Aw Crap, I Just Broke A Dozen Eggs!

While sifting through our clutter the other day, Marcy found an Olive Garden gift card the she had tucked away and forgotten about.  Yay, we get to go out for Valentines Day!  Now, some snooty people see Olive Garden as a culinary joke but we like the food and the hospitality.  Our very first visit to the O.G. was on opening day of their original Colerain Ave location.  We had just finished pushing Marcy's broken down Oldsmobile Cutlass out of traffic and we were hot and perturbed, a little greasy and a lotta hungry.  To kill time while waiting for help to arrive we went into this new place to check it out.  We asked if there was a dress code, told them our car had broken down, and they made us feel so welcome.  We remain loyal, and enjoyed dinner at their new location.

Dinner was good and the company was better.  Marcy and I have shared over a quarter-century's worth of Valentines Days, so we don't have to chatter like people who have just met.  Instead, we relaxed, enjoyed the friendly service, pretended we were considering some new menu items but settled on our familiar favorites.  Mmm, food prepared by someone else, served by a nice person on dishes that someone else would carry off and wash out of our sight.  No TV, no kids.  Eye contact and smiles.  We comment on the good food and service.  We pull out some old memories..."Remember the first time we...", savor them and put them away for next time.  Sometimes we speculate on a good future together:  roaming America in an RV, visiting friends & family, writing for travel magazines.  At last we're full and still have plenty of leftovers to box up.  We didn't want to go to Kroger hungry.

We're supposed to get another snowstorm overnight so we wanted to be fully stocked up.  We had about two-thirds of this month's food stamps left, plus Marcy also found a Kroger gift card tucked away and forgotten.  Those proverbial safe places of hers!  Food stamps for food, gift card for detergent & shampoo & such.  We ran into three different neighbors while shopping.  The common theme in the conversations:  we're all now grandparents or grandparents-to-be, hoping that our kids handle it OK.  Not many bargains to be found today, but we used a few coupons.  Pay up, pack up, and go home.  Carrying in the bags, one slipped from my grasp and landed on the kitchen floor.  The eggs of course.  I opened the carton to find every single shell cracked, but all the carton contained all the goop.  Marcy asked if I was going to throw them away and I replied with a quote from my dad:  "Something I can't stand is waste!"  I was tired and the last thing I wanted was to spend an hour cooking, but fate had brought me a challenge.  I set the oven to 375, pulled a packaged pie crust dough out of the freezer and finished carrying in and putting away the rest of the groceries.  Time to make quiche.

Real men don't eat quiche?  Bull!  It's a bacon, egg, and cheese pie, and forget about macho posturing anyway.  I defrosted the roll of frozen pie crust dough in the microwave for two minutes even though the package said not to.  I did let get it too warm and that made it difficult to unroll into my porcelain dish.  It kind of clumped up and tore in places but guess what - it's just raw dough, so I smushed it into place.  Next, I dripped a little of the raw egg white out of the carton into the pie shell and smeared it around to coat it, then took a fork and poked a bunch of holes around the bottom.  Next I retrieved my trusty bag of bacon pieces from the freezer and spread about three big handfuls of pieces evenly across the bottom of the pie shell.  Then I got a bag of shredded cheddar cheese (on sale 2 for $5 at Kroger!) from the deli drawer and put a nice layer over the bacon.  So far so good, time to make the egg mixture.  I got my hemispherical Pyrex bowl and put in 2 cups of 2% milk and microwaved it for 2 minutes to warm it a bit.  Then I poured in 4 eggs from the mess in the carton, careful to catch the shell fragments.  I put in a good shake of coarse ground black pepper, some seasoned salt (not much, this is a healthy quiche, haha), and my secret ingredient:  I use whole nutmeg ( it costs no more than ground) and grate it on the fine section of my regular old kitchen shredder (I hate unnecessary fancy tools).  It smells so good when you grate it!  I beat this mixture with a fork and poured it gently into the shell so I don't disturb the layers of bacon & cheese.  Into the oven, timer set for 40 minutes.  That's 4 eggs down, 8 to go.

I looked in the fridge and saw the container of rice left over from the souvlaki and I considered fried rice.  I had some leftover mixed vegetables I could throw in too, but I decided against it because I have no onions.  Instead, I searched the freezer for a loaf of Cinnamon Raisin bread from Panera.  Hats off to Panera for donating their leftovers at the end of each day.  We really appreciate their product quality and their community involvement.  After removing the wire twist tie, the bread went into the microwave for a few minutes to defrost.  I turned the burner under my cast iron skillet on medium and scooped some butter in to melt.  In the meantime I poured the rest of the egg mess, minus shells, into the same pyrex bowl used previously, added a bit of milk, a big shake of cinnamon, and beat it with my fork.  By this time the bread was warm enough for me to peel off slices, dunk them in egg, and lay them in the skillet to brown.  Peel, dunk, lay, wait, check, flip, wait, flip & turn for even cooking, pile on a plate.  Eventually the egg mixture was gone and I had a nicely piled plate of Cinnamon Raisin French Toast.  The oven timer beeped and I pulled out the quiche, stuck a knife in the middle and it came out clean, which means it's done.  I stuck the french toast in ziploc bags, 2 per bag, and came up with 7 servings now waiting ready in the freezer.  Here is what the quiche looked like.

I washed the dishes and finally sat down to eat (again) and type up this post.  Stop by again, and tell all your friends and enemies to stop by too.