How to Salvage a Quiche When Everything is Going to Hell

All I wanted was quiche for my Certified Cicerone exam day breakfast.

I love quiche, but like my good friend Marielle, I usually default to frittata. In fact, a draft post on this very blog that I haven’t been able to make come together is about frittata.

But, in truth, while I make frittata regularly, quiche is the “egg pie” I actually want to be eating. Why? Because it’s custardy! It’s delicious! It HAS CRUST! So, sometimes even when I’m not up to making pie crust (and, trust me, my skills are mediocre currently1), I make quiche. By buying pie crust.

The bad news is it’s been impossible (so far) for me to find in PDX the deep dish pie crusts I prefer for quiche.… Continue reading →

Peach Tea Smoothie

A smoothie, half consumed, on my coffee table. Half-full? Half-empty? I don't know. It's fully delicious, though.

I miss my Grandpa Steve an awful lot. He laughed a lot, joked a lot, doted completely on my grandmother, and talked to everyone. Man, did he love talking.

He also loved peach tea. Lots. His version was Lipton Instant Peach Iced Tea, and I cannot remember a time I’d go to his house and there wouldn’t be a big pitcher in the fridge. Usually, he’d have to make more, because he and the rest of the family drank a lot of it when we were together.

Peaches in a blender. Tea being poured over them.

Man, I loved that stuff. I don’t know if it was because I really enjoyed it or because my beloved grandfather did so much, but I wanted it all the damn time. Drove my mom batty, because she (perhaps alone) did not like it so much and I asked for her to buy it a lot even when we weren’t visiting those grandparents.… Continue reading →

SNAC! (Station North Art Cafe)

We found this gem via Yelp! For all the hatred Yelp! gets, much of it quite deserved, it generally serves us well when we’re lost in the wilds of another town and hungry.

Here’s what happened:

I needed waffles. We were staying in a part of Baltimore neither of us knows and I NEEDED waffles. So, we searched what we call “the Yelp machine” for waffles. And this place showed up. Lot of good reviews, several mentioning waffles…

Well, didn’t have to tell us twice! It took us a bit longer than we’d have wanted to get there, but when we got there, we found the best place. Art. Friendly customers. Incredibly friendly owners. Overheard intelligent conversations about the intersections of personal and political…

And fucking yummy, cheap food.… Continue reading →

[68] Pancakes

Cover of The Healthy Kitchen, by Andrew Weil and Rosie Daley

Pancakes. Bill and I love us some pancakes. By now, readers of this blog are probably fairly familiar with this.

Our “first recipe”:http://www.metacookbook.com/archives/6-1-Whole-Grain-Griddle-Cakes.html was pancakes. We didn’t even get 20 recipes in before “we did a second pancake recipe”:http://www.metacookbook.com/archives/38-19Everyday-Pancakes.html. Our first actual encounter with “a duplicate recipe (a.k.a. recipe #45) was pancakes.”:http://www.metacookbook.com/archives/87-Well,-was-it-a-new-recipe-or-not.html

So, yeah. We like to make pancakes on lazy weekend mornings. Somehow, I suspect we’re not the only Americans who eat homemade pancake recipes so often. Given the sheer number of Americans, I bet we’re not even the ones who have tried the most recipes in the shortest time. But we might get there. Or we might find our perfect recipe and forget trying any others.

That would certainly make this challenge harder.

So, here’s a recipe that’s about being healthy.… Continue reading →

Well, was it a new recipe or not?

Cover of How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, by Mark Bittman

Just in the knick of time to have it in today!

Well, I made pancakes this morning/afternoon (we slept in very late). It was the “Everyday Pancakes” recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. We’ve made a Bittman “Everyday Pancakes” recipe before, from “How to Cook Everything.”

These, frankly, we more dense. I don’t know what I did differently. Overall, just less delicious. I definitely didn’t cook them in enough butter. Boo.

So, would folks like to see a new write-up and a call for this to be a new recipe or no? If I get no input, that’s cool. I’ll make a decision.… Continue reading →