Inspiration...

One of the (many) great things about visiting different places is, obviously, trying a whole new range of food, which I forced myself to do in Spain : )

While I was there, I really enjoyed the Spanish omelettes, especially a spinach one, and came home determined to try to recreate it... after yesterday's Easyjet  travel nightmare, I got home and cooked myself something fairly boring but that I knew I liked - and it was horrible! The vegetables sprinkled with cider vinegar, the garlic carrot chips, the tuna... none of it tasted good at all! I was worried I'd been spoilt by the brilliant foreign food and would no longer enjoy my own weird unique style of cooking *gasp*.

So this evening, I was a bit more creative. After a chilled day food shopping, riding and doing my first "official" (but short) babysitting for my beautiful five-week-old goddaughter, I came home, rolled my sleeves up and created Spanish omelette a la Eleanor...

The traditional recipe is, I think, just eggs, potatoes and random other stuff so it's not that different (fairly similar to a frittata too)

I started by dicing and steaming 100g spaghetti squash. While it was cooking, I heated a pan with cooking spray and added half a small, finely chopped onion and a few chopped mushrooms with some garlic powder.

Once they'd browned, I added the cooked squash, chopped very finely, and let it all saute together.

I then added a big handful of baby spinach, torn apart.

Once it had wilted, I turned down the heat and added an egg and an egg white, beaten with about 1tbsp parmesan.

Like cooking a frittata, I then stirred it round a bit to try and make it fluffy, then left it to cook for a minute or two on the low heat. Once the bottom was set, I transferred it to the grill, set to medium heat, and left it for 5-10 minutes.

While it and the garlic carrot chips were cooking, I made some multicoloured coleslaw, using red cabbage, red onion, carrot, extra-light mayonnaise and some fat-free vinaigrette. I much preferred this to normal white cabbage/onion coleslaw, if only because it looks so lovely!

I also steamed some green beans, runner beans, leeks and broccoli with some more of the red cabbage, resulting in a huge plate of food which, if I do say so myself, tasted amazing! Wow, there's nothing like one horrible dinner to make you appreciate a nice one : )

And the best bit is, there's still half the omelette left AND some coleslaw, which means tomorrow's dinner will be great too so thumbs-up for inspiration from foreign food.

Of course, one of the other great things about going to different places is the need to carry out extensive and in-depth research into local pursuits of entertainment, which we managed to force ourselves to do!

(This is the start-of-night pic, the later ones are slightly less presentable!)