Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Summertime quiche

Is there something about summer that makes people want to be productive in the kitchen?  I have been on some sort of weird cooking/baking bender as of late, and I have plenty of pictures to prove it.  Too bad I haven't been posting those pictures.  After letting these sit in my camera for a month, I finally decided today would be the day I would finally upload them.

Is it a procrastination technique in progress?  You betcha.  I haaaaaate the chapter I am editing and want to avoid looking at the mess on the page.  I think I dislike editing in general, but I've returned to a chapter I sort of gave up on about nine months ago, and what I wrote then is not very pretty or even coherent.  The voice of reason inside my head tells me that avoiding my chapter is not going to make it go away, and it will probably make my anxiety worse.  That is so true, and I hate my inner voice of reason for that, which is why I'll suppress it for about twenty more minutes.

Back to more interesting things, like quiche.  I am totally in love with this recipe from Piece of Cake, and I just throw in whatever vegetables happen to look good at the market.  Lately, it's been things like carrots and leeks, but I'll see where the summer takes me.  Quiche from start to finish: as easy as 1,2,3,4



Ah, delicious dinner, brought to me through the joy of using my rolling pin and my pie plate.  I don't really know what I would do without my American pie plates.  How do the Dutch cope without them or regular cake tins, for that matter?  Actually, I'm pretty sure they bake 99% of their cake/pie/quiche concoctions in springform pans.  Finding a cake tin that does not come with removable sides involves some good sleuthing skills (until you find the large cooking store in Amsterdam, at which point you cry out of happiness and learn that all searches for baking supplies should forever after start there).  So I am sure that if your kitchen does not house the "exotic" pie plate, you could make this quiche, too.

Just out of amusement, I took a picture of our dinner menu for that week.  It looks like a love letter to the god of carbohydrates.  In case you can't read it, here is the menu:

Sat) Pizza

Sun) Vegetable quiche

Mon) Pasta with pesto

Tues) N[iek] not eating at home

Wed) Zucchini soup with puffed pastry vegetable tarts

Thurs) Pasta with vegetables

Fri) Black bean tacos

Is pasta twice a week overkill?  When I lived in L.A. I ate it maybe four times a week.  I suppose I can chalk it up to life of a student and all that that entails.  I'm still a student, kind of, so I see pasta twice a week as a major improvement.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks for the luscious-looking recipe. Would you believe that I have never made a quiche? Do you think that fresh green onions from the garden would do in place of leeks? Also, what sort of cheese might work? I am not up to driving up to 28 miles round trip for cheese.

    Pasta twice in a week sounds good to me.

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  2. I have pasta every day I run... so pretty much every day.

    Niek is adorable in that picture; I'm not sure why.

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  3. You can throw whatever you want into the quiche. That's the beauty of the recipe. These kinds of recipes lend themselves well to whatever you might have on hand. That's what makes them so great. As far as cheese, go with whatever you like. I use the gruyere available from the supermarket, but you could just as easily use whatever block of cheese looks good at the Super Wal-Mart. I know your Wal-Mart must sell a block of "swiss" cheese. If you're really lazy, you can just buy a bag of shredded.

    Steve- Niek is adorable in that picture, it's true. I think he's laughing a little because I told him not to make his standard picture face.

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  4. I've got it: it's the Mona Lisa smile in that photo that works - smiling with the eyes, trying not to with the mouth.

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  5. Do you know, I've never made a quiche, either-- and I can make good pie crust. Hmmm--next weekend? I have a pie plate:-)) (Diana-- your pie crust looks *lovely*). Problem--where to get enough cheese that won't cost an arm and a leg...

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