Cheesy Bacon Apple Fritatta

I wanted to use stuff up before I went to Mexico. I just have going on vacation and then coming home to a fridge of food I need to throw away. So, I looked through my fridge, looked through my recipes, and decided I could make this frittata, and then package it up for lunch for the week. I mean, I think breakfast caseroles make great leftover, shouldn't a frittata?

So I followed the directions, but remembered what happened with the frittata I made from a Martha Stewart recipe -- it was bland. And not cheesy enough. So I resolve from the beginning to up the chessy-ness.

How it's supposed to look.

And I'm gonna tell you right off the bat, I used regular bacon and skipped right over that "organic" word when it came to the eggs. Seriously. Organic is expensive and I've got grad school student loans. And I substituted cottage cheese for the ricotta cheese, because of the price and because I had cottage cheese in the fridge. (Mom uses it as a substitute in her stuffed shells to help control the cost, so I know it's legit.)

Anyway. I actually baked the bacon the night before, so I went to work on the apple.

I proceeded to follow the directions about everything, adding some butter to the pan to make up for the lack of bacon grease. I added extra cheddar to the dish, but not extra cottage cheese.

I made a couple of mistakes, but I didn't know it until after I pulled the frittata out of the oven.

(This is where I had intended to put the photo of my fritatta, but I seem to have lost it.)

First, I made sure with Martha's frittata that I got the butter way the heck up on the sides of the pan. Since this one started with stuff in the pan, I totally forgot to do that and the egg dish didn't slide out nearly as easily.

Second, The recipe said to make sure the apples and bacon were evenly distributed along the bottom of the pan. So I didn't stir everything together after I put the eggs in. Maybe I wasn't supposed to. But the apples burned, so I think I should have stirred, even distribution be damned.

Third, like I just said the apples burned. That would be the bottom. And the top got brown like it was supposed to. But I'm not entirely convinced the middle was cooked all the way. It might just have been the cottage cheese, but it seemed mushier than it ought to have. I blame that on the high heat for a short period of time. Next time, I'll follow Martha's cooking directions because a broiler didn't cut it.

I proceeded to eat the fritatta for lunch that week. It heated up just fine, but the aforementioned issues didn't make it the tastiest lunch.

If I decide to make this again, I'll try to merge this frittata and Martha's.