haha! on me cooking.

I usually make my own pie crusts. The only time I don't is when I use the frozen ones for my pies for Community Kitchen at Thanksgiving and that is because it is just easier to take in the foil pans and all that. For some reason I don't recall, MONTHS ago, I bought a package of those roll-out pie crusts. So I decided to make a spinach quiche tonight (my first quiche) and use up one of them. I looked on allrecipes.com at a couple of quiche recipes and made up my own of course, based on a couple that sounded good. None of them had peppers, onions and garlic and we know 75% of the food in our house must contain peppers, onions and garlic... the other 25% must contain chocolate! It DID seem like a good idea, however to pre-bake the crust a little bit. I figured it would keep it from getting soggy from the egg mixture. I have never pre-baked a crust before... I always make fruit pies, pumpkin or pecan and just use a raw crust, nothing like cream pie or lemon merengue or key lime where you need a baked crust. I do know, however, that people say the trick is to weight it down with beans so it doesn't bubble up. So I poured in a pound of beans... Well, when I pulled it out the beans were so heavy that they made little bean dents in the crust and baked right into it! I tried kind of gently scraping them off and it just began to tear it up. I pulled crust number two out of the package and just poured my filling into a raw crust. I no longer care if it is soggy. We'll see how my first quiche turns out!

Our day went differently than planned. At Farmer's Market a group called Earth First attracted Hippie Boy's attention. Part of their agenda is to protest the planned construction of the I-69 highway (which I believe is a fine thing to protest). This afternoon they had a caravan going to Greene county to see some of the land that will be destroyed by it. I could tell Michael really wanted to go so I told him I wouldn't be mad if he went instead of helping me put in the garden today. He went to Farmer's Market, Opportunity House (where we found two shirts he likes YAY!), Lowe's for dirt and Aldi with me. We can work on garden tomorrow, unless it is pouring rain. I have "plant flowers" on the list of possible party activities for tomorrow, maybe it will be plant tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers instead!

So I worked on the house and garage and went to the dump without Michael this afternoon. I want the garage a little more cleaned out and swept so that if it is pouring tomorrow party can be more comfortably expanded that direction and I don't mind if people smoke out there. I don't store anything out there that smoke will harm and Chris already smokes out there when he comes in the winter. Secret crush from work is a terrible smoker and I still like him. Can you believe it? I believe it is an addiction and I have my addictions too so who am I to judge?

I keep doing my fifteen minutes today and I have really accomplished a lot. They haven't taken me into the garden yet, but it is getting close. I will get started even if Michael is not home yet. I hope the rebellious environmentalist hippies he is driving with are careful drivers. I did tell them I have advised him not to become the type of environmentalist who blows things up. He kind of admires Edward Abbey, whom I believe is of that ilk... They smelled like the kind of environmentalists who don't believe in taking too many showers. I told him he might want to choose carefully whose car he rides in! As long as he lives in my house, he is commanded to take daily showers, but he has now started turning off the water between getting wet and rinsing off. I guess it will save money for me as well as saving the earth so I really don't mind.

Well I must go do my next fifteen minute increment of necessary or work-type activity.

I am happy today for allrecipes.com. I still love reading cookbooks but on a busy day like today it really is so fast to come in and do a search and instantly have five or ten recipes to view. If I were a person who found a recipe and followed it maybe looking at one or two cookbooks would be sufficient, but because I like to look at several recipes and combine what I think will be the best elements allrecipes is great.