Dairy Free Quiche

Hello!  So yesterday and today I have had to stay off my feet because I recently got a tattoo on my left foot.  Here's some pics of my new culinary tattoo. . .

So anyway, because I have had to stay off my feet, I figured I should write a blog.  But what to write?  This week I've made mostly easy recipes, last weekend I was on a float trip and I'm not going to blog about cooking hamburgers and hot dogs on the camp grill (especially when I didn't make the hamburgers).  So I settled on the dairy free quiche I made for my in-laws last week.  A little background real quick, my brother-in-law is an ovo-lacto-pescatarian (vegetarian who eats fish, eggs and dairy) and my sister in law is lactose intolerant.  Needless to say, I had a bit of a challenge figuring out what to make that both my in-laws could eat.  So I decided to make dairy free quiche for brunch one day: )  Here's the recipe!  (Basic recipe that I added to can be found here)

Dairy Free Quiche - makes 2, 9 inch quiche

- Dairy free frozen pie dough (if you can find one. I couldn't so I made one crustless quiche for my lactose intolerant sister-in-law and one quiche with crust for the rest of us)

- 9 large eggs

- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour

- 3.5 cups unsweetened almond milk

- 1/4 cup nutritional yeast

- 2 teaspoons salt

- 10 oz package frozen spinach

- 3/4 cup onion, chopped

- 1 small garlic clove, minced or pressed

- 3/4 cup mushrooms, chopped

- olive oil (enough to cook veggies in)

Preheat oven to 375.  Grease one 9 inch pie pan (for the crustless quiche) and set out frozen pie dough for other quiche. Cook mushrooms, onions and garlic in olive oil until onions are tender.  Add spinach and cook for 2-3 minutes.  Remove from heat and set aside.  Beat one egg in a large bowl with an electric mixer until light and frothy.  Add flour and beat until combined.  Add remaining eggs and beat until frothy and mixture has increased in volume by about a third.  Gradually add milk, nutritional yeast and salt and beat for 2 more minutes.  Stir in spinach, onion, mushroom and garlic mixture.  Pour into prepared pans and bake for 40 minutes or until quiche is no longer jiggly. 

Well I hope you enjoy the quiche as much as we did!

Veggies, Chicken Pasta and Wine

Hello again!  Two blogs in one day...I'm on fire!  So this past Sunday I decided to make Angel Chicken Pasta (recipe to come later in this blog) and was looking in my fridge for ideas for a side.  I wanted something fairly healthy to pair with the pasta and what did I happen to have in my fridge?  A bunch of uncooked, diced up veggies I had leftover from making veggie kabobs at my BBQ!  Awesome.  Roasted vegetables it is: )  Even more awesome, the chicken pasta recipe included wine so guess what the Hubby and I did while fixing dinner?  Lets just say I love to cook with wine...sometimes I even put it in the food: )

The wine may or may not have made it to dinner...oops.  Also, the beautiful wine coasters and jeweled decorations are courtesy of my awesome sister Audra.  Great birthday present sis!


Veggie Kabobs 

Your favorite veggies, diced or cut large enough to skewer on a kabob stick
Olive oil (how much you need depends on how many kabobs you are making, I made 22 kabobs and used about a half cup of oil)
2-3 garlic cloves
Your favorite herbs and spices


Instructions
The day before you want to make the kabobs (or at least several hours before), mince the garlic and add to olive oil.  Then add any seasonings you want to the oil.  I used some thyme, oregano, crushed red pepper, salt and black pepper.  Let the oil sit with seasonings overnight to flavor the oil.  Assemble the kabobs.  I used butternut squash, zucchini, red, yellow and orange bell peppers, and pearl onions.  I put roughly equal proportions or each veggie on each kabob.  (Actually, the wonderful hubby assembled the kabobs for me, I just did one example and he did the rest)  Using a silicone basting brush, brush the flavored oil onto the assembled kabob.  Grill kabob until veggies begin to brown and are heated through.


Roasted Veggies


Your favorite veggies, large dice (I added turnips and shallots to the leftover butternut squash, bell peppers and zucchini)
Your favorite herbs and spices (I used thyme, garlic salt and ground cayenne pepper)
Olive oil (enough to lightly coat veggies)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Toss cut up veggies in olive oil in a large bowl.  Sprinkle herbs and spices over veggies and toss again.  Arrange veggies on baking sheet in a single layer and bake for 45 min, or until veggies are cooked through and browned.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and enjoy!

Roasted veggies on the left and Angel Chicken Pasta on the right.  Sorry, the plate is a little messy.  I forgot to take a picture until I had already cut up the chicken and mixed up the pasta and sauce.



I also have an idea for the leftover cooked veggies.  Honestly, they don't reheat too well and I hate to waste food...what to do?  Well the reason they don't reheat too well is because they get mushy...mushy veggies?  Ugh!  Who wants those?  I thought about this for a while and finally had a sudden burst of inspiration.  Pureed veggies would make a great base for a spaghetti sauce!  So I pureed the veggies with some tomato sauce and later this week I will make a spaghetti sauce from that. I will let you all know how it turned out: )

Oh!  I almost forgot the recipe for the Angel Chicken Pasta.  It is actually a recipe from Allrecipes.com.  You can find it here.  It is a great recipe but I do make a few small changes.

1) Double the amount of sauce.  It is a great sauce and you will want a lot; )
2) I use 1 can condensed golden mushroom soup and 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup.  This is only because I am not a huge fan of mushrooms.
2) I use half the amount of wine and replace the other half with water.  You can also use all wine or all water depending on your personal tastes.  I feel using the full cup of wine gives the sauce too much wine flavor and it overpowers the other flavors of the dish.
3) I also flatten and tenderize the chicken before placing it in the baking dish.

I hope these recipes work as well for you as they have for me: )  Enjoy!

Bell Pepper Dice-up

Bah!  I'm a bad blogger. . . I promised last time that my blog would include instructions on the easiest way to dice a bell pepper and an onion.  Well, I have the bell pepper instructions but for once in my cooking life, I did not dice an onion recently and therefore could not take pictures.  Craziness!  Anyway, sorry faithful readers...I can only fulfill half of my promise.

Start by getting out your cutting board and favorite knife.  Personally, I use my chef knife to do all my chopping, dicing and other knife activities, but you should use whatever knife you are most comfortable with.  Also, if you find that your cutting board slips on your counter, put a damp washcloth underneath.  Your cutting board definitely won't slip anymore: )


Cut the top of the pepper off, like this:

If the whole top of the pepper comes off, stem and all, that is okay too.  Next, place the knife on the top of the pepper and slice in between two of the "veins" (white pith that attaches to the center of the pepper).

Repeat until you have cut between all the veins.

Then cut the pepper pieces into equal size strips, then cut across the strips into an equal size dice.  Make sure to keep your fingers curled under and your thumb tucked behind your fingers so you don't cut yourself.  I cut the pepper pieces into a large dice because I was using the peppers in a roasted veggie dish.

Hope this helps!  I know when a friend showed me this technique for dicing bell peppers, it made the process a lot easier/faster!


Also, big thanks to my wonderful husband Mike for taking the pictures: )