I have a thing, with quiche. It’s not just that I think quiche is good, although it is, it’s that quiche happens to be one of my top comfort foods. I’m not really sure why, because I don’t think my father ever made quiche when I was a kid; he was more of a timbale kind of guy. But, at some point, quiche became equal to comfort, and I happened to make a quiche yesterday, and I’m eating a cold slice right now with a wedge of lemon and some Tabasco (the only way to eat quiche, really), so I decided to write about quiche.

I like the process of making quiche. It’s messy, by nature, and I’m a control freak, so I kind of enjoy forcing myself to just let go, let flour and eggs pile up on the counters, and make something awesome. Of course, as soon as the quiche goes into the oven, I make the mess go away, but it’s strangely exhilarating when the kitchen is all messy with quicheness. Sort of like crossing the street when the light is red (I did that yesterday too), living dangerously, you know?

Anyway, one of the cool things about quiche is that you can put pretty much anything in there. The quiche I made yesterday happened to be mushroom and potato, but it could have just as easily been purple cauliflower and sweet onion, or beet greens and bacon, or zucchini and squid. I mean, you never know, is what I am trying to say. Quiche is a world of possibilities.

I also appreciate that it can be eaten hot or cold. I actually made this particular quiche with the explicit plan of eating cold quiche over the weekend, since it’s supposed to warm up, but, as always, I ate a big chunk of it, hot and steaming, before I could stop myself. Once, I ate half a quiche at one sitting, and then rolled around on the floor groaning for half an hour before I could move again.

It was awesome.

Quiche is also a superb vehicle for eggs, a food I happen to not really enjoy in a pure state. Yet, somehow, quiche performs some sort of alchemy, allowing me to consume something with eggs in it without feeling violently disgusted. When I was vegan, I used to make quiche with tofu, and it was pretty damn good, too.

I’m not really sure where I’m going with all this quiche musing, so I’ll cut to the chase: here’s my quiche recipe. Go forth and bake!

Crust:

3/4 cup flour

5 1/2 tablespoons butter

1/6 cup cold water, blended with a dash of salt and a dash of sugar

Cream the butter into the flour, add the water, and mash around so that the ingredients pull together into a dough. Don’t overwork the dough. In fact, why don’t you put it in the fridge, so that you won’t be tempted to mess with it? Pie dough doesn’t like to be messed with. Just…let it chill, ok?

In a large pan, saute:

Something which will go into your quiche

I generally use a whole yellow onion in all my quiches, and then add whatever sliced/diced ingredients I’m using. I don’t really measure stuff, it’s more of a sensation by feel kind of thing. I should have measured yesterday. Oh well. Throw in some spices if you feel like it, or not, whatever. Then set the stuff aside to cool.

Roll out your pie dough and get it set up in an oiled and floured pie pan while you mix the filling, so you can dump and bake. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (177 for my Celsius cousins, 450 kelvin for the physicists among us).

In a large bowl, beat together four eggs, and then add a cup of milk. Sprinkle in some salt, pepper, and nutmeg (don’t ask, and yes, it is important. Trust me.) Then add 2/3 cup of delicious, delicious bread crumbs, and beat again. Add in another half cup of cheese of choice (I actually just grate right over the bowl until it looks good, but a half cup sounds right). Then mix in your veggies, pour the mess into the pie pan, and let her rip.

It usually takes around 40 minutes, or until an inserted knife/toothpick/cake tester comes out clean. If you can possibly bear to wait, let the quiche cool for awhile on a rack before slicing. Once completely cooled, said quiche can be refrigerated, covered. (By the way, if anyone wants to get me one of those bad-ass lock together pie plate things, let me know. Do those even exist? Because they should. Pie and quiche need protecting from the forces of evil in the world.)

Our money is changing size to accommodate the blind, which is pretty awesome; thanks to a court ruling, different bills will have different sizes and textures, allowing the blind and visually impaired to identify money by feel. While it’s going to be a bureaucratic nightmare, I think it will be worth it.

Issues just aren’t what people talk about in election year.

Cohousing is getting bigger in the United States, and I happen to think that’s supercool. Don’t know what cohousing is? Go read this article.

Five Britons born to foreign parents have returned to the lands of their family origins, and kindly written about their experiences for the Guardian. It’s pretty neat, my clunky brief description aside.

The almost 500 children taken from a polygamist sect in Texas are about to go home, because the state was unable to prove child abuse. (Child brides aside, apparently.)

Nearly 500 Californians have died in Iraq, and you can read about them in the Los Angeles Times. Bravo to the Times for working on this series.

This may be one of my favourite books of all time, and it’s a book that I consistently recommend to pretty much everyone, because it’s just that awesome. It’s frivolous, and sad, and fascinating, and so are the other books in this trilogy which, when viewed as a collective whole, pretty much knock your socks off, especially as you feel the characters progressively moving into and out of a time of intense darkness.

The book is based in a fictional Latin American country, but it uses very real incidents from history to tell a compelling story. There are great characters, fascinating landscapes, and surreal events, side by side with brutality, Communists, and festivals. The rich tapestry of characters is pretty much the most awesome thing ever; I’ve rarely read a book with some many characters and been able to follow them all.

I don’t really want to say too much about this book, because I wouldn’t want to ruin the fun. Just go read it.

Demographics:

The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts, by Louis de Bernieres. Published 1990, 363 pages. Fiction.