd. But if you write saute, you need the ED to make it sauteed.

FTC whatever: no compensation was received for mentioning these brands.

ARA: Eddie asks about food

The day I got married to Carol, I rode my bike to Friendly’s on Delaware Avenue in Albany for breakfast.

Dolly Madison Raspberry Zingers

A couple of weeks ago, Eddie, the Renaissance Geek, who has been one of the bloggers I have been following the longest, asked a series of questions.

What’s your favorite vegetable?

Spinach, no lie. It was one of the few vegetables I would eat as a child, along with peas, corn, green beans, and carrots. In the day, it was all canned. Fairly recently (2013, maybe for my birthday), The Wife bought a can of spinach; it was AWFUL! Fresh, preferably; frozen, if necessary.

Yes, I was heavily influenced by Popeye, who was featured on some local afternoon kiddie shows on WNBF-TV, Channel 12 in Binghamton, on which I appeared a few times.

Your preferred comfort food?

Boring, I know, but it’s mac and cheese. When I was in college, I might put a can of tuna fish in. BTW, in those days, a can of tuna was a lot bigger. Occasionally, I’d put in some cooked ground beef.

Do you ever eat a bowl of cereal just because you want one?

I mean, and why not?! I’ve blogged about cereal here, FCOL, complaining that people were too busy to eat cereal, which I think is absurd. Also blogged specifically about mixing cereals here.

What is your junk food weakness–the one you cautiously indulge because it would be too easy to go overboard with it?

Raspberry Zingers. Of all those junk-filled cakes, it wasn’t Twinkies or those chocolate things, it was the combination of coconut and faux fruit. There are knockoff brands, but none are as good as Dolly Madison.

Finally, what was your favorite, but now defunct, local restaurant?

I guess I’ll say Friendly’s. It’s not defunct, but it’s no longer in the city of Albany, or indeed in Albany County. The day I got married to Carol, I rode my bike to Friendly’s on Delaware Avenue in Albany for breakfast, a structure that’s been closed for years, and nothing’s been done with it. More recently, the restaurant on Central Avenue, which always took great care about The Daughter’s peanut allergy, disappeared, oddly only months after the building was rehabbed. The location on Wolf Road in Colonie also disappeared.

Going to the suburb of East Greenbush (which we did once) or the neighboring city of Troy (which I went to for the very first time just last week) is not the same, in terms of convenience.

I suppose it’s also that I am peevish that we had purchased some discounted coupons from our local restaurant, which closed the VERY NEXT WEEK!

By the way, the food questions come because I have chemo on Tuesday and my eating will be all screwed up for the rest of the week.

And you KNOW I wish you nothing but the best, Eddie!

30-Day Challenge: Day 5 – Favorite Food

Do I HAVE a favorite food?

It’s much easier to pick the things I DON’T like.


Ah, a tough one. Certainly, I’ve stated my love of spinach lasagna. Partly, it came from the realization that I didn’t have to cook the noodles beforehand; no, you don’t need to buy those special noodles, you just need extra tomato sauce. But I don’t have it very often. Same goes for dishes with duck, or a beef steak.

I do know that I tend to like things mixed more than plain. Cheerios and shredded wheat is better than either component.
Ditto:
orange juice and cranberry juice
cottage cheese and apple sauce
sharp Cheddar cheese and a Ritz cracker

Thing is, I don’t like that many things over and over. I eat a lot of chicken, but it becomes tolerable only because it’s prepared in different ways.

Though I have gotten into ruts. If I have a bagel, it’ll always be cinnamon raisin, if it’s available. Likewise, strawberry ice cream, lamb saag (spinach) from the local Indian restaurant. My candy choice tends to be plain M&Ms, which I eat in color order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, brown); it’s part of the enjoyment.

Do I HAVE a favorite food? I suppose it’s spinach, a function of propaganda from daily doses of Popeye on television as a child.

It’s much easier to pick the things I DON’T like: things with peanut butter; things with the artificial banana flavor (I like bananas) or almost any fruit; anchovy; cauliflower; sauerkraut. Don’t drink coffee, beer, vermouth or Scotch, so I don’t like coffee ice cream, e.g.

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