Let Them Eat Quiche

I had all of those lovely bread crumbs from the dried out hamburger buns that I'd run through the food processor the week before and I didn't know what to do with them.   I didn't want to coat any more meats or fish before frying them and I certainly didn't want to throw the crumbs away. Wasting food is definitely not frugal!

I had the idea of using them to make a pie crust but I wasn't sure that this was possible.  I found this site here which told me that it most assuredly is.  Armed with this knowledge, I pressed on!  (Pun intended.)

I had 3 cups of crumbs that I combined with 3 tablespoons of melted butter in the bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie plate.  I then froze the resulting shell.

Later, I took a basic quiche recipe of 4 beaten eggs combined with 3/4 cups of half and half and modified it.  I didn't have half and half but I did have a carton of heavy whipping cream (thanks Karen and Philip) that I used instead.  I did this by combining 1/2 cup of skim milk with 1/4 of the cream.

I had never made a quiche before.  We only have real men around here so I'd never attempted one.  (What?  You don't remember that book?  Real Men Don't Eat Quiche, I think it was called.)  Anyway, real men or not, mine were in for a somewhat kitschy quichey meal.

The big decision was what to put in the quiche.  We were out of all cheese except for a slice of American and none of the usual quiche filling ingredients were available either so I improvised again.  It turns out that we had a couple of banana peppers in the freezer and a jar of chunky salsa in the refrigerator.  Hmm. That salsa would definitely add some veggies to this meal!   I took about 1/2 cup of the salsa and slices of one pepper and added them to the egg batter.

I then poured the batter into the frozen shell and set my concoction into a preheated 350 degree oven.  It took about 45 minutes to bake and that was with me checking often after the first half hour to see if it was done.  I did this by inserting a bamboo skewer into it often (we're out of toothpicks, too).  When the skewer was clean, the dish was done.

The final touch was to tear up that piece of cheese and place it on top of the warm quiche.  It promptly melted and I spread it as best I could with a knife.

The Bear looked at my concoction with a skeptical eye.  Evidently he has also heard that real men don't eat quiche even though he wasn't even alive when that book first came out.  He asked me what this dish is called.

Not to be outdone I told him that it is called "Scrambled Eggs With Salsa On Buttered Toast."  (Hey!  I can call it anything I want!)  He loves scrambled eggs.  He loves buttered toast.  He ate it and he liked it!  Adding a serving of bratwurst sausage complemented the um, scrambled eggs, and used up another meat found at the bottom of my freezer.