Foodgasm

You should be sitting down.

Sit down now, if you're not already. Sitting? Okay, you can go on.

I'm not much of a cook. I can follow a basic recipe, and I make a pretty good oatmeal raisin cookie, but day to day dinner type cooking, I just get by. I don't much enjoy cooking, so that's part of it.

But, about a year and a half ago, I decided to try to learn to cook a bit, so I asked my Mom for a Joy of Cooking book, because it's basic and stuff.

I'm still not much of a cook, but since winter, I've decided to try to eat more veggies. Now, I like veggies okay. If someone cooks for me, I'll eat pretty much anything (with two exceptions, which almost disqualify me from ever returning to my home state, alas). But cooking them, blah. It takes forever, and they're boring. But still, I've been trying.

So, I took my cookbook and tried making a basic quiche, and it was basic, and okay. And it's easy to take to school for lunch, and to heat up a bit and have for dinner. I got a bit creative; I tried adding some veggies from a frozen mixed veggie bag. That was okay, too. I've done that several times this semester, almost once a week.

And then I got an idea. As I've said before I think, my favorite vegetable is artichokes. But artichokes don't thrive up here in the Northwoods, so when you get them at the store, they're not great. They're sort of like cardboard with a slight flavor. But, I thought, what if I got canned artichokes and put them in a quiche!

Last week I tried that for the first time. I made a basic quiche with bacon, cheddar cheese, baby artichoke parts, and sauteed mushrooms. And it was pretty good. But the cheese wasn't quite right and sort of overpowered things in terms of consistency. It wasn't sharp enough for the artichokes, if that makes sense. And the bacon, surprisingly, didn't really work with the artichokes.

I finished that at lunch today, so tonight I made another.

I got some grated asiago cheese and some grated parmesan cheese at the store, and some more cut up mushrooms.

I sauteed the mushrooms and added a little frozen spinach. And then I added nutmeg. I know, you're thinking, NUTMEG???? But the book had me adding nutmeg to the basic quiche, and I'd done it once but then not. But somehow, I thought I'd give it a try, so I sprinkled some in. Then I added the artichokes so the veggie stuff was all mixed up well.

I made a basic custard mix.

When the pie shell was cooked, I put in a bit of both sorts of cheese, then some veggies, and more cheese, and more veggies and cheese, and then I poured the custard mix in. And baked. I could smell the nutmeg, and that worried me. It smelled just a bit too strong.

Once it was out and had cooled a tad, I cut a piece. And then, OMG, this is about the best non-sweet thing I have EVER cooked. Look:

The cheese is sharp, and sets off the artichokes beautifully, and the nutmeg adds just something, and it's sooo good.

Now I'm going to cut myself another piece and enjoy the foodgasm.