Free tatas:

Or, as they are normally spelled, frittatas.

If you are plumb out of dinner ingredients, but you have some chickens and some plants, frittatas are here to save the day.

Tonight's tasty dinner frittata (hastily planned after a brief 'no-ingredients' freakout) featured the following home-grown goods: broccoli, red onions, basil, and eggs, plus sliced cherry tomatoes on the side. From-the-cupboard ingredients were garlic, olive oil, and grated cheese. And voila, a tasty meal was pulled out of my...hat. Out of my hat.

Only egg whites went into the frittata, per the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home recipe for Light Broccoli Frittata on p. 296. This did make the product admirably light and not too eggy, but left six extraneous egg yolks. These were fed back to the chickens when I went out to the garden to cut the broccoli. It's a little gruesome to the thoughtful person, but the hens with egg yolks are like me with ice cream. They get inexpressibly delighted, rendered incapable for a minute even of making their normal 'great food here!' noises. They peck and glug, peck and glug singlemindedly at the delicious, sticky nectar.

Mmmmm...you know what's good dessert after frittatas? Ice cream.

Mmmmmm...iiiiice cream. I have to go now.