I don’t make anything that can be called a quiche because I don’t like to add milk or cream to eggs, not even to scramble ’em.  But I do make a couple varieties of egg and cheese pie.

Ingredients:  eggs, cheese, some kind of vegetable (asparagus for us), and pie crust (optional).

Directions:  if you are going to put it in a pie crust, make your pie crust first and stick it in the oven while you mix up the other stuff.  These don’t need pie crusts at all and usually I am too lazy to make one in advance.

Next, in a mixing bowl, break and empty about six large eggs.  Discard shells.  Put a whole heap of shredded cheese of various kinds in there.  Add seasoning.  Stir like crazy and make sure that all the egg yokes are broken.

Chop asparagus into little pieces.  Get out your pie pan with or without crust inside and add asparagus.  Finally, pour egg and cheese mixture over and schmoosh around until everything’s about even.  Bake at 350-375 until you’ve smelled all the ingredients cooking and the top is browned (about 30 minutes I think).  Eat.

Note:  if you’re using a leafy floppy vegetable like spinach you could probably mix it in the bowl with the egg and cheese and then pour it all together.  I put the asparagus in the pan first to minimize splashing when pouring.

A while ago, when I spent more time in the stacks, I found this book called White Trash Cooking.  In it I found a recipe called Leetta’s Fancy Eggs & Cheese Pie.  That Leetta used cream in her pie and she didn’t capitalize the second ‘e’ in her name, but I felt an affinity just the same.  Nearby in the same book I found Margie’s Fried Chicken and Alma’s Almond Omelet.  That’s me, mom and grandma all in one book.  So of course I love White Trash Cooking.  I might talk more on it later, even.

I was inspired to this by an honest to goodness recipe, or something, that I saw online during the days when I had enough time to look at food photo blogs.  Ah!  those were the days!  Anyway, I modified it a little and it is a solid ‘everyone loves it’ dinner for any time of year.

Ingredients:  Cous cous (I like the parmesan one though the original makes more), asparagus, eggs, parmesan cheese

Do:  get the cous cous started in a pot with the directions on the box and put the asparagus in a pan with some oil.  Saute saute saute the asparagus.  When the cous cous is done, add some parmesan cheese (even if you got the parmesan cheese one).  Dish on to plates.  Layer the sauteed asparagus on top of cous cous.  Now comes the tricky part.  I like to fry my eggs in the same pan I sauteed the asparagus with because I hate extra dishes.  This can require some finesse and has resulted in some smokey kitchens in my time.  You don’t have to use the same pan if you don’t want to – it might be less tricky to get the temperatures right.  Finally, layer fried egg on asparagus that already on cous cous and shake a liberal helping of parmesan on top.  There you have it.

I only gave it a name here because ‘egg on asparagus on cous cous with parmesan’ was too long for the title.  Oh, and I hear there are places in the states that cannot get asparagus year round, so my comment about any time of year could be incorrect.  I’m sorry for you if you cannot; that is a terrible state of affairs.