A New Recipe (for me, at least)

We're back from Florida! We had a wonderful time with some of our best friends, Chad and Meg, and were so sad to leave them. It was a glorious ten days filled with fun and I'm absolutely going to blog about it once I get my pictures uploaded. I actually left my camera battery charger in Florida, but Meg grabbed it for me and is going to hold onto it until I see her in about a week and a half. It was much easier saying goodbye knowing that I'll see her in a few weeks!

We got home late Monday evening after the flight from HELL. United Airlines, you are officially dead to me. If I walked by you in the desert and had a full water bottle, I would give you NONE. The flight from hell left me rendered absolutely speechless as well as starving, so for dinner, we enjoyed some Taco Bell and KFC from the drive-thru. We are nothing if not classy. Last night, I got home from work and cleaned out the fridge from our vacation and proceeded to go a little too far and really clean out the fridge. I'm horrified to say that there were a lot of expired items in there. I threw away a lot of stuff and wiped down my fridge and I feel like the world is a better place today. We went to the supermarket and got a lot of the basics that we needed as well as the fixings for our dinner-- QUICHE!

Believe it or not, even though I love to cook, I'd never made quiche! It was surprisingly easy. I took the Pioneer Woman's recipe and modified it a little bit. Even though it took awhile for me to make (read: we ended up eating at 9:45 PM-- AWFUL), it was amazing. T and I both took it for lunch today and I am already looking forward to having it. Here is my recipe that is based on PW's recipe. I really can't take any credit. 

Pioneer Woman's Quiche-- Rachel Style

          {Image from Tasty Kitchen}          

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch asparagus, chopped into fourths
• 1 frozen package of spinach, thawed and squeezed of excess water
• 1 large onion, very thinly sliced
• 16 oz lump crab meat
• 1 stick of butter
• 1 whole pie crust (I used Pillsbury)
• 7 whole eggs
• 1 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 2 cups grated Swiss cheese
• Salt and pepper, to taste
• Cayenne pepper

Preparation:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
• Melt butter in a skillet. Add the onions and cook for a few minutes. Add the asparagus and cook for a few more minutes. After the spinach is thawed and squeezed of all excess water, add it to the skillet and cook for a few minutes. Salt and pepper the mixture to taste. Remove from heat and let it cool for about 20 minutes.
• Roll out your pie crust into a deep dish pie pan. EMPHASIS ON DEEP DISH!! A regular pie pan will NOT work. I got a deep dish pie pan at Target a while back and it has been a great addition to my cookware.
• In a large bowl, beat the eggs with the cream. Add the grated cheese, some salt and pepper, and just a dash of cayenne pepper. Set aside.
• When cooled, add the vegetable mixture to the egg mixture with a slotted spoon. Stir gently to combine. Add in the crab meat and stir again gently, just to combine.
• Pour into your pie pan and press to submerge the ingredients. Cover it loosely with foil and put it on a pie pan to bake. Check it at about an hour, but mine took about and hour and twenty minutes. Just make sure it's not too jiggly.
• After you take it out of the oven, let it sit for about ten minutes. Enjoy!

You could do so many things with this quiche! I'm hosting our Bunco group in a few weeks and I think that this will be something that I'll make for an appetizer-- hey, I could make mini quiches in muffin tins! Since it has eggs and vegetables in it, I feel like it is something you can eat at any time of the day. I left out the bacon (as well as some other things), but I do want to try this with some sort of meat the next time I make it. T really enjoyed this and said that he couldn't wait to take it for lunch. I would say that my mission was accomplished.

I hope you're having a great week!