Friends, cooking, thrifting and all that fun stuff...

This week I found this beautiful quiche dish at a thrift store! It is stoneware and let me just tell you how lucky I feel. I put it back three times because I felt guilty for thinking of buying something I don't need but just want. But I just kept knowing deep down in my gut that it was a true find and that I would regret it later. I told myself-- you have never made a quiche in your life and you will probably hardly ever use this dish. But eventually my little gut gave in. I was tested once again at the checkout line when I saw that it had about 5 people ahead of me and Ez decided he was d-u-n-n done, shopping. I almost set it down and left but at the last second, took my place in line like everybody else and waited my turn. Thankfully the lady behind me entertained Ezra during our wait. I spent a lot of time surfing around on the web for the right recipe for Quiche. I really wanted one that did not call for a boring pre-made pie shell, but I just couldn't seem to find the right recipe. You know how you just know when you've found the right one? It just wasn't happening.

So anyway, my wonderful thoughful friends Susan and Crit and their two little munchkins showed up in my bedroom unnanounced at 10:30 pm Thursday night! They drove a long way to see us-- BFF extravaganza. After the shock of the suprise wore off-- my first thought was that I just had to find the right recipe so I could try out my new dish on them. No more messing around. the time was now!

After I got everyone settled into thier sleeping arrangements I went back to my search. I was trying to find out if a quiche shell is the exact same as a pie shell or if it should be nade slightly differently? I just did not know. And it was simply too late to call my sister who knows everything about cooking and ask her. So I settled on a martha stewart pie crust recipe (found here), and the Allrecipes website recipe of the day which just so happened to be a spinach quiche! I was very unsure of whether this was going to work or not but I just decided to stick with the adventure and have a little faith that I could in fact actually make a pie crust! I have heard that it's tough to get a good one so obvioulsy my perfectionistic-- it's not ok to make a mistake self-- was a little nervous. At 2:00 in the morning I put my "disc" (which I have no idea if I did it right or not) into the refrigerator to chill overnight and went to bed-- well kind of. Just about the time I was ready to go to sleep-- Ezra decided he was ready to not sleep-- :)

But anyway by the time I got up and moving and spent all the time it took to prebake the pie dough ( I read it would be less soggy this way) and make the quiche and bake it-- It ended up being our lunch instead of our breakfast. I made quite a few alterations to the actual quiche recipe based on things I compiled in my head from my quiche recipe research. But this was the recipe I scaled it from-- here --I added pear tomatoes, and precooked bacon, precooked yellow zucchini and onions and I forgot the garlic. I also used a mixture of mozzarella and cheddar and substituted fresh parsley for spinach. I went with sour cream rather than yogurt and added some chili powder, seasoning salt and extra pepper as well as fresh rosemary.

Let me tell you-- the pie crust turned our pretty good-- for my first one with no clue what I was doing-- I was pretty happy with it. I would like to find one that is flakier and not as dense and a tad less butter for next time but all in all this was honestly the best quiche I have ever eaten-- and I'm not just saying that. I want to make one every day now! And I had so much fun feeding my friends-- I am glad they were patient with my experiement :) And I am glad I got that dish.

I did it!