Excellent Quiche

Recently I've been making a lot of variations on this crustless quiche recipe.  It's wonderfully forgiving and will take whatever orphaned vegetables I want to throw in.  We're hungry people and each quiche makes four lunch-size servings, so I usually make two or three so there will be leftovers.  I need a bigger mixing bowl.

• 4 cups of sliced or shredded vegetables
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1/2 cup cooking oil
• 4 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder (the original recipe had Bisquick instead of flour, so I put in the baking powder.  I'm not sure it makes a difference)
• salt and pepper
• herbs if you have them
• 1 cup shredded cheese

Just mix everything, transfer it into a greased pie pan, and bake for 50 minutes at 350 degrees. I've made 50% larger quiches in a large cast-iron skillet -- they just need to be baked slightly longer.

Tomorrow's Lunch Tonight

We signed up for Boston Organics, which is not quite a CSA. It's similar, though, in that every week a random assortment of vegetables is delivered to the house. Last night I made a delicious seasonal dinner out of them:

• Throw some quinoa in the rice cooker.  Remember salt.
• Medium-finely chop ~8 small carrots and ~6 large cloves of garlic.
• Slice 2 normal-size summer squashes.
• Chop the carrot greens like you would parsley.
• Chop as much basil as you can pick off the plant out back.
• Melt about 2 tablespoons of butter and begin to cook the garlic and carrots in there.
• Once they've had their moment in the sun, throw in the summer squash and the herbs.  Add another 2 tablespoons of butter.  Cook until the squash is translucent.

• Add salt and pepper.
• Top the quinoa with the vegetables.  If you like, fry an egg and put it on there.  Or consider having some Greek yogurt on the side, or feta cheese on top.

I'm having the leftovers for lunch today with some yogurt.  Last night we went the egg route.  Everyone loved it (we had some friends over), and I would definitely make this again.

Pho Sure

Pho is delicious, no doubt.  But I'm vegetarian, so the usual beef broth is a no-go at our house.  However, I've had two great developments on that front:

1. First, I impulsively bought this pho "soup starter", to which I added my own noodles & veggies.  It was delicious.
2. More importantly, while eating the soup I made from that, I had the leisurely tasting-and-eating time to figure out that if you add Chinese five-spice powder, ginger, garlic, and maybe some lemongrass to regular old veggie broth, it's a pretty good approximation to pho broth.

When packing pho and other brothy soups (especially noodle ones) for lunch, I prefer to pack two containers: one contains the broth and cooked or semi-cooked sturdy vegetables, the other contains cooked noodles and raw or semi-cooked wimpy vegetables.  I just combine everything when I'm ready to eat and then microwave it. That way the noodles don't get soggy and the vegetables don't get overcooked.