I enjoyed a marathon trip to my local grocer today. Two hours of perusing each aisle, shelf-level, end-of-aisle display, refrigerator case and produce bin. Usually, when I treat myself to this kind of shopping extravaganza, I spend most of my time inspecting obscure products, mixes and other ingredients, checking their nutrition labels, reading the serving suggestions.Tonight I found some especially intriguing toys to add to my pantry shelves including these two which will hopefully debut in an upcoming blog post:
Oddly, I did most of my detective work in the canned meats section. That's right, I spent a good twenty minutes picking through row after row of potted
meats, SPAM and TREET, 30 different kinds of hot dog chili, Vienna sausages, turkey Vienna sausages (for those of you who will eat these little wienies but don't want to eat pork?), corned beef hash, and dried beef products. I concluded that while I ate several of these - ahem - interesting items as a child, they now utterly disgust me.My thoughts turned to foods I was terrified of as a small child and I realized most of them were served in the cafeteria lunch line and I has afraid of them because my fellow pupils told me they were gross. In fact, I never tried quiche, collard greens, squash, fried okra, yams, or pineapple until I was a teenager purely because my peers warned of instant death upon ingesting these things.
In honor of my childhood palate, I made a vegetable quiche tonight. Just for fun, I starred the ingredients I feared as a child. Alas, the lunch ladies were right: I was missing out on some mmm mmm good food!!
Savory Vegetable Quiche
1 9 inch pie shell
2 cups of steamed vegetables (I used yellow squash and zucchini. Asparagus, mushrooms and spinach would also be great!)
1/2 cup diced yellow onion
1 tsp olive oil
2 tbls bacon pieces (find this in the salad dressing aisle and pick the reduced fat kind!)
2 tbls fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
1/2 cup reduced-fat cottage cheese.
4 eggs
1/2 cup skim milk
1 tbls dried Herbes de Provence
3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
2 tbls grated parmesan cheese
1 tsp ground pepper
1/2 tsp salt
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Bake empty pie shell for 8-10 minutes. Remove from oven and reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees.
Slice and steam squash or other vegetables for 7-9 minutes or until slightly tender. Drain any remaining liquid from vegetables. Heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Saute onions until translucent.
Combine onion, squash, bacon, parsley and cottage cheese in a mixing bowl.
Break eggs into a second mixing bowl and add milk, Herbes de Provence, salt and pepper. Beat egg mixture well.
Now to assemble the quiche!Spread shredded cheddar and grated parmesan in the bottom of the pie shell.
Top with vegetable mixture.
Pour egg mixture over vegetables.
Bake quiche in a 350 degree oven for 1 hour or until a knife inserted in the middle of the quiche comes out clean.
