My mother always said that it’s the effort that counts; today I get an A for effort.  I was whistling zippity- do-da today as I enthusiastically hit the local farmer’s market to pick up produce that I would need to make an awesome dinner tonight.  I found a fabulous sounding recipe this morning for Italian Frittata that suggested it be served with braised kale “recipe on page 54″.  I assume is was called an Italian Frittata  because it called for fresh basil and mozarella cheese.  However, since there was also spinach in the recipe and, I already had feta cheese in the fridge but no mozarrela, I figured why not substitute feta for mozarrela and throw in some kalamata olives to make it a Greek frittata instead of Italian.  I suppose that could have been okay but the strong taste of the fresh basil was far too much competition for the kalamata olives, and the hash brown potato base wasn’t brown let alone crisp but instead was rather mushy, and the eggs were somewhat runny until I re-cooked the whole thing in the microwave.  In short, it made me want to gag.  Add to that the misfortune of accidently braising the kale on high heat which caused the vegetable broth to quickly evaporate resulting in partially burned kale that smelled worse than burnt popcorn.  My supportive husband insisted it was still edible and picked off the burnt sections and carried on with adding lemon juice and tomatoes to create a quite awful tasting side dish.  The strangest thing about all of this is that my husband was okay with how everything tasted and is willing to eat the leftovers tomorrow.  I don’t know if he’s just feeling sentimental about his survival days in the military or, if he is is experiencing fond memories of his depression-era father who was just happy to have a meal.  I just don’t understand how  this food-loving guy of mine with a true passion for really, really good food could even stomach a dinner like I prepared tonight.  He even livened up the frittata with the lemony broth from the kale.  I guess it’s just good medicine in his mind.  Either that or he just really, really loves me and doesn’t want me to get discouraged.