ONION AND GRUYERE MINI FRITTATA

Sometimes (rarely) I really love waking up to a rainy weekend. It poured in New York all day long on Sunday. It felt like a reason to stay in pajamas, and dash out only quickly for coffee and eggs, and do things like finish baking a birthday cake (more on that soon) and clean the apartment.

I've been trying to be more mindful of cooking with leftover odds-and-ends in the hope of wasting less food and being slightly more frugal. I also think it makes me get more adventurous in the kitchen with spices and techniques, as I have to find ways to adapt to what I have (half a red onion? ginger that is questionably old? a nub of very salty sheep's milk cheese?) -- it's like a real-life episode of Chopped. Except you can't really lose, unless your breakfast turns out to be truly wretched.

In this case, I had two pita sprinkled in za'atar spice, left over from lunch the day before, and eggs and cheese and onion. I've always thought frittatas (and egg dishes in general) sounded sort of intimidating, with all the spatula-raising and pan-tipping and careful baking. For this breakfast, I just mixed eggs with milk, cheese, salt and pepper, and sliced green onions then stirred in some quickly sautéed red onion and garlic. I poured the mixture into small ramekins and baked them for 15 minutes. They puffed up beautifully and if you take them out when the center is slightly jiggly still, they will continue to cook and be perfectly done by the time you dig in. With a warm toasted pita and a milky latte, they made a rainy Sunday morning pretty great.

Onion and Gruyere Mini Frittatas 
Makes 2 ramekins

3 eggs
1/3 cups whole milk
salt & cracked black pepper, to taste
1/3 cups shredded Gruyere cheese (spring for the good stuff here kids)
2 green onions, cleaned and sliced thinly
1/2 a red onion, diced
1 large clove of garlic, minced
splash of olive oil

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Heat the olive oil in a small saucepan and add the garlic and red onion. Cook for a few minutes over low heat until the onion softens.

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk. Add the salt and pepper, cheese, green onions and garlic/onion mixture. Stir together gently. Pour the mixture into two small buttered ramekins.

Bake for 15 minutes, but start checking at 10 minutes. Take the eggs out when they have puffed up and begun to brown, but when the center still looks too liquid-y. Bake them on a cookie sheet in case of overflow.

CHOCOLATE OLIVE OIL COOKIES WITH SEA SALT

If you run out of eggs, and have no butter, but do find yourself with a serious chocolate craving, you can still make cookies, how's that for good news? These would also be perfect if you needed to bake a dairy-free dessert. The olive oil makes a brownie-like batter. Scoop the dough with a spoon into rounds and sprinkle with coarse sea salt. The result? Fudgy, salty-sweet, soft chocolate cookies.

Chocolate Olive Oil Cookies with Sea Salt
Adapted from Take a Megabite

3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup cocoa (use Valrhona dark if you want to get serious)
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sugar
2 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup hot water, plus 2 tablespoons

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk together flour, cocoa, baking soda, salt and sugar in a medium bowl. Add oil, water and vanilla. Beat until the batter is stiff (it will have a brownie batter-like consistency).

Drop heaping spoonfuls of the batter on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle with coarse or flaked sea salt. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Let cool.

CHOCOLATE CRINKLE COOKIES

We're lucky to have cookies in this world, aren't we? We're lucky to have chocolate. We're lucky to have time to bake warm, crinkly, buttery cookies. We're lucky to have people to share them with. We're lucky that instead of being beaten down by tough times, that we can man up and learn how to make something out of sadness.

I call this "silver lining syndrome" or maybe "the only person making you sad or happy is your own damn self syndrome". So when days are not great, at least we know with certainty that we can have a very perfect chocolate cookie to eat while we contemplate how to find a good way to sit with problems, tease and comb them out, lay them in front of us in twisted, shiny strands, and then reorganize them into something neat and happier nd all wrapped up.

These cookies have a very appealing crumb. They easily break as you take a bite -- not the way a shortbread cookie does -- but with a softer, chewier crumble. My fellow tasters and I can't quite describe it, so we'll just say that it is distinct from anything else we've tried and that we like it. And perhaps it is just as well that we couldn't find the words because now you'll just have to make them (and eat them!) yourself!

Also, these would probably be extraordinary with coconut oil instead of butter. Probably.

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Adapted from Good Things Grow

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1/2 cup butter (or coconut oil)
1/2 cup powdered sugar
3/4 cup cane sugar
2 tablespoons flax meal
6 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 cup spelt flour
6 tablespoons cocoa
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoons salt
1/3 cup milk
MORE powdered sugar (for rolling!)

Melt the butter or coconut oil with the unsweetened chocolate. Set the mixture aside to cool. Mix the water with the flax meal in a separate bowl and let sit for at least five minutes. In another bowl, combine the flours, cocoa, salt, and baking powder. Add the sugars to the melted chocolate mixture. Add the flax mixture and vanilla and stir well. Add half of the flour and mix. Add the milk and then the remaining flour and stir until combined. Form the dough into a disk and wrap it up. Put the dough in the icebox for at least an hour or the freezer for at least 30 minutes.

When you are ready to bake them, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Pour some powdered sugar into a bowl. Take the dough out, pinch 1 tablespoon pieces, form them into balls, roll them in the powdered sugar, and place them on the cookie sheets. Bake them for about 12 minutes.