Mushroom-Spinach Quiche

I'll preface today's entry by saying that I hate eggs in virtually every form and have since childhood (much to the chagrin of my poor southern mother who started many a school day by trying to serve me a "healthy" breakfast of sausage or bacon, grits, and scrambled eggs).

I don't like them fried. I don't like them scrambled. I don't like them poached. I don't like them boiled. I don't like them in casseroles, souffles, or quiche. I won't eat cookie dough that might be contaminated with ooey, gooey, icky, sticky raw egg. And like a certain storybook character, I don't like them in a house or with a mouse, on a boat or served by a goat. I truly despise eggs ...

... except when I'm pregnant.

And then, for whatever reason, all food rules seem to go out the window. In three out of three pregnancies so far, I've found myself craving eggs -- and even more curiously, the dreaded egg has a tendency to stay down even when nothing else will.

We're at the 34-week mark now, though. The egg craving is finally subsiding, and normal food is tasting good again. But in cleaning out the refrigerator yesterday, I discovered that we still had nearly a dozen eggs on hand, and if there's one thing I hate more than eggs (under normal circumstances), it's wasting food. So before normal egg aversion returns, I decided to turn that carton of eggs into quiche.

Of course, most of the quiche recipes I found were loaded with meat, cheese, and other really high-calorie nasty stuff, so today's lunch turned into an experiment.

• 1 10-inch pie crust
• 6 large eggs
• 1/4 c. sour cream
• 1/2 c. milk
• 3 c. spinach
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• 8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
• 3/4 c. onion, finely chopped
• 1/4 c. red bell pepper, finely chopped
• 1/2 tsp. Herbamare or RealSalt
• freshly-grated nutmeg to taste
• freshly-ground pepper to taste
• shredded cheese (optional)

To begin, I made a pie crust. Yes, you can buy them premade, but most of the premade ones contain really nasty ingredients ... such as lard. While rolling the crust, I preheated the oven to 450 degrees, then prebaked the crust for about ten minutes.

Next, I sauteed the mushrooms, onions, and red bell pepper in approximately 1 tsp. of olive oil.

While the crust baked and the sauteed vegetables cooled, I whipped the eggs, sour cream, milk, and seasoning together and added 3 cups of organic baby spinach straight from the package (the leaves were small enough that I saw no need to pre-chop them). Finally, I stirred in the sauteed vegetables, poured the mixture into the pie crust, and baked at 375 for approximately 45 minutes. Just before removing the quiche from the oven, I sprinkled lightly it with shredded co-jack cheese for hubby's benefit, turned off the heat, and let it sit for about 15 minutes before cutting.

Oh, and about the cheese for hubby's benefit? I discovered early in our dating relationship that this one-time carnivore would eat almost any veggie dish as long as it contained cheese. Since then, I've found that it's not so much the taste of the cheese that attracts him as the appearance of cheese. Yes, I could have followed a more traditional quiche recipe and mixed a cup or more of the stuff into the batter, but a couple of tablespoons visibly melted on top make him just as happy. Shhh! Don't tell!