All posts in breakfast

The Perfect Crustless Quiche

02.28.12 // Comments:15

February 17 was a big day for my family this year. Not only was it my mom’s birthday, but it also was the first time they came to visit Nashville. Ever! And while I’ve been wanting my parents to visit ever since I first moved last February, I’ll be the first to admit that in the valley of a few weeks ago, it felt a little impossible. So I’m thankful to say that in fact, we had a busy four days, filled with many moments where I’d look at Tim and say, I’m not in pain!, amidst marathons of Downton Abbey, antiquing in Franklin, a visit to the gym and grabbing them Olive & Sinclair chocolate-dipped popsicles at Hot and Cold. It all started when they arrived early Friday morning, having braved a 6 AM flight to get here, and so we had a birthday breakfast waiting—and the star of that show was this quiche.

Here are the reasons I like this quiche: 1) You don’t have to make a pie crust. It’s not that I have anything against pie crust (especially not this foolproof one!); it’s just that sometimes, say the weekend where you’re already making two other pies, one pumpkin and one lemon meringue, you don’t feel like another. And even sans crust, I love how this quiche holds together beautifully, firm and solid, like an egg bake.

2) It’s a meal in itself. It’s true this quiche was our breakfast, alongside sprouted cinnamon raisin English muffins and fruit, but it could just as easily be lunch or dinner, maybe with greens on the side.

3. It is the perfect blend of flavors. I hesitate to use the word perfect here, mostly because it feels a little pushy amidst a sea of competing opinions for the best this or the most delicious that, but I’m doing it anyway because, objectively, this quiche was so good, everyone had seconds, and the one small piece that was leftover after the five of us ate it was gone the next morning. And also, you know how sometimes you cook a new recipe and all you think is how it’s missing something? This quiche was the exact opposite: it was precisely as it should be, from the dispersion of spinach and chard to the blend of three different cheeses.

But beyond that, perhaps the most convincing argument, if you want to know the truth, is that my mom, the birthday girl herself, has asked me for this quiche recipe three times, and something like that hasn’t happened since the Great Pot Roast of 2010. After that kind of ringing endorsement, I don’t know what else to say but that here, I bring you, Mom and everyone:

our new favorite crustless quiche!
Read more…

Comments:15 Click here to comment! Categories: breakfast, pie

Sprouted Coconut Cocoa Banana Muffins

11.22.11 // Comments:22

The first week Tim and I got back to Nashville, while we settled into a regular rhythm of making meals and paying bills and sharing a home office together, I began tackling the to-do list that follows a wedding. There were thank-you notes to write, bank accounts to merge, a pretty major name change to take care of—at the DMV, the social security office, with basically every account I have on record anywhere—and even looking back now, with it all done and finished and behind me, I can tell you there were definite low points (i.e., AT&T: Why is it so hard to get two existing users spun off into a new account? WHY?) and definite high points (i.e., these muffins).

I’ve always been the kind of girl to crave a couple hours alone in the kitchen. When I used to work a regular office job, I’d often come home at the end of the day, tired and not really wanting to go anywhere, and I’d comfort myself with cooking (eventually with my camera and you guys to join me, and thus this blog was born). Sometimes I’d play music or watch an online TV show in the background. Sometimes I’d talk to myself out loud. What mattered was the way it felt like downtime—cooking doesn’t always feel like that.

If you talked to our friend Corri, for example, who came over for dinner last week, he could tell you what a different kind of cooking looks like. He could tell you about walking into a house and seeing both cooks still in the kitchen, green beans on the stove, chicken in the oven, flour all over the counters, and about hearing the sad, sad story of two back-to-back attempts to remake macarons and failing. At some point during our meal, I’m pretty sure I was apologizing to him for apologizing, that’s how bad things had gotten in my mind—and I do mean in my mind because the reality was our meal was perfectly good, thanks to that very capable man I married—but rather than loving my time in the kitchen and my contributions to what we were eating, I had been frustrated by it, by how my results weren’t matching my expectations.

I think that’s part of the difference between baking for leisure and baking for a purpose, and I think that’s what made these muffins such a highlight of our first week of Nashville married life.

There were a lot of things I was doing for a purpose that week: waiting for two hours at the DMV, mailing cards, sitting down with Tim to plan our monthly budget—but baking these muffins? That was different.

Because when you’re baking one morning in your pajamas while your husband works in the next room, you can talk to yourself, you can spill flour, you can burn something—you’ve freed yourself to. But when you bake for company or for a business or for the first time at a Thanksgiving dinner with all your family, you constrain yourself into thinking something must be how it must be and anything else is disaster. Or at least I do that.

These muffins didn’t have to be anything special, just a way to use up ingredients and a way to relax for a few afternoon hours. Heaven knows, Tim and I would eat them regardless of how they ended up tasting. I found the original recipe online, where it came with high reviews, and I improvised ingredients with what we had (hello, huge sale on sprouted wheat flour at Whole Foods!) and ingredients I wanted to add.

When I brought one to Tim, sliced and buttered and still steaming hot, it was just a happy bonus that we liked them—not too sweet, the perfect vehicle for a little jam or honey, yet chocolatey and cakey and a nice morning treat.

And so it was these sprouted coconut cocoa banana muffins that, set beneath a glass bowl, first graced our dining room table, the dining room table that Tim built, and made our first week together in our first house feel a little more special, a little more right, a little more like home.

Guest Post from Carrie of Deliciously Organic!

10.19.11 // Comments:6

(I’m married, can you believe it?!? While I’m away on my honeymoon, sweet Carrie from Deliciously Organic volunteered to tell you a little bit of her story here. I love Carrie’s perspective on food and I love getting to feature her. Read more about her at DeliciouslyOrganic.net.)

If you had two girls, under the age of two, and your husband, a fighter pilot, was flying cover during a war in Iraq, would you be thinking about converting your diet to organic, whole foods? I wasn’t. My life had enough stress without another distraction. But, that’s what happened in 2003.

Two years earlier, after the birth of my second daughter, I began having daily migraines. I was 25. As migraines often are, they were both baffling and debilitating. They started with the birth of my first daughter, but were infrequent and not as severe. I often had to lie down in a quiet dark room, which was almost impossible with toddlers to care for.

I was taking several medications to manage the pain just to get through the day. They continued, though, four or more a week. After two years of struggle, my neurologist suggested adding yet another daily medication to my prescription regimen, a treatment that wasn’t working anyway. I kindly rejected her suggestion and drove home thinking: There must be another way.

The same day I saw my neurologist, a tiny newsletter article caught my eye while going through the mail. It was about the benefits of organic foods. I knew migraines could be related to diet, so I wondered if changing to organic foods might help. I was at the end of my rope and willing to try something different.

eggs in a bowl

At the time, I was eating lots of vegetables to lose the last 10 pounds of baby weight. I replaced my lettuce with organic. It was my first step. I picked lettuce because it was the food I ate the most of. Within a week I noticed a significant difference. The frequency of my migraines decreased, and it was now easier to care of my kids. I didn’t need any more encouragement. I next switched all produce to organic with the intent of increasing the amount of pure and untreated food in my diet and decreasing my pesticide intake. As I dug deeper and learned more, I continued making changes to my pantry and refrigerator. Over the next year and a half, I converted my family’s diet to whole, unprocessed, organic ingredients.

As I began using organic, unprocessed ingredients, I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I had a hard time finding recipes that were equivalent in flavor to what we were accustomed to. Nevertheless, I avoided such ingredients as white sugar, white flour, and partially hydrogenated anything. Recipes using whole grains were especially challenging. We weren’t ready to leave the world of paninis, pasta, and pizza, but just substituting ingredients didn’t exactly work out. As my husband likes to say, we ate some terrible pancakes during the transition. This was disheartening because I had grown up with a great love for cooking that I inherited from the women of my family.

I’m blessed and grateful to be a part of a line of wonderful cooks going back generations in Louisiana. From this rich, generational heritage I discovered the bedrock value of simple, delicious recipes paired with creativity and boldness in presentation. I decided that if we were going to eat organic dishes they were going to taste every bit as delicious as the ones I used before.

Over time, I shared with my friends and family how I overcame my health problems. And then I told others. Many were earnestly interested in learning more or in making changes to their own diets. I continued to tell my story, share my adapted recipes, and give encouragement through my blog, Deliciously Organic, and my recently published cookbook, Deliciously Organic.

Through organic, unprocessed food our family of four was able to overcome: severe asthma, eczema, IBS, and migraines. No drugs. Just good, natural, real food.

If organic, whole foods are something you’ve thought about I encourage you to give it a try. I hope you’ll discover, as I have, that eating food direct from the source of the earth uninterrupted by fewer chemicals and less processing is not only perfectly doable and beneficial but also perfectly delicious! And don’t be surprised when your friends and the whole family (including the kids) say, a I can’t believe this is organic. It’s delicious!

breakfast bake

This is my favorite dish to serve when guests come to visit. I want something that doesn’t pull me away from my guests, but is good enough to make them want more. The beauty of this dish is that you can make it ahead of time. This way, instead slaving over a hot stove in a kitchen dusted in flour and filled with dirty mixing bowls, you merely pop this baby in the oven and visit with your guests.

Accompany this with fresh fruit, coffee, and maybe milk for the kids. It’s filling, so no one will be itching for a snack an hour later.

breakfast bake

Bacon, Tomato, and Cheddar Breakfast Bake
If you buy from good sources of eggs, butter and bacon (organic and grass-fed or pastured) they provide healthy amounts of omega-3 fatty acids and linoleic acid. Sourdough made the old-fashioned or artisan way contains probiotics that are beneficial to the digestive system. Adapted from Food and Wine. Serves 8

Ingredients
1 pound sourdough (or a good gluten free bread), cut into 1-inch cubes
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
12 ounces smoked turkey bacon (*or bacon–nitrate-free and pastured, preferred)
1 large yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained and patted dry
4 cups cheddar cheese (**I prefer raw cheddar)
4 green onions, chopped
1 3/4 cups chicken stock
Celtic sea salt
6 large eggs

Directions
Preheat oven to 350º and adjust rack to middle position. In a large bowl, lightly toss the sourdough and butter and spread out on a large baking sheet. Bake for about 20-25 minutes until bread is golden.

Cook the bacon over medium-high heat in a large skillet until crisp. Transfer bacon to a plate lined with paper towels and pour out all fat except for 2 tablespoons.

Add the onion to the skillet and cook over medium heat until caramelized, about 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes and cook until almost all the liquid has evaporated, about 5 minutes.

Pour the onion mixture into a large bowl along with the bread, bacon, cheese, green onion, and stock. Stir until incorporated and season well with sea salt. Spread the mixture in a 9×13 baking dish and cover with parchment paper and then with foil (I do this so the foil doesn’t touch the food). (At this point, you can place the dish in the refrigerator and then bake in the morning.)

Bake for 30 minutes and then remove the foil and parchment. Bake an additional 15 minutes until the top is crispy. Remove the baking dish from the oven and, using a ladle, press 6 indentations into the bread mixture. Crack an egg into each indentation. Return the dish to the oven and bake for about 15 minutes until eggs are set, but yolks are still runny. Serve immediately.

Bio: Carrie Vitt is the author of the cookbook Deliciously Organic and publisher of popular food blog, Deliciously Organic. Carrie focuses on recipes using unprocessed, organic ingredients with vibrant flavors and simple dishes everyone will love. She is the wife of an Air Force Test Pilot and mother of two daughters.

notes from Shanna:
*Re: bacon: While I stick to a kosher diet, I agree with Carrie that if you’re going to use bacon, look for the highest quality (I like Applegate farms, for example).

**Re: raw cheddar: I love grabbing mine at Trader Joe’s.

Comments:6 Click here to comment! Categories: breakfast, guest post