Crustless Veggie Quiche

We eat a lot of eggs around here.  They are inexpensive, a good source of protein, and versatile.  The kids love hard-boiled eggs, egg salad, "sunny-side-up" eggs baked in a muffin tin, scrambled eggs, and omelets.  They also like a good cheesy quiche!

I will admit that I am particularly fond of quiche with a buttery, flaky crust.  However, I usually make it crustless for two reasons: 1) a good crust takes a lot of time to make, and 2) no crust means a lot fewer calories.  Despite being crustless, this recipe is still hearty and makes a fantastic main dish.  I usually serve it with a side salad ( I know, more veggies, right?!) 

Here's your ingredient list:
*2 cups of chopped veggies (we have used spinach, zucchini, broccoli, carrots, herbs, peppers, mushrooms, garlic, green onions, tomatoes, etc.  Use whatever's in your fridge)
*olive oil
*1 1/2 cups shredded cheese (we like medium cheddar, but mozzarella, swiss, colby jack, and a variety of other cheeses would do just as well)
*6 eggs, beaten
*1 cup whole milk
*salt and pepper
*small amount of butter

Now make your crustless quiche! 
1.  Heat some olive oil in a pan on the stove and saute your veggies until cooked.  This should just take a few minutes - you don't want mushy vegetables!
2.  Grease an 8-inch or 9-inch round cake pan with butter and spread all the sauteed veggies in the bottom of the pan. 
3.  Add the milk to your eggs and mix well.  Add salt and pepper and the shredded cheese and stir.
4.  Pour the egg/milk/cheese mixture over the veggies in the bottom of the pan.
5.  Bake your quiche in a 350 degree oven for 35 to 40 minutes.  The top of your quiche should be golden brown, and the center should be firm.

Then cut it into slices and serve.  I enjoy mine with salsa and a dollop of sour cream spooned on top.

(Reminder:  If you are on the Feingold Program, Stage One, there are certain produce items you need to avoid in this dish, such as peppers and tomatoes.  Otherwise, this recipe will fit the program just fine!) 

Cookie Dough You're Supposed to Eat

Today I've got an easy but very dangerous recipe to share with you all.  (dangerous to the waistline, anyway, and any slivers of self control that you might have remaining after making it!)  I call it "Cookie Dough You're Supposed to Eat" (fancy title, no?) because that's exactly what it is - chocolate chip cookie dough that you can eat without fear of getting sick from raw eggs.  (I'll wait a moment while you clean that drool off your chin...)

Okay, so here's what you need:

1/2 cup butter, softened

3/4 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tbsp. vanilla extract

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

4 to 6 tbsp. water

Take the butter and sugar and cream it together.  Stir in the flour, salt, vanilla extract, and chocolate chips.  Gradually add the water until you get a nice cookie-dough-like consistency.  Spread it into a container with a lid and put in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.  (This takes great self discipline, by the way.)

Then take it out of the fridge and help yourself to a few spoonfuls.  If necessary, hide in a closet or other kid-safe place so you don't have to share. 

If you're wondering how long this stuff lasts when kept in the refrigerator, I have no idea.  Mine has never made it past one day.  (No, I didn't eat the whole thing by myself!  At least not all in one sitting...)

Fits the Feingold Diet - Snack Time

Surprisingly, the transition to making most of our food from scratch has been a relatively easy one.  I am getting more comfortable in the kitchen, making bread twice a week as well as several snack foods.  These honey graham crackers are so yummy and easy to make.  I make up a double batch of the dough and freeze it in several rounds.  That way, I can just pull out a round to thaw when we need some more crackers and bake 'em up.  I'm not patient enough to roll out a perfect rectangle and cut graham crackers out that look like the ones you buy at the store.  So, I just scrounge around in my cookie cutter box and use whatever looks like fun at the time.  The Beast called the ones in the picture above "pirate cookies", because he said they looked like gold doubloons.  Whatever works, right?!  I've also made them in teddy bear shapes - giant teddy grahams.  Anyway, you can find the recipe I used here at Foodie Bride.  

Another favorite snack around here are animal crackers.  Only, ours never look like animals.  Sometimes they look like maple leaves or stars or hearts, but mostly the kids choose alphabet shapes for their cookies.  The Beast prefers only letters that exist in his name, the number 3, and the number 8.  The Spud likes to get as many cookies out of the dough as possible so there always ends up being a lot of sevens, lower case l's, and ones - ha!  Anyway, I mentioned this link before in a potpourri post, but you should definitely try this recipe for animal crackers.  Like the graham cracker dough, you can freeze this dough too in portions to be pulled out and thawed as needed.

However, the snack of choice around here are my homemade granola bars.  I found this recipe a year ago and have made it countless times since.  When made with a cup of chocolate chips (Feingold approved, of course) and a cup of shredded coconut, they are so good that you think you are cheating on granola bars with cookie bars or something.  I make 24 bars at a time, but they are always gone within a few days.  So good!

It's snack time!  Pick one to try with your family today.

Easy Breakfast: Happy Toast

 My Beast does not like cereal - he won't touch the stuff.  I've tried multiple varieties to entice him, but he's not taking the bait.  So much for simple breakfast.  However, that boy does love him some toast!  I often make him Egg-In-A-Hole to make his toast a little more nutritious and satisfying.  He calls it his happy toast. :)

It's incredibly easy to make.  You just need a good sturdy piece of bread (pictured is a slice of homemade honey wheat bread), an egg, and some butter.
How to Make Happy Toast:
1.  Melt some butter in a skillet over medium high heat (or on a griddle).
2.  Cut a shape out of the center of your bread slice with a small cookie cutter or drink glass.
3.  Place the bread slice on the melted butter in the skillet.
4.  Traditionally, Egg-In-A-Hole is made by cracking an egg directly into the hole in the bread.  My Beast likes scrambled eggs better; so I whisk up the egg first and then pour it into the hole.
5.  Hold bread in place with a spatula while egg cooks.  (You don't want the egg to run out all over the skillet!)
6.  When egg is mostly cooked, flip bread over to finish cooking the egg.
7.  Serve it up to your kiddo and look for a delighted smile at the fun shape in his toast.  This will confirm that you have just made. . .

HAPPY TOAST!   Here's to a wonderful Tuesday to all you readers out there!

Fits the Feingold Diet: Hawaiian Pizza Alfredo

Stage One of the Feingold Elimination Diet takes out a lot of fruits and veggies with salicylic acid since some kids can definitely have a sensitivity to these foods.  One of these foods is the tomato.  Oh, how we have missed the tomato!  Little did I realize how often I made Italian or Mexican dishes in the past, all of course showcasing the tomato.  A few weeks ago, the Drama Queen asked me if there was a way we could still have pizza.  "Well, honey, we can't have tomatoes right now," was my immediate answer, but then I thought, "Why not try making a white pizza?"  And here, my friends, is the result - hawaiian pizza alfredo.
For the dough, you need:
   1 cup lukewarm water
   1 TBS active dry yeast
   1 TBS oil
   1 tsp salt
   2 1/2 to 2 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
For the alfredo sauce, you need:
   4 TBS butter
   4 TBS unbleached all-purpose flour
   dash of salt
   dash of black pepper
   2 cups milk
   1/3 to 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
For the toppings, you need:
   1 can pineapple chunks, drained (save juice for cooking the chicken)
   1 lb cooked boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into small cubes and cooked in the pineapple juice until no longer pink
   2 - 3 cups of shredded cheese (I used colby jack, but mozzarella would work well too)

Okay, let's make a pizza! (well, two actually...)
     Make your pizza dough first by adding the yeast to the lukewarm water and letting it sit for a couple of minutes.  Then add in the oil, salt, and 1 1/4 cups flour and mix well.  Keep adding the rest of the flour until you have a soft dough that pulls away from the sides of the bowl.  Turn dough out onto a floured surface and knead for six minutes until dough is smooth/elastic.  Put your dough into a large greased bowl, turn the dough over to grease the dough, and cover bowl with towel.  Put the bowl in a warm place for the dough to rise until doubled (about 80 to 90 minutes).  (I turn my oven on its lowest setting for 10 seconds and then turn it off.  The inside of the oven is then the perfect temperature for allowing the dough to rise.)  Next, turn the dough out onto a floured surface and divide into two equal pieces.  Roll each piece into a smooth, even rectangle onto a cookie sheet.
     Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  While the oven is heating, make your alfredo sauce.  Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.  When completely melted, add the flour, salt, and pepper, and whisk until completely combined.  Pour in the milk and whisk constantly until the mixture starts to thicken.  Add the Parmesan cheese to your taste and stir to combine.  If sauce is too thick, add a little more milk.  Remove sauce from heat and immediately spread it over your pizza crusts.
     Sprinkle the shredded cheese over the alfredo sauce and then add the chunks of pineapple and chicken pieces evenly over the pizzas.  Bake in the oven at 425 degrees for 15 - 18 minutes, when the crust edge is lightly browned and cheese is melted.  (The center of the pizza may seem a little soft and underdone, but it is just the alfredo sauce).

Wait a few minutes, then slice up into squares and enjoy!
 

Fits the Feingold Diet: Crunchy Cheese Stars

So in case you haven't noticed, I have four kids ages six and under.  This means that their little tummies are often empty, and the little beggars will come around looking for snacks.  Pre-Feingold, I would give them cheese and crackers, carrot sticks, tortilla chips, granola bars, goldfish, popcorn, etc.  While some of those are still good options for the offspring, manufactured snacks such as goldfish, graham crackers, and chips are out unless I want to shell out a lot of money for the organic, no-additive variety.  The frugal me says that's not okay, especially when my kids chow through a little box of crackers in one day.  Just sayin'.  So I have been on the hunt for recipes to make my own crackers (thank you Pinterest!) with these three goals in mind:  1) it has to have healthy ingredients  2) it has to be simple and not-too-time-consuming  and 3) it has to be tasty enough that the kids will eat it willingly - otherwise, it's so not worth it!  And in my search, I found this recipe for cheese crackers.  Five ingredients.  Prep sounded simple.  Baking sounded easy.  Pictures looked awesome.  And so I tried them.  Here's how my version went down:

First, I made the dough.  It's really just like making a pie crust, with the addition of cheddar cheese of course.  I took 4 TBS of butter, cubed it up, and threw it in my food processor.  Next I shredded up the cheddar cheese to get 8 ounces (make sure to use Feingold approved cheese) and attempted to add that to my food processor.  It was then I realized that I did not own a full-size food processor, but rather a "mini", which was not large enough to fit this recipe.  What to do, what to do?  I moved the cubed butter and shredded cheese to my blender, added a cup of flour, 3/4 teaspoon of salt, and pressed the button.  What happened next was a whole lot of nothing.  The blades whirled merrily around, doing nothing.  I shook the blender and did a lot of very-unculinary-like things to try to make it work.  Nothing.  Still persevering, I transferred the whole chunky mix to my Kitchenaid mixer.  I put that baby on high until finally the mixture was incorporated enough to add the 2 TBS cold water.   I then transferred the cracker dough (finally!!) to plastic wrap, wrapped it up tightly, and put it in the fridge for thirty minutes.  (Or maybe it was an hour, I did get pretty caught up in some Facebooking and Pinteresting...)

The next step was to put the dough on a sheet of wax paper and roll it out as thin as you can.  Realizing that I only had parchment paper in my pantry, I decided it would work just as well and commenced with the rolling.  This takes some muscle work, ladies!  The paper kept shifting on the table, and my only solution was to get one knee up on the table to hold down the paper while I rolled that dough.  And no, I did not get you all a picture of that athletic feat!  Eventually, I got a nice, even, thin slab of dough to cut out my stars.  Our Ordinary Life creatively made her own cutters out of a soda can.  I happened to have a little star cutter that worked just fine.  I cut and cut and cut and cut and put all those cheesy stars on my cookie sheet, close together because they wouldn't spread at all.  And then I baked 'em for fifteen minutes at 350 degrees.

Results?  Crunchy, buttery, cheesy, tasty crackers that were more than just a little addictive!  I rerolled the remaining dough a few more times to cut out the rest of the stars and baked them too.  What crackers actually made it past the hungry crew lying in wait in the living room were stored in an airtight container for future snacking.  And despite all my struggles with evil kitchen appliances and slippery dough, I felt it was very worth it.

I did some math for you all to figure out the cost of making a batch of these yummy crackers.  I used average costs for butter, cheese, and flour, with the final total being about $1.50 for 12 ounces of delicious cheesiness.  That's a lot cheaper than Annie's Homegrown Cheddar Bunnies!

I made these crackers a second time this past week, using the mixer straight away instead of messing with the other appliances.  My dough was not as pliable that time around and was much harder to roll thin.  I think I'm going to have to spring for a full-size food processor.  Me thinks there will be many more recipes in my future using this machine...