the white lighter

I am baking two quiches at the moment and they smell amazing. Alton Brown says that you can cook, cool, and then freeze a quiche for up to two months, so I am taking him at his word and going to attempt that with one of those in the oven. The other will be dinner tonight. Kevin saw the quiches that Pam had made for the cafe and wondered what went in them aside from eggs and filling. Apparently, not much: just half and half or milk and crust ingredients. I used mushrooms, potato, green beans, and fresh dill, along with cheddar cheese in one and reggiano in the other. It’s what we had, so that’s what went in. We also have kale and I thought about throwing that into one or both, but promptly forgot. They are both quite full, however, so it wasn’t necessary.

Today is our last day of the month o’ vegetarianism challenge. Neither of us found it particularly difficult, except for once or twice eating out when there were few options for us, and Kevin’s takeout issues with lunch at work. DelCo is not famous for its culinary options. We have both made purposeful exceptions during the month, mostly for people (like my mother) who’ve cooked us a meal and didn’t know about our one-month restriction. But really? It wasn’t hard at all, which makes me feel much better about our meat consumption. I wanted to do this in order to take stock of how much we wanted, needed, craved meat — it turns out, not much at all on any of those accounts. And that means it won’t be too terribly difficult to keep our consumption in check once we start eating it again.

Although I am planning a very decadent steak dinner for sometime in February… but that isn’t something we do often. Or ever, actually. I think the two steak dinners we’ve had together (over almost 2.5 years of dating) have both been “special occasions” and cooking adventures encouraged on my part for the learning experience.

After this month of experimentation, mostly I feel blessed to have a partner who: 1) doesn’t rely on meat entirely for his stomach satisfaction; 2) is an open-minded eater who truly likes everything, even mistakes are edible to him; and 3) is easy-going enough to hop on board when I suggest something like abstaining from meat for the first month of a new year.