Happy Halloween!

Ohhh yeaaa.  Happy Halloween to me!  This was the real day off I've had in about a week, and the last one I will have for the next fourteen days.  Needless to say, I was determined to enjoy it, and I think I am doing a fine job.  I slept in, pet the cat, enjoyed not one but two morning constitutionals (TMI, perhaps, but I'm just keeping it real and you all know that's the kind of thing that makes you feel accomplished even when you're having a lazy day), enjoyed a great workout, called my grandmom and my mom, cleaned the bathroom, and made my first-ever quiche. 

Right now, I'm sipping a hot cup of ginger tea and watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on DVD.  Because I own probably every good Peanuts special on DVD.  Some might find that hopelessly lame, but I'm alright with that.  Peanuts, especially the older strips and animated specials, is just as entertaining, if not more so, as an adult.  Sure, there is an undeniable nostalgia factor, but Charles Schulz had some pretty heavy hangups and a lot of unintentional existentialism comes across in his work.  It's also very witty and the humor is innocent yet sophisticated enough that there's still something there for adults.

So far, we have had zero trick-or-treaters.  I heard some kids rampaging past our windows a little while ago, but they didn't approach our door.  The porch light is off, so it's entirely possible, yet hard to believe, that kids in this town actually respect this signal.  I feel a little guilty, but I'm too lazy to get up and turn the light on.  If they don't want the store-brand bulk-bin peppermint patties I'm prepared to hand out, then it's their loss (and my gain, in probably more ways than one unless I forget about them and Andy eats them all, which is likely).

I've been cooking and baking and cleaning a lot lately (or at least thinking about wanting to do those things).  This falls at odds with both my work schedule and my desire to sleep all day.  My work schedule also interrupts my ability to be cranky and irritable.  This seems to happen every fall.  The weather turns cold and gray, and all I want to do is bitch and nest.  I'm beginning to wonder whether I have Seasonal Affective Disorder or if my mom neglected to tell me that I'm part bear.

Since I love food right now, let's talk about this quiche.  Not to toot my own horn, but SO GOOD.  I've been wanting to make quiche for a while, and I received the final push I needed when a blogger I recently started following shared her recipe.  I made the crust from scratch with the pate brisee recipe that I wrote about in August.  Then I perused some quiche recipes on allrecipes.com for temperature guidelines and how many eggs to use.  And then I made up the rest, because I'm defiant and don't like to follow directions. 

Quiche is great, because it's so simple and there's so much room to play around.  Eggs and whatever other crap I want to throw in?  I can handle that.  It's like my omelets, which Andy calls "scrambled eggs with shit in them" because they are hideous and sloppy.  So quiche is like scrambled eggs with shit in them, but baked in the oven with a pie crust.  It only sounds pretentious.  Here's the rundown:

Preheat your oven to 450 and begin sauteing the following: two small zucchini, thinly sliced; about half a red pepper and a green pepper, diced; one small onion, diced; and three generous handfuls of spinach.

Arrange your pie crust in your pie plate, line it with foil, and bake at 450 for five minutes.  Remove the foil and bake for five more minutes, then remove your pre-baked crust from the oven and reduce heat to 350.

Mix 5 beaten eggs, 1/4 cup milk and 1/4 to 1/2 cup grated cheese.  I used some cheddar and some mozzarella because that's what we had on hand, but you can get fancy if you like.

Transfer your sauteed vegetables to the pie crust, and add a handful of sun-dried tomatoes.  Pour the egg mixture over your veggies, sprinkle on a liberal dose of garlic, and throw that bad boy in the oven.  Bake it for 40-45 minutes, let it sit for at least 5, and then prepare to have a oralgasm.

The two of us devoured half of it, and now I have lunch tomorrow and dinner on Tuesday to complement my inhuman work schedule that prevents me from cooking or eating at normal times.