Wednesday, August 18 2010

Today, I decided, was going to be quiche day.  I realized I had never made a quiche, and seeing the pie shells in the supermarket gave me the idea. Quiche recipes abound on the net, but I decided to go simple and just make a spinach and feta.

I stayed up the night before to make the quiche: I softened a diced medium yellow onion and about three cloves of minced garlic in olive oil and butter, then added one pack of frozen spinach that I had defrosted and squeezed every drop of moisture from, plus diced zucchini that I added at the last minute knowing this was probably my last chance to use it all up before it went bad. The zucchini I diced the same amount as the onion, by the way. Transferred it all to a mixing bowl, and grated in about 8 oz of feta then left it to cool. Spooned the mixture into a pie shell, at which point I realized I had enough for two quiches, so I fried four strips of diced bacon and added it to the second pie shell.

I lost track of the liquid, but it was roughly two cups of milk, 4-5 whole eggs, 3-4 egg yolks, a tsp of nutmeg, and black pepper, all whisked up and poured over the quiche filling. Baked at 375 C for almost an hour.

It came out of the oven looking like this:

And soon looked like this:

The girls each had a slice for lunch, though Serena put half of hers back and replaced it with leftover lasagna, with salad, and apple and President's Choice chocolate chip cookies, which we seem to go through an awful lot of.

* * *

We had breakfast today too - onion hash browns, maple sausages and fried eggs for the girls, and for me ... quiche.

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Dinner tonight was going to be mapo tofu. It's not true mapo tofu, but then again neither is it in at least 3/4 of the restaurants in Hong Kong that serve it. For the ingredients I went to the delightfully named Foody Mart. Chinese supermarkets are typically way cheaper than Western ones, and this is no exception. For $ 21 I got 2 lb of minced pork, 2lb of fresh tofu, 3 litres of chicken stock, 2 cans of condensed milk, two bunches of green onion, a big bunch each of parsley and coriander, 2 litre carton of soy milk, plus a pack of white buns for steaming to dip in the condensed milk.

The mapo tofu is served with basmati rice and the rest of the Chinese broccoli before it all goes bad. That's also lunch taken care of tomorrow.

FOOD COSTS:
Bacon $ 2.69
Sausages $ 3.29
Eggs $ 3.09
Pie shells $ 2.99
Feta $ 3.59
Spinach $ 1.69
Nutmeg $ 4.49 (the cheapest and smallest I could find - it is more that I have ever used in my entire life)
Minced pork $ 2.15
Chicken broth $ 0.99
Green onions $ 0.39
Parsley $ 0.99
Cilantro $ 0.99
Tofu $ 1.89
Steam buns $ 2.69

Wednesday total: $ 31.92.

Not bad for what is going to be six, maybe seven meals.