You say strata, I say… ?

TGIAF!!!!  Oh yea, thank-goodness-it’s-almost-Friday is in full effect here 🙂

I must say though, my first full week back to work has flown by so far, however I’m sure that’ll change soon so I’m rollin’ with it for now!

So last night I was doin’ a little reading of some of my fave bloggies and stumbled across my homegirl Brandi’s fabulous looking dinner that I knew I had to try soon… and since I wanted to plan a BFD (breakfast for dinner) one night this week I knew that it would fit perfectly into these plans!

So what is it you ask? 

Strata!!!  🙂

“Say whattttt”?!  Here’s what I gathered up for you friends:  A strata is a brunch casserole dish, similar to a quiche, made from a mixture which mainly consists of bread or hash browns, eggs and cheese. It may also include meat or vegetables. The ingredients are combined in a casserole dish and baked. It is served warm.

Ummm yes please?!

I had heard of this strata-thing before but never taken a stab at making one myself… actually I don’t even know that I’ve ever eaten one either now that I think about it?  Either way, this is one of those “use up what you got” kinda meals and I was all for it tonight!

Rounded up the key players:

• 1/2 loaf Italian bread, which I had frozen a while back & just let sit out overnight
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1.5 onions, sliced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• frozen chopped broccoli
• black olives (not pictured)
• salt/pepper
• dried basil
• 1 tsp Napa Valley Spicy Apple, cinnamon & ginger mustard

First I gave the onions a saute over medium for 10 minutes or so in some EVOO, adding the garlic towards the end.

Then added the frozen broccoli and olives until the veggies were warmed through.  Salt and pepper too!

I cut up the bread into large chunks, laying it into a lightly buttered casserole dish.

Then piled the veggie mixture on top.

Added the shredded cheese of course!

At this point I whisked up the egg mixture using the eggs/milk plus some salt, pepper, dried basil and “the” mustard (if you can find this amazing stuff, buy it, buy it now and in bulk — it is that good!) 

Poured this over the top, added some additional spices for fun and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes 🙂 

Many recipes I saw called for an overnight rest, but obviously we wanted dinner tonight and not in the a.m. so that just wasn’t goin’ down! 😛

After the half hour was up I popped it into a 350F oven for 20 minutes, cranked up the temp to 375F to finish it up for about another 10 minutes and dinner was ready! (if you haven’t noticed, I suck at timing things, I just take it out when it looks done :/)

 

All served up w/ a nice sprinkin’ of Frank’s hot sauce (a must for me on anything egg-y!)

x 2!!!!!!!  Holy mackerel this was delicious!  Ummm someone slap me on the wrist for never making this fabulous superrific strata before for realzzzzzzzzz!  We both loved it, plus we used up all the “extras” in the house to end the week off without being wasteful – I see a win-win situation here?!

And now for the “broken-record” part of the post 😉 

Remember.  ExerciseTV Giveaway!  Winner to be picked tomorrow night.  Enter to win 🙂  Please, you know you want to?! 

I’ve gotten that one down huh?!?!  😛

Alrighty, gettin’ my GTL on and ready for some serious fist-pumpin’ tonight friends! 

See you for Friday funday!!!!