Veggie recipe: Quiche aka. salty food pie.

A few months ago, my friend Mette taught me how to make a quiche, or as we refer to it "a food pie." Tonight I made the recipe again, and made the crust from scratch. If you're just starting out though and want to see how easy it is, you can also buy frozen crust, but either way, I find this quiche looks like it requires much more effort than it actually does ;)


I initially forgot to take a picture and dug right in. Sorry about that!


What you'll need:
- 1 egg
- 300g flour (you can try different combinations, I used about 100g of spelt and 200g of regular all-purpose)
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3 tablespoons water
- basil, pepper, and whatever other spices you'd like to use
- 150g softened butter (not completely melted but very soft nonetheless)
- 75-100g of your favourite cheese (I used feta)
- A variety of veggies: onion, broccoli, leek, zucchini or any combination of them.

Preheat your oven to 180-200C.

To make the crust:
Soften/microwave the butter and stir in the flour. Mix until consistent then add a dash of salt. Stir in the 3 tablespoons of water and ta-da! Your crust is ready!
Spread it in your pan (You can use a pie pan like I did in the picture or a square 9"x9")

To make the filling:
Chop the vegetables and grate the cheese. Break your egg, beat it a little and add your spices. Add a bit of milk, stirring it in until you can lift the fork without getting that thick egg-y texture, but rather, a slightly more liquid-y feel. Fill the baking dish with veggies, top with the egg mixture and cheese.

Cook for about 40 minutes and enjoy.

Veggie recipe: Club sandwiches

I've procrastinated enough! Now's the time to unleash the first of many vegetarian recipes... I've only been waiting for the day when I made something that looked beautiful enough to take pictures of (because what's a recipe without a picture?) or the day I didn't forget to take a picture of something delicious before I ate it.

So you're already probably wondering how club sandwiches can be veggie... they definitely can! But really the name is because it's a spin-off of a club sandwich recipe we started making ages ago (with chicken and bacon) that slowly morphed into the veggie deliciousness you'll witness today.

So here's what you'll need to make this for 2 people:
- ciabatta or focaccia bread (from your local bakery, grocery store or made from scratch, see the bottom for more info about this)
- 1 big/medium tomatoes
- 1/2 cucumber (sliced)
- 1/2 red onion (white is great too, I just prefer red)
- 1 avocado (I buy mine a few days beforehand to give it time to ripen)
- some feta cheese
- your favourite mustard
- your favourite ketchup
Feel free to play around with some of your favourites, change the textures, or pick up whatever you have in the fridge. You'll be surprised how something so simple can taste so good.

How to whip it up:
1. Prepare your bread (make it from scratch if you want, put it in the oven if it needs to be cooked post-purchase or just slice it if it's fresh)

2. Cut your tomatoes, cucumber, feta cheese, avocado and onions into thin slices.

Not a Heinz commercial.

3. Put the ketchup and mustard on the bread (or not, it's up to you!)
4. Carefully place the ingredients in the sandwich, being attentive to texture (crunchy vs. soggy) and taste. Also, these usually get pretty big so realize that you'll have to consolidate the 2 slices before you eat it.

5. Consolidate aka. put the two slices together and don't let go of them until you've finished eating...

6. And I guess by now you're already enjoying the best sandwich you've ever had!

Some details...
The first few times we made this, we bought ciabatta from the grocery store (wrapped in a rather thick plastic). It was ready-made but needed to be warmed up in the oven. A few weeks ago we got a similar bread to ciabatta fresh from the bakery in our grocery store (this was a little better and came in a paper/plastic bag). Most recently though, my friend Lauren came over and we made focaccia from scratch (thank you!). I had never made bread before but today was my second time making this recipe with home-made foccacia and it's by far the best. When you're feeling adventurous, try it out with your own bread. We used the following recipe.
The only adjustment made was the addition of fresh basil instead of Parmesan.

In addition to being delicious, I've managed to cut down the plastic waste of this recipe to almost 0. The only thing that still contains plastic from the above ingredients is the feta cheese and the ketchup (which was already in our fridge). Otherwise, it feels pretty good to make such a great meal with such a small trade-off.

Finally, don't expect to get something this good at most restaurants; I am constantly disappointed when I order similar things. Either the bread or the ingredients are not as fresh, or as well-selected.

Now it's your turn, how did the recipe turn out? What did you change? And did you take any pictures?