Joyful Abode

I’d never made a quiche before, and I have NO IDEA why… they’re so easy and delicious. I imagine that I’ll be making them more frequently from now on!

We had three more zucchinis that were ready to eat, so I decided to make a quiche. I started with my flaky pastry crust recipe, which makes a double crust.  Instead of doing a “lid” on one quiche though, I decided to make two lidless pies and freeze one for later.

Each pie started with a sprinkle of grated cheese (the 4 cheese Mexican blend, but you can use whatever you’d like). Then a few layers of thinly sliced zucchini on top (salt and seasonings should go here… cumin would be really nice, or nutmeg), followed by a little more cheese.

Then, I cracked 4 eggs for each quiche into a measuring cup, and filled it with milk until it was to the 2 cup mark (I guess about a cup of milk or so). Beat, and pour over the pie slowly, letting it settle in between everything.

Bake for about an hour (I think it was more like 50 minutes) at 400 degrees, then let cool so everything “sets.”

We ate most of one for dinner, and finished it, cold, for breakfast/lunch the next day… good thing I wrapped the other in tin foil and safely tucked it in the freezer!

Look at the yummy layers!

As you might or might not have noticed, I am sort of re-vamping the site a LITTLE bit… basically, I’m in the process of making a new front page (an intermediate version is up now at the Joyful Abode home page).

I’m also thinking about developing a Q&A page… not a FAQ, because I can’t look at “FAQ” without trying to pronounce it “fack.” Anyway, I don’t know what to put on it.

So what questions do you have for me?

• Questions about me/my little family?
• Questions about my business and other jobs?
• Questions about military life?
• Questions about my education?
• Questions about Joyful Abode or the website in general?
• Anything you’ve kind of been wondering but aren’t sure about?
• Anything you think someone new to Joyful Abode would need to know?

Thanks in advance!

Seriously, these are so delicious and incredibly easy.

While I make my chocolate cake from scratch, my scratch-made chocolate waffles have never quite measured up to these. My mother was always throwing random stuff into the waffle iron when we girls were little. Two of my favorites were devil’s food waffles and cornbread waffles. We recently whipped up these chocolate ones.

You just mix up devil’s food cake mix as directed on the box, and use that as your waffle batter.

We had these for breakfast with mounds of fresh honeydew and cantaloupe, but they’re also delicious for dessert along with vanilla ice cream and/or whipped cream, and fruit.

We froze the leftovers in baggies (2 waffles per bag). They reheat wonderfully… just microwave them for 40 seconds or so and they’re all warm and soft again. Or you could toast them if that’s more your style, but I’d go with a toaster oven rather than a conventional toaster, because they ARE soft and could fall apart in your toaster.

Catherine, correct me if I’m wrong… but I think this is how it went.

The first time I met my dear friend Catherine, she had just moved into my hall (I was a Resident Assistant) as a freshman in college. She knew that there was a no-hotplate rule in our residence hall, and concerned, asked me if blenders were allowed. She told me she was addicted to making smoothies and REALLY hoped that blenders were okay to have in the dorm. They were, and she was happy.

Until she realized that her roomie was a messy athlete who never washed her stinky work-out/practice clothes. But that’s another story.

Anyway, Catherine, I thought of you while I zipped up this smoothie in the blender!

• 1 and 1/2 cups vanilla yogurt
• 2 cups frozen fruit (I used strawberries)
• 1/2 cup frozen juice (I used this juice pop thing) or you can just use some juice and some ice
• 1 and 1/2 cups fresh fruit (I used cantaloupe)

Throw stuff into the blender and blend it.

For me, the cantaloupe was an afterthought, or I could’ve blended it all at once. But I didn’t…

Yum!  I added a little slice of melon to the guy’s glass, to be cute. But he didn’t notice or if he did, he didn’t say anything. So sad. But he did really like the smoothie.

Enjoy! Try switching up the fruits, or using ice cream instead of yogurt for a more milkshake-y texture and flavor.

We’ve harvested quite a few zucchinis from our garden by now, and thoroughly enjoyed each one. I’m LOVING the fact that I can go out into the back yard and pluck dinner off of a plant we’ve nurtured since it was a seedling.

The first garden-zucchini-laden meal we’ve had this summer was a vegetable fried rice. I read a bunch of different techniques for making fried rice online, watched some videos, and branched off with my own mix of methods.

First though, Let me show you my gorgeous zucchini.

Such creamy dense flesh…

Now, for the fried rice, you need some leftover white rice… it needs to be leftover, evidently, because hot just-cooked rice is too moist or something, and your fried rice will turn out mushy and gross.

But we’re going to start by cooking/heating the veggies over medium high heat. I used my zucchini, chopped up, a can of mung bean sprouts (rinsed and drained), a can of bamboo (also rinsed and drained), and baby corn (rinsed and drained as well).

Stir fry them in a couple tablespoons of veggie oil.  Then, sprinkle in some oyster sauce and soy sauce. Don’t smell/taste the oyster sauce though… it’ll make you not want to use it, but if you want “authentic” flavor, you need to (and it’ll taste good once everything is finished.)

Pour in some beaten eggs (I used three).

And stir with a spatula, moving constantly, until the egg is cooked.

Now add in your rice, lower the heat to medium or medium-low, and stir until heated through. Add more soy sauce and oyster sauce, too.

Add a sprinkle of sesame seeds, and you’re done!

Yum! We enjoyed it with Chinese chopsticks I bought in TaiZhou (Shanghai shops were full of highly decorated pointy Japanese chopsticks for the tourists. hehe).

We had extra rice, so the next day for lunch, I whipped up another version, this time using a peas-carrots-greenbeans-corn frozen veggie mix. Also very tasty.

The next zucchini we harvested wasn’t cooked at all… we enjoyed it raw, on a veggie platter with carrots, radishes, and blanched asparagus.

This was the perfect dinner for munching while watching Lost. We’re in the middle of the third season now, and when a new DVD comes in our mailbox, we look at each other and say, “Are you curious?” “Yes, I’m curious.” “Me too.” and then we go watch… we can’t help it! Please, no spoilers.

They’re ready, and in the shop! The baby is hanging from the tailhook of the jet, which is appropriate since the T-45 is the plane used to learn how to land on carriers with the arresting hook.

Woo!

I like the way they turned out, but what do you think?

Remember to use coupon code BLOGFRIEND to get 15% off of your shop purchase!

First of all, there were some ERRORs involved in this… the cheese didn’t mix in very well with the rest of the stuff (I added it at the “raisin beep” on my bread machine), which resulted in a lot of it being on top and bubbling over, burning in the machine. Also, it seems to be in clumps in the bread rather than streaked throughout…

So next time, I will probably just make the dough in the machine or in my kitchenaid mixer, then add the cheese manually, let it rise again, and bake it in the oven. (Feel free to suggest temperature/times because I don’t know!) It could be regular bread-shaped, or as dinner rolls or breadsticks or whatever… mmm.

Here’s the recipe, which I adapted from a basic bread recipe. (T. is tablespoon, t. is teaspoon)

• 1 1/3 cups water
• 1 T. butter
• 2 T. cream cheese
• 1/2 t. salt
• 1 T. sugar
• 1/2 t. Italian seasoning
• 1 t. dried basil
• 2 t.minced garlic
• 4 cups all-purpose flour, sifted (you can substitute 1 cup for whole wheat flour if you want)
• 1 T. active dry yeast
• 3 cups of any kind of shredded cheese (I used half cheddar and half Mexican mixed)

Add everything (except the shredded cheese) to your bread machine in the recommended order, and let it do its thing. Add the cheese at the “raisin beep” … and hope yours mixes in better than mine did. I wonder if you’re supposed to take the dough out and mix it in yourself… maybe the machine isn’t supposed to do the mixing at that stage? Input?

Then let it bake. Cool, then slice. If you try to slice it when it’s hot, you’ll get frustrated, I promise.

Sooooo delicious! But see how the cheese kind of stayed mostly on one side?It would’ve been nice if it were more marbled. VERY good garlicky flavor though.

Edited to add: I just looked at the user’s manual for this machine (which my mom sent me via PDF), and you’re not supposed to have to take the dough out at any stage… the “raisin beep” tells you to add stuff, and it’s supposed to knead in itself. So I did what I was supposed to… the machine just couldn’t handle such tasty bread I guess.

This is how the garden looked a few days ago… lots and lots of monkey grass, a weird bush thing on the left (which was actually 3 separate plants), and a bunch of weeds.

So we pulled up a lot of the monkey grass, that ugly bush, and all the weeds.

And put in lots of yummy sun-loving plants… 2 lantana plants, 2 sun coleuses, lots of salvia and 5 gerbera daisies. We surrounded everything with cedar mulch and soaked it really really well.

I think in about a month, everything will be much fluffier and happier, and it’ll start looking nice.  But for now, it’s still a vast improvement. (That ugly black thing covers the water meter. Why couldn’t they put that somewhere else?) The two lantana plants are cut off in this photo, but this is the basic idea…

Zora helped us, too. Check out her bling.

I love eggplant parmesan, when it’s done correctly! I’m not saying my way is “THE Right Way” but it works pretty well for me… what I DON’T like in an eggplant parmesan is bitterness or too-tough-ness due to undercooked eggplant. Soggy breading is also a downer.

So here’s how I avoid those pitfalls.

First, bitterness. What I always knew to be “the way” to take bitterness out of the eggplant was to sprinkle it with kosher salt to draw out a lot of the bitter juices… wait about 20 minutes, then rinse off and pat dry.

But in my research for this article on blanching (which I wrote to be published at StartCooking.com), I learned that blanching can also take bitterness out of things, like broccoli rabe.

It also starts the cooking process for things like broccoli and cauliflower… that you might want to throw into a stir-fry but don’t want to stir-fry forever (because it’ll get limp and soak up a lot of oil). So I decided to blanch my eggplant slices to combat too-toughness from undercooking AND sogginess from over-cooking in the breading.

I had read on a chart that for 3/4 inch slices, you should blanch them for 3 minutes, but I think that was a little too long. I’d probably do 1.5 to 2 minutes next time.

Anyway, you throw them in the boiling water for a couple minutes, then into ice water to stop the cooking.

(Here, I’m pushing the slices into the boiling water with my tongs.)

The skin kind of shriveled, but that wasn’t an issue in the final product.

Then I dried the slices off, and coated them in flour…

Then dipped them in an egg wash followed by Italian breadcrumbs (oops! Didn’t take pictures of those.) Then they go into the pre-warmed pan with pre-warmed olive oil. The ones in the back here have obviously already been flipped.

When they’re all brown and delicious looking, throw them into a baking dish with a little spaghetti sauce and mozzarella cheese on top. I only put a tiny bit of sauce (again, to combat the soggy eggplant parmesan problem). I can always add more sauce later on my dish, you know? Anyway…

Then stick the whole thing in a warm oven until the cheese melts. And you’ve got eggplant Parmesan! I made some of that whole wheat pasta too, and it was really nice together.