My weekend can best be summed up as “produce dealing”.  There was the bag of cucumbers Virginia dropped off that became bread & butter pickles, peppers from the garden that became pepper jelly, a round of watermelon rind pickles started thanks to Virginia trying to get to a watermelon before the little nibbling critters in our garden did, only to cut it open to discover it wasn’t quite ready for eating.

There was also a small batch of cherry butter  and black forest preserves made and there’s still  a box of peaches from Saunders Brothers sitting in my kitchen that will need to be dealt with this afternoon as I finish the watermelon rind pickles. I’m not entirely sure exactly what I’m doing with all those peaches, but I have realized that it’s infinitely less exhausting to put up a few bushels of peaches if I approach it a half bushel at a time.

In between all this, we had a house full of company – in addition to the usual flow of neighbors popping in, Will and Owen Smiley were here, using the house as their base of operations for mountain fun and Allison stopped through Saturday night with Sarah on their way from North Carolina home to Annapolis.  Needless to say, come Sunday night, I was sort of done with cooking, so I whipped up a quick crustless quiche for dinner, throwing in some of Saturday’s dinner leftovers as well as other garden bounty.  The squash plants I’ve planted down at the off-site garden have been doing fairly well -so well, that I’ve realized I need to check it daily to avoid finding squash the size of a dinner plate.

Quiche with squash

I sort of followed a new recipe for this – I’ve been winging my eggy pies for years and after having one of Lynnette’s quiches recently, I realized mine were seriously lacking and I needed to up my game on them. So out came the cookbooks for inspiration. I threw two tablespoons of flour into 4 beaten duck eggs (our friend William has been quite generous with duck eggs this summer) and a cup milk, poured it over my filling of sauteed onions, peppers, patty pan squash, leftover grilled Hot Italian sausage from Free Union Grass Farm, a good handful of chopped basil, oregano and parsley from the garden, some cheddar and provolone cheese and baked it for a half hour at 350.  I let it sit for 10 minutes before serving and it was lovely if I do say so myself. I kept the proportions of the filling on the smaller side – half an onion, a small patty pan squash, two small chile peppers – as when making fillings like this, a little bit goes a long way.

With Edie off at camp for another two weeks, it’s just Pat and myself,  so there was enough quiche leftover to serve as dinner this evening, so that I can just focus on that box of peaches while finishing the watermelon rind pickles.  It’s canning season y’all!

Crustless Quiche

2 Tablespoons Flour

4 eggs, beaten

1 cup milk

Combine and pour over combined sauteed veggies/meats plus 1 cup shredded cheese in a greased pie plate.  Bake at 350 for a half hour or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean.  Let sit 10 minutes before serving.