Sunday Cooking: Mission Aborted

Did everyone have a nice Easter/Passover/Spring Weekend Holiday? I was a busy little bee, prepping the kitchen area on Saturday for the painter. I realized that I had let the clutter expand in there and it was going to take two days to get it all done.

This is what I started with.







I had already re-organized most of the cabinets about six months earlier, but there were two left, one under the junk drawer on the outside of the island and one under the sink, where I knew we we were not utilizing the space properly. Once I cleared those out, a good proportion of what was on the counters were going to find new permanent homes.

Under the junk drawer was first. It's where we were keeping our tools, electronics, etc. Lo and behold, we were storing some electronics that we definitely did not need anymore. Check these out!



Anyone need to send a fax? Can't do it here, we don't have a landline anymore!



A real answering machine! I hated the voicemail that came with the phone lines, and stuck with this answering machine right up until the moment I switched to a cell phone. This is the machine the President of Pizza Hut left a message on, thanking us personally for our business. (True story!)



The base for our wireless phone. God only knows where the phone is. Look, caller ID!! It was top of the line, back in the day.



We had this princess phone for emergencies; if the power went out, the wireless phones went dead, but we had this one with its dirty, tortured cord to keep us connected to the world. I think I had this phone in college and in my first couple of apartments, thus the sprung-out cord. I walked all over my place with it in hand, talking to my girlfriends back home. Ah, good times.

Once I cleared those out, re-arranging the rest was a breeze. I next tackled under the sink and threw out bottles of cleaners that we never use (yay, cleaning ladies! All of their products are in the basement). Then I stored most of the remaining counter stuff in the basement temporarily so it wouldn't be in the painter's way. By the end of Saturday, the kitchen looked like this:







Then the painter called on Saturday evening, and cancelled Monday's appointment.

ARGH.

He is rescheduling with my husband for either Friday or the following Monday. If he defers again, I am stepping in.

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What does that have to do with food? Nothing! I just wanted to show you what I did this weekend. :)

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Sunday was Easter, and I had plans for my pal J to come visit during the day so we could watch The Office Christmas special (UK version), and then we were going in the late afternoon to our other friend J's for Easter dinner. I had decided on Saturday (before we got The Call) that since our kitchen would be out of commission for a good part of the week, it was a week for quiche and salad.

While J was here, I roasted cauliflower and garlic for a replay of that amazing mustard quiche, and made a quick broccoli slaw with honey mustard yogurt dressing that I had first seen on Pinterest.

My plan was to pop a couple of quiches in the oven and marinate some chicken breasts for cooking that night. Then we sat down to watch TV and gab. We lost track of time and had to rush to cook up the pierogis to take to my girlfriends. Thus my Sunday Cooking ended up as aborted as my painting did. Whoops!

Luckily, on Monday night, I forced myself to complete the quiches; it occurred to me that the half-hour of work they needed were all that stood between us and a week of takeout. I held strong!

The second quiche was to use up some items in the fridge. I had bought a chicken sausage the week before that I was dying to eat; I had had it long ago at Fredhots as one of their specialty sausages, and the flavors were so rich and amazing I scooped up a package as soon as I saw it at Whole Foods: AmyLu's Cranberry and Cognac Chicken Sausage. We both give this one two-thumbs-up approval, and Hubby doesn't even really like cranberries.

I sliced up some onions on the mandolin and sauteed them in a bit of olive oil. While they were cooking I chopped up two sausages and added them to the pan. Then I dropped a half-bag of frozen cut leaf spinach into the pan, and used kosher salt, cracked pepper, and a bit of Penzey's salt-free Pasta Sprinkle (basil, oregano, thyme) to season it.





Then I poured this into a whole-wheat pie shell and covered it with some fresh grated gruyere cheese and 6 mixed eggs, also seasoned with Pasta Sprinkle. Cook at 350 for 40 minutes, and we were good to go!

I am not gonna lie; I couldn't fit all of it in the pie shell, and while the quiches were in the oven cooking, Hubby and I ate the remaining spinach and sausage chunks with our hands. We might have made happy mouth noises, too; it was just that good. Funny, the quiche turned out fine, but the mixture outside of the quiche was even better. I have two more links (100 calories each!) and extra frozen spinach; I may just make another saute pan of it and have that for dinner this week.

(Don't tell Hubby; I don't want to share it with him. LOL!)

So in the end, I was able to complete the mission even after it got scrubbed. And I am ready for the painter whenever he gets here!