Crab Quiche

I confess to not being very good at utilizing leftovers.  I'm continually throwing out overripe produce, moldy cheese, half-eaten casseroles or pasta dishes. You would think I would learn by now to do more menu planning so that I'm utilizing leftovers and not putting $$$ down the garbage disposal. One day I'll get there!

We recently had Crab Louie salads for dinner. I had quite a bit of crab leftover and, for once, decided I needed to do something with it.  A few nights later I made this crab quiche. My Hubby loves quiche and this was a winner in his books. As it was a weeknight when I made this I didn't have a lot of time, so I used a frozen pie crust.  I find frozen pie crusts to be quite good, especially for dishes like this.

I found this recipe on the allrecipes.com website. It interested me because (1) it had many positive reviews and (2) the method of leaving the quiche in a turned-off oven. I think this method made for a very creamy quiche.

Crab Quiche

1 (9 inch) deep dish pie crust
4 eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
3 dashes hot pepper sauce (i.e. Tabasco), or to taste (I used 6)
1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
8 ounces crab meat (real or imitation)
1 green onion, chopped

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Bake the pie crust for about 10 minutes, until just starting to brown. Remove from the oven, and allow to cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs, cream, salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Stir in shredded cheese, onion and imitation crab. Pour into the pie shell.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes in the preheated oven, then turn off the oven, but leave the door closed. Leave quiche in the oven for an additional 20 to 30 minutes until firm. This will give it a smoother texture.


My hummingbird craziness extends to some of my dishes, too.  Aren't they cute?!!



Fingerprint Thank You Notes

I believe in thank you notes, the old-fashioned hand-written kind.  I am not a fan of receiving thank you's via text, Facebook or mass-printed, unsigned cards. I always made my kids write thank you notes. Some days it was a challenge but we got them done and they learned the importance of doing so. I believe teaching a young child to write thank you notes is just as important as teaching them to wash their hands.

I recently discovered these drawing books. In these books the author demonstrates how to combine fingerprints and thumbprints, ink pads or water colors, with some simple drawing and outlining.

The results are adorable images of birds, plants, objects, etc. I do a lot of handprint art projects with my granddaughters but they make, by necessity, larger pieces of artwork. These little fingerprint drawings make the perfect artwork for thank you cards.

Our youngest granddaughter recently had her fourth birthday. It is the custom for me to pick her up on Friday afternoon for an overnight visit at Nana & Papa's. I usually try to incorporate a craft or baking session in these visits.  This Friday we made fingerprint thank you cards. I used my Stampin' Up! stamp pads and some stamps for this purpose.  In the future I think I will get a more child-friendly ink.  It was hard to get the ink off her little fingers and my worktable!

We got 10 of these done this day before her attention span started wandering. We have smudges and boo-boos, but that's quite all right! Due to her age, I had to write out the notes but I did make her sit by me as I did so and we talked about the gifts she received and who gave them to her. By making this a fun art time I'm hoping this is the start of a lifetime of writing out thank you notes!

Birthday Cookies!

Our youngest granddaughter celebrated her fourth birthday recently.  The celebrations started with the first party on Saturday, another party on Sunday, and carried on through her actual birthday on Tuesday. How fun to be four! We should all celebrate our birthdays in such fashion instead of worrying about getting old!

We hosted a small family swim party. For months she had been telling me she wanted a "Cinderelly" party. The day of the party she looked around at the decorations and said "but I want an Ariel party".  Too late, kid, Cinderella it was!

I made Cinderella glass slipper sugar cookies to give out to our guests. These were easy to make; one color of frosting and a sprinkle of sparkles.

She had ballet class on the day of her birthday so I made cupcake-shaped cookies to give to her fellow ballerinas.  Though not a hard design, they took a while to make because of the multiple colors and having to let things dry between design elements.  

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I had plenty to keep my occupied this day as I was tuned in to the biggest drag race of the year. Even though I spent all morning in the kitchen decorating cookies it didn't seem that long.

I ordered a few more cookie cutters the other day, have more ideas in my always-jumbled mind! Next I need to conquer the clutter that my cookie cutter collection is becoming!

Vanilla Cream Pie

Today is my Dad's 83rd birthday. No big celebrations for him, he's rather a "bah-humbug" when it comes to birthdays and holidays! He's hard to buy for but I know a sure-fire way to please him, bake him a vanilla cream pie.  It's his favorite and also one of the easiest and simplest pies to make!

Cream pies are really easy and can be done in steps to fit into your schedule.  The pie crust can be made a day ahead or, in my case this day, in the morning. Bake it, let it cool, and make the pudding filling and meringue later!

Because cream pies don't need baking, only a little oven action to brown the meringue, the pie crust must be pre-baked. To keep the pie crust from baking unevenly, the unbaked crust must be pricked with a fork. Pricking allows air to escape so the pie dough doesn't get bubbly.  I add two more steps by chilling the pie crust for 30 minutes or so and using a homemade version of pie weights to keep the crust weighted down during baking.  I keep dried garbanzo beans in a container for just this purpose. I put waxed paper in the pie crust, fill it with the dried beans and bake for about half the recommended baking time.  I carefully remove the waxed paper and beans and continue baking.  The result is a nicely browned, evenly-shaped pie crust.

 Meringue isn't difficult to make but care must be taken that the meringue is thoroughly whipped so that the sugar is dissolved.  Sugar crystals will cause the meringue to weep.  After whipping the meringue, take a little dollop and rub between your fingertips.  If it still feels grainy, whip it a little more. Put meringue on hot filling, making sure all the filling is covered. 

 Our computer is in for repairs so I couldn't access the regular vanilla cream pudding recipe that I usually use, one that my Mom has made for years (most of my recipes are on our computer). Today I used this recipe from Paula Deen.  It was good but a little sweeter than I like.  Next time it's back to the old recipe! But, Dad liked it, and on this day that was all that mattered!

Baking our ABC's!

My youngest granddaughter will be four in a few weeks.  She now goes to preschool two days a week and is learning her letters, besides the familiar ABC song she's known for a while now. She loves to be in the kitchen with me.  I have her almost every Friday night until mid-day Saturday and each week she asks me what we are going to make. So I thought it would be good to combine a learning lesson with some kitchen fun.  We made sugar cookies in the shape of the letter A.

Attention spans for little children aren't long so I rolled out, cut and baked the cookies ahead of time.  She helped me make the frosting.  While doing so, we were also able to work on her number skills, counting the cups of sugar that go into the frosting. She chose the colors she wanted the frosting to be (I let her choose four and white!) I put the frosting in squeeze bottles to make it a little easier for her, put out bowls of sprinkles and candies and we got to work!

We talked colors, counted sprinkles, talked about what things started with the letter A. She talked about her Daddy & Mommy, her Papa, her upcoming birthday party. She was quite chatty, in fact!

We went swimming first, thus the wet hair!

As evidenced by the frosting on her face, quite a bit went in her mouth!

The highlight of the evening, for me, was later on when we went to our favorite Mexican place for dinner.  She looked at the menu and said "Nana, look an A"!  She then proceeded to point out all the A's she could find.

I had a lot of cleanup to do this morning, including mopping the kitchen floor and cleaning dried royal icing from the cabinets. Not sure we'll be doing the remainder of the alphabet in cookies but it was a fun time playing with the letter A!

The sad part of the evening was when I got out our aprons. My Mom made matching Disney Princess aprons for my oldest granddaughter and I, five or six years ago.  She's now outgrown the apron and the little one wears it. It just seems like yesterday that my big K was wearing the apron! My girls are growing up much too fast!

Pasta Making Toy

I love my Kitchenaid mixer and would be lost without it.  I use it to mix cake and cookies batters, to make royal icing, bread dough.  I use it so much I have two work bowls so I can do multiple things without having to take a break to wash the bowl! I have two attachments that I find I'm using more and more and they both involve pasta.  The pasta roller & cutter attachment rolls and cuts the dough for sheet pasta, fettucini, etc. I also have the pasta press attachment. This gadget is an extruder and produces "tube-style" pasta, such as spaghetti and rigatoni.

Last weekend I made a batch of rigatoni. The dough was initially mixed up in the Kitchenaid, then kneaded with the dough hook for a few minutes. I attached the extruder, put in walnut-sized pieces of dough and let the machine do the rest. It took me about half an hour to make this batch of rigatoni, easily done while watching a preseason football game that my team was losing (regular season please get here soon!)

Using fresh ingredients, some bacon, cream and basil,  I made a very simple pasta sauce and tossed the cooked rigatoni in it. Like most freshly-made foods, fresh pasta is so much superior to the boxed pasta. It's worth the extra effort!

A little kneading action!

The extruder attaches to the mixer.  Small balls of pasta dough are put in top and the machine does the rest!

The pasta is cut to the desired length with the wire attachment.

Fresh pasta ready to be cooked! Yum!

Poor Man's Fruitcake

I come from a long line of Okies.  Nothing derogatory about that, just facts. Most of my ancestors are from Oklahoma, they struggled through and survived the Great Depression. As a result, they learned how to be thrifty and industrious, especially when it came to food. They grew their own fruits and vegetables, canned them, slaughtered livestock, saved and re-purposed everything.  They had no choice, had to do that to survive and by doing so, they acquired many good skills and traits that inadvertently passed down to the younger generations.

Besides my parents, the most influential Okie in my life was my Grandma McGee. She saved all her leftover food.  I used to laugh when I'd open her refrigerator because there would be all kinds of plastic containers filled with a spoonful or two of something. She didn't waste them, they became lunch the next day. Her pantry was full of canned goods, her freezer full of meats and other products that she stocked up on when on sale. If she was given a bag or box of fruit she would drop everything and get out the canning equipment, nothing must be wasted! She had a drawer full of leftover wrapping paper, neatly folded to be used again. Scraps of material became quilts. Buttons from worn-out clothes were taken off and saved in her button jar and would be seen on another article of clothing in the future.

She's been on my mind a lot these last few weeks.  We have an espalier apple tree, it is grafted with six different varieties of apples.  I'm not a farmer and it's hard for this accountant to tell when apples are ready for harvest.  My Hubbers and I noticed a few on the ground, so we started picking.  Soon we had over two dozen apples. I didn't feel like baking anything at the time and knew we wouldn't eat that many apples before they went bad. I could hear Grandma telling me not to waste anything.  So I went in and made applesauce, just the way she taught me. There is no recipe for this, it's more a method.  Peel, core and slice apples and put in large pan, add 1/4 cup water to keep the apples from sticking to the pan, adding more if needed.  Cook, stirring often, until soft.  Add sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg, to taste (I usually add during the cooking process and adjust afterwards).  I like my applesauce lumpy.  A food processor or immersion blender can be used to make smoother applesauce.

It helps to have an apple peeler and assistant when working with a lot of apples! Thank you, Hubbers!

Just put the apples in a pan and cook until you get a soft consistency.

Homemade applesauce is so much better than store-bought!

I ended up with a pretty good-sized bowl of applesauce.  After about a week of eating it, I was tired of it.  I really should have canned some of it to begin with but was too lazy that day! Then I thought of Grandma again.  She made a loaf cake using applesauce that she called Poor Man's Fruitcake.  I have no idea where the name came from but I've always loved it. It recalls my Okie roots, poor people can have fruitcake, too (thankfully, this doesn't taste like traditional Christmas-time fruitcake)! I baked mine in a loaf pan, I seem to recall Grandma would sometimes bake hers in a tube pan.  Store-bought applesauce can be used and the seasonings can be adjusted to taste.  My applesauce had cinnamon in it and I added more in the cake batter, making for a very dark cake. I took it to the office today and had some with my morning tea, shared some with a client. It was the perfect mid-morning treat!

Grandma would've been proud of my thriftiness with these apples, not one was wasted! We still have more apples on the tree, I will be making and canning applesauce soon!

Poor Man's Fruitcake

One stick butter, softened
2 cups granulated sugar
2 cups applesauce
2 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons nutmeg
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins
1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease loaf pan.

Blend together butter and sugar until creamy.  Add 2 cups applesauce and mix until blended. Add flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.  Mix until just blended. Stir in raisins and walnuts.

Pour into loaf pan.  Bake for 45-55 minutes, until inserted toothpick comes out clean.  Cool on wire rack for 10 minutes, remove from pan and finish cooling.