Quickie Quiche: Tomato, Spinach and Cheddar

 

Do you ever feel like every meal is running together? The same ingredients rearranged?  I know I do.  One night I decided to mix it up a little, and have some Quickie Quiche for dinner.  I know, Quickie Quiche is a really clever name....yet, I feel confident I am not the first to use it.  Oh, well! On to the quiche.

The great thing about quiche is that you can make it so many different ways, and eat it at any time of day.  Bacon and spinash.  Asparagus and cheese.  Mushroom and tomato.  You get the picture, eggs go great with everything.  You can make it heartier or lighter depending on what you add to the magical mix, not to mention it is a great way to pack a bunch of veggies into one meal.  Using store bought crush makes it a super-quickie quiche, but make your own if you prefer. I always make a pretty big one, it goes fast!

Tomato,Spinach and Cheese Quiche

1 pie crust
6 eggs
1/2 cup milk
kosher salt and pepper to taste
1 tomato, sliced thin
1/2 cup thawed (frozen) or wilted(fresh) spinach leaves
1 cup shredded sharp cheddar

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Bake the crust alone for about 7 minutes, or until the surface is set and no longer moist to the touch.  Lower the oven to 375 degrees.
Beat the eggs and all the ingredients besides the sliced tomato.  Pour the mixture into the crust, and arrange the tomatoes on top.
Bake at 375 degrees for 20-30 minutes or until the top is golden brown and puffed.

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How 'Bout Them Apples! 5 Uses for Homemade Applesauce

It's finally fall in North Carolina.  Granted, the calendar says November 2, but we haven't seen many consecutive cool days until the past week.  And now that the air is crisp and the leaves are so many shades of gold, red and brown it's prime time for apples!

Before a few weeks ago, I never ever had homemade applesauce.  All I ever has was the store bought variety, which I ate and sort of like.  But when I made my own from a bunch of honeycrisp and gala apples, I fell in love and so did Elias. He barely left any for the rest of us! All you do is get a large pot, fill it with your peeled and cored apples, and add enough water to cover.  Add sugar and cinnamon to taste (or maybe brown sugar, or fruit puree...), and cook until the apples reach the desired texture.  If you want some chunky and some a little smoother, remove part of the applesauce when it is chunky and allow the rest to continue to cook down.  I dare even call this a recipe...

Unless you have children, you might think that to make homemade applesauce is more trouble than its worth.  What will you do with such a large quantity? The best part of making things yourself is that you can control the outcome.  You can make your applesauce the texture and level of sweetness you would like, depending on what you will use it for.  I came up with these ways, but I'm sure you can get creative and come up with more of your own.  Comment and let me know what else you came up with!

1.  Yogurt-  Use chunky applesauce as a stir in for plan or vanilla flavored yogurt.  I buy a large container of Stonyfield Farm brand and add the applesauce to sweeten and flavor it.  You save a ton compared to buying the individual cups, especially for organic!

2. Oatmeal-  Add a couple spoonfuls of your chunky applesauce to a pot of oatmeal, or you can even add it to uncooked oats and water to microwave.  Quick, and lots more flavor than those little packets.

3. Fried Pies or apple dumplings-  For a quick fried pie add about 1 tablespoon of filling between two flattened crescent rolls or a rolled out flaky biscuit and fry in hot oil, or use the Pioneer Woman's Recipe for Apple Dumplings using the applesauce instead of sliced apples.  Believe me, you will make these again and again.

4.  Side Dish-  Cooked apples are a great side dish for dinner.  Do you have picky eaters? Sometimes when you can't get them to eat vegetables try a fruit at dinner instead!

5.  Dessert Topping-  Warm up some chunky applesauce with a little caramel and spoon over ice cream or cheesecake.  Then tell yourself it's a serving of dairy and fruit for the day :)

What I'm Eating

Hard boiled egg, whole wheat toast with Smart Balance, banana

I'm up at 6 am on a Saturday folks, aren't I a busy bee? This is all thanks to my wonderful husband who reminded me that hard work doesn't sleep,even on crisp fall mornings when the temperature is just right when you are under the sheet but only halfway under the comforter.  So I got up after morning prayer, Fajr, and picked up where I left off last night on my research on organic and natural foods in restaurants.  (For those of you who don't know, I'm a senior at East Carolina University in the Hospitality Management program.)  I hard boiled two eggs, sprinkled them with cracked black pepper and about 17 grains of kosher salt and added some whole wheat toast with Smart Balance and half a banana.  That was until someone who's name rhymes with Rasheed gave me that "I should have taken her up on that boiled egg offer" look and I ended up forfeiting half of my egg and banana.  Two cups of coffee later and here I am, distracting myself from my research with my blog.  But there's a full day of house cleaning, laundry and baking ahead so I'll come back later with how that all goes.

What I'm Eating

Kashi Cinnamon Harvest

Breakfast is Kashi Cinnamon Harvest, 1% millk, and coffee. Since I've been out of town there is no fruit around. What are you having to start your day today?

Muffin Makeover

Yes, my muffins are on a paper plate. Don't judge me.

Remember the other day when I posted a very tasty (what, you didn't try it yet?) blueberry muffin recipe?  Well i fulfilled my promise and did a remix with dried cranberries, and trail mix.  Sounds exciting right? Here's the recipe.

Orange Cranberry Muffins

2 cups all purpose flour
2 ts. baking powder
1/4 ts. salt
1/2 cup Smart Balance Spread - Original
2/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 ts. orange zest
1/4 c. orange juice
1/4 c. milk ( I used 1%)
1- 1/4 cup dried cranberries or trail mix*

Preheat the oven to 375, and prepare your muffin pan by lightly coating it with Smart Balance.  Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together in a small bowl and set aside.  

Fold carefully, please!

Action shot!

With a hand mixer, or in the bowl of a stand mixer cream the Smart Balance and sugar until it's fluffy, around two minutes.  Add the eggs one at a time, making sure the first is incorporated before you add the second.  If you're using a stand mixer remove the bowl from the stand.  Fold in the first third of the flour, then add the milk.  Fold in the second third of the flour, then the orange juice followed by the last bit of flour.  Make sure that the flour or liquid you're folding in is incorporated before you move on.  Add in the orange zest, then the cranberries or trail
mix.  Use an ice cream scoop or 1/4 cup measure to dip the batter into the pan.  Top with extra cranberries or trail mix if you'd like.  Bake 20 minutes, or until the edges and tops are golden and puffed.

Trail mix with crack like addiction properteis.

Before I proceed I will say this: If you THINK you don't like dried cranberries, you do.  That's it, it's that simple.  If you can eat a raisin, you can eat a dried cranberry!  If you don't like raisins, eat Great Value Indulgent Trail Mix and you'll start eating raisins.  I NEVER ate raisins until I started eating it.  Plus, all this stuff is really good for you, so if for no other reason than that, let's give it a try. What do ya say? Yes? Okay!

These muffins were a great success, especially considering the substitutions.  Smart Balance has much fewer calories than the butter in the original recipe, as well as the 1% milk.  I used Simply Orange juice, but if you use a sweetened orange juice you may want to cut back on the sugar in the recipe. And now for my asterisk regarding the trail mix...I used Sam's Choice brand Indulgent Trail Mix, which has golden raisins, cranberries, chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, almonds and cashews.  If I were you, I'd remove the whole nuts from the trail mix when adding it to the batter.  If you're a fan of huge nuts in your muffins, be my guest.  Otherwise I would chop them or leave them out all together.   

This recipe is modified from the Food Network recipe found here.

Sahoor Blueberry Muffins

Now THOSE are some muffins, right?!

Hi guys, it's been a while! I apologize for my extended hiatus.  My original intention was to take some time off of Facebook during Ramadan, which turned into a hiatus from the Internet all together.  But I'm back, and I have some product reviews and recipes from my time away.  Let's start with some GREAT blueberry muffins I made at the beginning of Ramadan to eat at sahoor, the morning meal Muslims eat before we begin our fast for the day.

Any Muslim with a few Ramadans under their belt can tell you that there is no amount of food or beverage that you can scarf down in the morning that will make up from abstaining from eating and drinking all day.  On the flip side, as soon as it is time to break the fast our eyes tell us to pile up plates with delicacies of all kinds...but alas, our tummies nearly explode after half the plate.  With all this said, I made these blueberry muffins from a recipe I found on FoodNetwork.com that you can get here.

The muffins turned out very well.  They looked beautiful, were moist and tender, and the recipe called for just the right amount of blueberries so that each bite had a piece of berry in it.  They had soft of a cake-like texture, and I loved the cracked effect on top.  I used a standard ice cream scoop like this one and it made twelve perfectly sized muffins.  It's a good recipe for those who don't consider themselves "bakers" since it doesn't require a lot of equipment and the method is pretty straightforward.  They make a great breakfast with some fruit, or a good snack.  I'll be tweaking this recipe with my new favorite snack dried cranberries soon, so look out for that but for now try out this tasty version.

Hello again...

Has it really been 20 days since I've graced your mental space with my presence? Alas, I am here with more tales from the kitchen!

I have tried out so many new recipes lately! So many that I have barely been able to keep up, so I will start with one that is not new but is getting better with time. Since I am a Southerner, I have a torrid and torturous love affair with the bites of buttery, doughy goodness that are biscuits.

Why is my relationship with a Southern staple so strained? Well, because although they are easy to prepare, cheap, and tasty they are essentially flour and fat. Which is not a great choice for a girl who is celebrating a full week at her lowest weight to date in her weight loss journey ( this dedicated soul of which we speak would be me!). But biscuits called my name, and who am I to ignore the beckoning of one of Earth's greatest culinary treasures?

And now a brief discussion on biscuits. Slave women were the originators of the Southern biscuit that is characterized by a soft, tender crumb and buttery flavor. Today's biscuits are of the baking powder variety, meaning that baking powder is the leavening of choice for the dough. This is the alternative to the beaten biscuit, which was traditionally beaten 100 strokes "or more for company". The beaten biscuit was the original version of the modern recipe which was popular when leavening was not available. At the time pearlash was the only widely available leavening but caused a bitter taste in biscuits. But I digress....After looking up a recipe for beaten biscuits, I decided that it's best that I thank God (swt) for technology and stick with this recipe which I have always had great success with.

Baking Powder Biscuits
2 cups White Lily all purpose flour
1/4 cup butter, margarine or shortening (or any combination of the three)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 to 3/4 cup cold milk

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut fat into small pieces and place in freezer for 15 minutes. Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Mix well with a fork or a whisk. Once the fat is cold, use a biscuit cutter tool like this one or your hands to incorporate the fat into the flour mixture (using the tool is better because it keeps the fat cold which creates a flaky, tender biscuit). Add the milk a little at a time, mixing as you go. Add milk until the dough comes together and is a little wet. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and flour the top, adding flour until the outside of the dough does not stick to the surface. Use a 2 inch cutter for biscuits that will be for snacking or with a meal, use a 3 inch cutter if the biscuits will be used for sandwiches. If you prefer biscuits with soft sides, place the biscuits so that they are slightly touching, if you prefer brown, crisp biscuits space biscuits 2 inches apart. Brushing the tops with milk or melted butter is optional. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until biscuits are golden brown. Then try not to eat the whole pan.