Tag Archives: food

“Quiche”

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A side dish that turned into a main course.

We were going to have steak for dinner. Mike had bought two “beautiful” (I haven’t seen them) rib eyes at Albertson’s on his way home on Wednesday. I needed to make something to go with them and I didn’t feel like a trip to the store.

One thing we always have a lot of these days is eggs. With 8 hens, we normally get 5 to 7 eggs a day. Alex eats an egg every morning and sometimes Mike will have 2 or 3 (they’re generally smaller than average). And I’ll have 1 or 2 once in a while. Otherwise, we wind up giving quite a few away. Basically, if you hand us an empty egg carton, you’ll get it back a short time later with a dozen eggs in it.

I thought about that Bisquick quiche I used to make and tracked down the recipe in my stack of clippings. The recipe called for only 3 eggs; I wanted to use more. And the recipe said nothing about vegetables; I had a bunch in the freezer that I wanted to use up. So I improvised. The following is my approximate recipe; it actually turned out quite good. And when Mike got home with a headache, we had the quiche for dinner so he didn’t have to go out in the heat to grill the steaks.

Ingredients

  • 5 eggs. Remember, mine are small; if you buy large or jumbo eggs, 4 would probably be enough.
  • 1/2 cup Bisquick
  • 1/4 cup melted butter. The recipe called for 1/2 cup, but I think that’s too way much. It makes the final product greasy.
  • 1/2 cup milk. The recipe called for 1-1/2 cups, but I wanted to get rid of eggs, not milk.
  • 2-3 cups frozen (or fresh) chopped vegetables. I used asparagus, chopped spinach, and a potato/onion/pepper blend. I let them defrost for about a half hour on the countertop before I mixed them in.
  • 1/2 cup shredded cheese. The recipe calls for a full cup, but I thought that was too much. Also the recipe calls for cheddar, but I didn’t have cheddar so I used Havarti with dill.

The recipe also called for bacon, but since we were going to eat it with steak, I left that out.

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, beat eggs.
  2. Mix in the Bisquick, melted butter, and milk. Stir until blended.
  3. Add the vegetables and stir well.
  4. Pour the mixture into a lightly greased pie pan. (I used olive oil spray to spray the bottom of the pan before I poured the mixture in.)
  5. Sprinkle the cheese over the top of the mixture.
  6. Bake for 30 to 45 minutes at 350°F. Quiche is done when it begins to brown and crack along the top.
  7. Eat while hot.

The magic of this recipe is that the Bisquick automatically creates its own crust. And, between the olive oil spray and the butter in the mix, it did not stick to my glass pie pan. It made a nice meal.

Alex’s Favorite Snack

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Edamame.

Alex the Bird absolutely loves edamame — soy bean pods. I buy them frozen at the local Safeway Supermarket and keep them in the freezer. Every few days, I put a handful into a bowl, add a splash of water, cover the bowl, and put it in the microwave for 5 minutes on high. Ten minutes later (cooking time plus sitting time), they’re done. I let them cool on the counter top and then drain all the water and stick the bowl in the fridge.

Alex Eats EdamameWhen Alex is good — which is pretty often, I’m glad to say — I give him a few edamame pods as a treat. I usually give it to him when he’s standing on the divider between our two kitchen sinks (see photo) or in his cage — I really hate cleaning the shells up off the floor. He holds a pod in one foot while he uses his beak to coax out one of the beans. He peels the skin off the bean, mushes the bean a little with his mouth, and swallows it. Sometimes I think he swallows the bean whole. He can eat the two or three beans in a pod very quickly — faster than many people I know. And then he drops the empty shell and looks at me, waiting for another one.

Sometimes I take the edamame beans and stuff them with shredded paper into one of Alex’s cage-like puzzle toys. Although he used to pull out all the paper to find and eat the beans, he’s now learned how to get just the beans out, leaving most of the paper behind. I challenge him by stuffing as much paper as I can around the beans and he still amazes me by retrieving just the beans. Obviously, I need practice.

I think that if I put 100 beans in front of him, he’d eat them all. He really loves them. But then he’d get sick. And a sick parrot is not something I ever want to deal with.

African Grey, parrot, edamame

Gazpacho

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A nice summer soup.

GazpachoMike is a huge fan of gazpacho, a tomato-based, chilled vegetable soup. We’ve tried a bunch of recipes and, as usual, have come up with our own variation. I just made a batch today; we’ll have it for dinner tonight.

Ingredients:

  • 4 large ripe tomatoes
  • 2 medium cucumber
  • 1 medium pepper. Most people use green peppers, but I prefer yellow or orange, which have a milder flavor and don’t make me burp peppers for the next six hours. Today we had 1/2 of each leftover from another meal, so that’s what I used.
  • 4 green onions. If you like a sharper onion flavor, use 1 small onion or 1 medium sweet onion.
  • 2 cloves garlic
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar. Mike really likes b-vinegar.
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1/8 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
  • Tabasco (if desired) to taste. We don’t use this; we prefer a mello gazpacho.

Preparation Instructions:

  1. Chop the first 4 ingredients. Put half of each in a blender or food processor (we use a blender) and the other half in a mixing bowl.
  2. Add remaining ingredients to the blender or food processor.
  3. Puree until very smooth. The mixture should have a pinkish color.
  4. Add pureed mixture to mixing bowl with chopped ingredients. Mix well.
  5. Cover and refrigerate for at least two hours but not more than 3 days.
  6. Enjoy cold.

And if you see a gazpacho recipe that looks good to you but includes bread and water, just omit the bread and water. (The idea of including soaked bread in a soup really grosses me out.) As you’ll see, you don’t need bread to make the soup hearty and delicious.

New York Egg Cream

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A refreshing and simple drink for the whole family.

When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, my grandparents had a bakery in our home town of Cresskill. Across the street was a soda fountain named Dave’s — a place where you could go in for a soda or ice cream or ice cream soda or a variety other things. The counter was formica — I seem to recall it being yellow — and there were swivel stools in front of it. We’d go in with some loose change and walk out with whatever we could afford.

One of my favorite soda fountain drinks was something Dave called a “Gizmo.” It was a mixture of chocolate milk and seltzer. Many years later, I learned the real name for this beverage: an egg cream.

Egg creams are hard to get outside the New York area. They’re probably hard to get inside the New York area these days, too. After all, soda fountains are disappearing, replaced with fast food joints or vending machines. You can’t get an egg cream in a vending machine.

The recipe is easy:

  • 1 part milk
  • 1 part seltzer
  • generous helping of chocolate syrup

Take the milk and the chocolate syrup and mix it together to make a very dark chocolate milk. While still stirring (and this is important) slowly add the seltzer. If you stir just right, it won’t overflow the glass. Drink with a a straw.

A real New York egg cream calls for U-Bet chocolate syrup. I don’t think that’s available around here and, even if it was, I wouldn’t buy it. I never did like U-Bet. I prefer Hershey’s syrup, in the plastic squeeze bottle. Don’t get the “light” version — it’s terrible.

I actually keep straws on hand at home just for drinking egg creams.

I’m having one now. Quite refreshing.

I’m not sure where the name egg cream comes from. Someone told me that they used to put eggs in this drink. I can’t imagine that. I think it might have something to do with the creamy top that appears when you make it just right.

Chopsticks

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Use ’em or lose ’em.

The area we lived in in New Jersey had a huge Asian population — and that means lots of good Asian restaurants: Chinese, Japanese, Korean — they were all within 10 miles of our home. In those days, we ate out several times a week and would usually hit one Asian restaurant a week.

I got very good at eating with chopsticks. I’d learned way back when, in Boston on a trip with my friend and her father. We were sixteen and her father was there on business. We stayed in a suite near the Prudential building and would wander around the city while her father was at work. One night, he took us to dinner at Benihana. That’s the touristy teppanyaki steakhouse chain. They handed chopsticks all around the table, but by the end of the meal, I was the only one still using them. Even back then I realized that you couldn’t learn something without trying.

Through the years, I got lots of practice. Whenever I went to a restaurant with a fork and a pair of chopsticks, I’d use the chopsticks. This was good, because sometimes I’d go to a restaurant where the fork was missing. Like when I worked for the New York City Comptroller’s Office right after graduating from college. My partner was Chinese, originally from Hong Kong, and on payday, we’d go to Chinatown for lunch. Lucille (my partner) didn’t go to the Chinese restaurants where the tourists went. She went where the Chinese people went. I was usually the only non-Asian in the restaurant. She’d order food and I’d eat it. Sometimes, she didn’t tell me what I was eating until after I’d had some, afraid that I wouldn’t try it if I knew what it was. But I’ll try just about anything once. She brought pigeon for lunch one day and I even tried some of that. I didn’t eat the head or the feet, both of which were still attached. I do recall asking later if it was a local pigeon — New York has lots of pigeons. It wasn’t.

Lucille used to say that every time you try something new, you add an extra day to your life. It’s something that has stuck with me since those days long ago.

Now I live in Wickenburg and chopsticks are difficult — if not downright impossible — to find. And on the rare occasion when I do eat in an Asian restaurant — usually on trips down to Phoenix or up to Prescott or out to San Francisco or New York — I’ve discovered that my chopstick skills have deteriorated. I need more practice.

I got some the other day at the Kona Grill in Scottsdale. I’d gone “down the hill” on some errands: buy food for Alex the Bird, see a lawyer, visit a jeweler, and see a doctor. Mike had some birthday gifts to exchange and the Scottsdale Fashion Center mall had all the stores he needed to hit. So we met there when I was done with my errands. By that time, I was starved — I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Our first stop was the Kona Grill.

Understand that I’m not a big fan of chain restaurants. They tend to deliver mediocrity. This is especially apparent in the low-end restaurants — the ones where you can get a meal for under $10. I truly believe that places like Country Kitchen, for example, serve prepared foods that they heat up when you order it. Food that was prepared in some big factory and quick frozen or vacuum-packed before being shipped to the local restaurant.

Kona Grill is a chain, but it’s one that we’ll eat in. So are P.F. Chang’s, Macaroni Grill, and Outback Steakhouse. The trouble is, all the new restaurants going up are part of a chain. There are so few independent restaurants. When you find a good one (which is not easy in a place likek Phoenix), you should eat there regularly, just to preserve it. Someday soon, there won’t be any independents left.

We arrived at Kona Grill at happy hour. Mike and I aren’t big drinkers, but the happy hour menu did include half-price selected appetizers, pizzas, and sushi. So we settled at a high-top in the bar, ordered some appetizers and sushi and token drinks, and prepared for a feeding frenzy.

They gave us chopsticks, probably because we ordered sushi. Now I’ve never been to Japan, but my understanding is that in Japan, sushi is “finger food.” That is, you eat it with your hands. (If you’ve been to Japan or live in Japan now and can set me straight on this, please do use the comments link — I’m genuinely curious.) I usually use chopsticks — mostly to get practice — but I’ll use my fingers when I eat big sushi — you know, like futomaki — that you can’t stuff into your mouth at one go. I’ve found that my chopstick skills are no longer sufficient to hold together half a piece of sushi after I’ve bitten into it. (It could also be the sushi chef’s rolling skills.)

Anyway, we enjoyed a good, cheap meal and got our chopstick practice. We also got a chance to walk around a big mall that wasn’t crowded with 15-year-old, tattooed kids on cell phones.

Next week, I’ll be in Mountain View, CA with my editor, Megg. She’s already asked what kind of food I like so she can buy me dinner on the publisher. I’m hoping to get some more chopstick practice then.