I don’t know if I’ve mentioned often enough for you to remember that we lived in the South of France for almost 3 years. Many, many things make us homesick for our wonderful home and friends there, like the gazillions of French mementos I dragged back here and with which I filled our home to over-flowing.
We lived in that big old house with the blue shutters. When I went into the park next door to take this photo, our cat, Mephisto, went with me. She had been a local street urchin, but didn’t take long to figure out that I was a sucker, after which she made us her family. Sadly, when we moved back to the States, we had to leave Mephisto behind. She knew nothing about the predators of California, and she absolutely hated being an indoor cat (not to mention she hated dogs). She would not have lasted a week here. So I found her a wonderful home with some friends who owned a vineyard near Aix.
While we lived in France, Butterfly came for several extended visits. She quickly found three favorite things that she liked to have daily, if she could get them. The first was bread – there’s nothing like the bread in France. We lived about two blocks from a boulangerie, a heavenly convenience. When Butterfly first came to visit and I would stop by the boulangerie to pick up a baguette on my way home from wherever we had been in town, she would admonish me, “You have bread at home from last night’s dinner!”
“I’m not eating that stale bread!” I’d tell her. “Not when I can get this delicious bread fresh from the oven.”
Pretty soon, the day came when, as we’d be walking by the boulangerie, headed home for lunch or dinner, Butterfly would ask me, “Aren’t we going to stop for a baguette?” She got spoiled quickly!
The second thing she loved in the summertime was the soft ice cream that was available from vendors on practically every street corner. We would go across town running errands, stopping for her ice cream cones along the way. Butterfly really is like a little kid.
The third thing that she loved was the fact that when she wanted a quick bite to eat while we were out and about, she knew she could count on the boulangeries to have quiches, sold by the slice. To this day she talks about those quiches.
This is why Butterfly was so very delighted when she made this find while cruising through one of her favorite thrift shops.
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Everything you want to know about quiche
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It has the recipe for a quiche printed right in the ceramic pan.
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can't misplace this recipe
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Butterfly was so impressed with this that she still can’t stop talking about it. She brought it to me and said, “Here you go!”
I looked at and said, “First, if you eat this you will die of a heart attack, and second, I don’t have room for one more dish, thank you very much.”
“Sure you do,” she said, “put it in your dish cabinet. But first make me the quiche.” I had to build a dish cabinet upon my return from France, where I turned into a bit of dish whore. I trust you’ve seen French dishes. Turning into a dish whore can happen to anyone.
Now I looked at her. “What? Are you crippled? You can’t make your own quiche?”
“You know I don’t cook,” she said. “I’m retired.”
“Oh, that’s right, I forgot,” I said, “if you can’t microwave it, it doesn’t happen. But what about the part where I’ve never cooked? I hate to cook.”
“I know all that,” she said, “but be a good daughter and make the quiche.”
This was about 2 or 3 months ago. Fast forward to yesterday. She trotted in with the newspaper.
“I see that Bel Air and Raleys have bacon on sale,” she announced, waving the newspaper at us.
“So? We don’t eat bacon, except, rarely, when we go out. That stuff will kill you.”
And then this morning, it hit me. The quiche recipe. I looked at that quiche dish, saw that it needed bacon, and decided maybe it was time for me to be a good daughter (since I so rarely am) and make the darned quiche for her.
She couldn’t write down the shopping list fast enough.
Just for grins, I took pictures while I cooked. But have no fear; there is no way this is going to turn into a cooking blog. Why? Because I don’t cook!
Cook the onions and bacon in butter until browned.
While that’s happening, amuse yourself by cracking open eggs and grating gruyere cheese.
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get to grating your gruyere
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Oh, look, things are browning nicely!
Dump the onion/bacon mixture into the egg/cheese mixture.
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into the clever quiche pan it goes
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Pour this mixture into the pie crust you’ve put into your lovely quiche dish. Now you’re in trouble. You’ve just covered up the instructions! I hope you’ve written down the oven temperature and time. (HINT: It said 375-400 degrees for 35-40 minutes – what’s with the ranges??? I hate that!)
I baked it at 375 degrees for about 35 minutes. If I’d gone for 40 minutes we’d have had to use a fire extinguisher on it, I’m pretty sure.
While the quiche cooled for a few minutes, Butterfly tackled a green salad that I had tossed together.
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so happy to finally get her quiche
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Then she could stand it no longer.
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Butterfly REALLY liked it!
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Butterfly declared it a smashing success. With all those tasty calories, why am I not surprised?
Now, just so you really, really, really understand why I don’t cook, I have to end this with a confession. Remember back at the part where I went from cracking eggs, grating gruyere, and pouring the mixture into the crust? That step took a bit longer than it should have, because on the first pass I misread “cream” (which gets added to the cheese and eggs) for “cream cheese”. By the time I realized my error (I had this nagging feeling that cream cheese made no sense in a quiche), I was far enough along that I had to throw out the goop on hand and remix the batch. That’s why I don’t cook.
