Quiche Day

During my Birthday Week, Thursday was "Quiche Party" day. Quiche is good.

Especially with bacon in!

My nephew forced me to make quiche. How did he do this? He asked, "Aunt Julie? I need some help. I'm making dinner for a date, and I need some help with making a quiche." And since his mother is not here to help him and I am, and because I will do almost anything for the dear boy, I made quiche. The biggest problem was that his date doesn't eat bacon, so it had to be left out of the recipe. I should have refused on moral grounds. Instead, he is forbidden to marry any girl who won't eat bacon. It's unnatural. And weird.

So I went to one of my best resources, PW. She knows everything. Especially food. She didn't let me down, but provided me with an amazzzzing  and easy quiche recipe. You can find it here. When I made this recipe for my nephew's misguided girlfriend, I followed this recipe except for the artichoke hearts and the monumental mistake of leaving out the bacon. When I made it again for my birthday, I made some changes to make it more "mine." Quiche is really easy to change -- when it comes down to it, all it is is glorified scrambled eggs. Today, I give you my adaptation of PW's recipe:

Julie's Birthday Quiche
2 deep dish pie shells from your grocer's freezer because we're cheaters.
8 eggs
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup butter
1 lb bacon
1 small zucchini, diced
1 large onion, sliced very thin
2 cups chopped mushrooms
2 cups grated swiss cheese
a big bunch of fresh spinach, coarsely chopped


Make sure you dice those mushrooms real small because huge ones make me gag. And mine were enormous mushrooms, almost as big as the onion.

First, in a large pot or dutch oven, fry up your bacon. Not too crispy, 'cause it's going to continue cooking with all the other ingredients. Remove from the pan and put on a paper towel to dry. You might lose 3 or 4 calories this way.

Now this part is evil, you may not want to follow my bad example.

Saute the oinons in the bacon grease.

Or be a good girl and drain the grease and saute in the butter instead. 

Me, I figure bacon grease is just as bad as butter, so why not use it instead? More flavor, man!

When the onions start to carmelize, add your mushrooms & zucchini. Everything starts to shrink at this point. And when you add the spinach next, it gets even worse:

So look at it starting out all green and fluffy.....then look below to what becomes of spinach when combined with heat:

But this is okay, you wouldn't want a bunch of fluffy spinach in your quiche. After this is all reduced, remove from the heat and allow it to cool while you mix the other ingredients.

In a large bowl, scramble the eggs thoroughly. Then add the cream and grated swiss cheese, and some salt & pepper if you like. Add in your cooled veg BEING CAREFUL TO DRAIN OFF ANY LIQUID. You don't want a squishy quiche. Chop up your cooled bacon into small pieces and add to the mix, then pour the whole mess into the two pie shells. Cook at 350 for one hour, covered with aluminum foil.

Then, as Ree would say, "feed to hungry humans." This is Jack, my friendly neighborhood aspiring-musician and co-worker who never says no to anything free and edible. And make sure you hang around for the compliments, he's quite generous in that regard. Below are some of the lovely ladies I work with wondering "Why, again, are you taking random photos of us with food?" Because I love you, ladies. And since you read this miserable blog, you should at least get photo credit for it.

Soooo....... what have we learned today? DON'T FORGET THE BACON ....and.... BACON HATERS SHOULD ALL BE SHIPPED TO MINNESOTA WHERE THEY CAN ENJOY SOME NICE LUTEFISK INSTEAD.

That's all. You may now return to enjoying your regularly scheduled day.

.