Elora and I went out to the vegetable garden after taking Georgie and Matthew to school. We looked at how the veges are faring. Some of our Asian and lettuce mixes have either died or been taken by birds and instead of about 60 green plants we have about 30. Something has pecked off the tips of our basil and marigolds, so they are pretty much non existent now. Also, one of the cucumber plants has been broken (by a dog?), but luckily everything else looks like it is thriving.

We picked a bunch of spinach and a bunch of parsley, as well as a juicy spring onion. We also collected some eggs from the chooks. The photo above is our bounty for the morning.

We decided to make a spinach and feta quiche. We washed the vegetables and Elora got very involved in the washing. She also got involved in the mixing – she did all the mixing for this quiche so I bet it will taste extra special!

I thought I ought to share the recipe today, mainly because I made it up as I went along, and it’s always wise to write such things down to document them!

Spinach and feta quiche with cheesy mushroom topping

ingredients
Bunch of fresh spinach
Bunch of fresh parsley
1 spring onion
2 eggs
100g sour cream
250ml milk
5 mushrooms, sliced
1/3 cup grated light cheddar cheese
1 sheet short crust pastry

method
1:: Preheat oven to 220 degrees.
2:: Cook spinach and squeeze out excess liquid (I learned that spinach takes 10 minutes to cook in my microwave) leave to cool
3:: Slice onion and parsley.
4:: Whisk 2 eggs.
5:: Add sour cream and milk and mix.
6:: Add parsley and onion to the egg mixture and mix.
7:: Line greased baking dish with pastry.
8:: Place spinach on pastry, evening it out. Aim to have as much liquid squeezed out as possible (we were interested in how small our quantity of spinach ended up being!)
9:: Pour milk mixture over spinach.
10:: Top quiche with sliced mushrooms.
11:: Place grated cheese over mushrooms.
12:: Bake for 20 minutes at 220 degrees.

The whole process of collecting the food from the garden with my daughter, who was chatting and getting involved the entire time, and chopping and mixing the ingredients to make this nourishing dish was really fun. One day I would like to be making the quiche with our own milk and cream. And I have to sort this pastry making thing out too. I know I can do it. I just need to do it! I guess it is the time factor that sees me heading to the freezer for frozen pastry…