Swiss Chard and Cheddar Quiche

On Thursday I made a swiss chard and cheddar quiche. The recipe came from the April 2011 issue of Real Simple. This was a very simple dish to make. All I had to do was chop an onion and the swiss chard and then soften them in a pan. I then dumped that into a bowl with some eggs, salt and pepper, and cheddar cheese. Toss all of that into a pie crust and bake for 45 minutes. Viola! Here's what I got:

I forgot to take a picture of it until we were sitting at the table eating it!

It came out of the oven looking awesome. Mark said it was perfect, and he loved it. He even saved some for lunch on Friday. However, I hated it. I hated it so much that I dug a beef burrito out of the freezer and had that for dinner. Is it cheating if I make a vegetarian meal but end up eating a beef burrito? I tried it so I think that counts.

Mark said the quiche was perfect and delicious and that the problem was with me and not the recipe. I had a problem with the texture of it. I found it to be entirely too squishy yet Mark assured me it was well cooked. His theory is I don't like baked eggs. There were three eggs baked into the quiche so I'm going with what he said.

If your into quiches then I think you will like this. Next week I'm falling back on tomato soup since it will still be cold outside. However, I dug up a new recipe for the soup, and I am looking forward to testing it out.

Spaghettit Puttanesca & Crostini

This weeks' vegetarian meal featured goat cheese and carmelized onion crostini and spaghetti puttanesca. Let's start with the crostini. The recipe for it came from the April/May 2011 issue of Fine Cooking. It looked like this:

I toasted the bread, smeared some goat cheese across it, and then topped it off with carmelized red onions. This is the easiest and yummiest appetizer ever! I could eat it all day long. Go make it now.

For dinner I decided to make Spaghetti Puttanesca. Now, in terms of learning more about vegetarian cooking, spaghettit seems like a cop out to me. But, I had a lot of the ingredients sitting around my house so it seemed like a good way to use them up. The recipe was from an issue of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food. It called for anchovies which I left out. Everything else was included. It's not an exciting picture. How exciting can spaghettit be? Capers, olives, and pieces of garlic are hidden down in there.



Overall, I never care to eat this dish again. While it did call for me to make my own pasta sauce (and I LOVE making pasta sauce from scratch), the sauce just didn't work for me. It used a tomato puree as its base. While I added salt, pepper, etc...to the puree it just didn't sit well with me. Maybe if I made this from scratch with tomatoes I had grown or pureed myself I would like it better.

I have no idea what I'll try next week. I will continue eating the goat cheese and bread. What's your favorite vegetarian dish?

Tabbouleh & Samosas

The vegetarian meal for the week was tabbouleh and samosas:

Mark did most of the work for this. He makes an excellent tabbouleh. All I had to do was go to Whole Foods and fry the samosas. Samosas can be filled with a variety of things including meats and beans. We typically fill ours with potatoes. There's also some jalapeno in there plus whatever Mark felt like tossing in. The samosas had a nice amount of spice to them.

None of this stuff is hard to make. I highly recommend getting a recipe for either of these things and giving it a whirl. We always make enough tabbouleh to have leftovers. The stuff is always better on day two when it's had time to hang out and marinate.

Chick Peas with Chard and Pan Roasted Tomatoes

Last year, when I turned 36, I decided to learn how to bake. I baked something once a week for the year. I was asked to blog about it and share pictures, and I didn't. When I turned 37 I decided that I would resolve to eat at least one vegetarian meal a week for a year. Again, I was aked to blog about it but didn't.

Now, four months in, I've changed my mind. Why? Well I'm taking pictures of most of what I make anyways. Also, this really would be a great way to chronicle what I do and learn from the whole experience. I've decided that I'll post something once a week at a minimum. I'll always share what the vegetarian meal of the week was. In addition, I'll probably share my thoughts on different vegetarian cookbooks and what not that I read. I will likely post about non-vegetarian dishes too that we make that just rock, and things will just evolve from there.

On March 4th, our vegetarian meal for the week was Chick Peas with Chard and Pan Roasted Tomatoes. It looked like this:

The recipe came from the March 2011 issue of Real Simple. I substituted jasmine rice for brown rice. The recipe called for raisins, but we're not fans of raisins in our food so I left those out. On a scale of 1-5 (5 being highest) I'd give this a three. It was simple to make. I used our rice cooker for the rice, and everything else just needed to be roasted/wilted/warmed in a pan. I didn't make enough chard, and I think it would have tasted better it I did. The chard and the tomatoes really give the dish a lot of flavor. When I took a bit of just chickpeas and rice it was pretty bland. The dish could benefit from some additional spices or herbs, but I haven't thought that through yet. Overall, we agreed we would eat this dish again.