Sunday afternoon cooking

I'm making pie crust and don't have a pastry blender. I agree with Alton Brown about "no uni-taskers," therefore there is no such implement in my kitchen. (A pastry blender looks like look like a handle with 5 or so wires or blunt knife-like loops.) Instead, I daydreamed having Wolverine's claws to speed up blending the flour and shortening.
-from Nerd's facebook status, Sunday March 6

It's late Sunday afternoon, and I have a quiche and a casserole in the oven.

I made the quiche crust from the single-crust pie pastry recipe in my trusty Better Homes and Gardens red-check binder cookbook. It's not the same one my mother gave me in my college years: I broke the binding of that one and replaced it with a later edition a few years ago. The filling is also based on the basic quiche recipe in that cookbook. Instead of sliced green onions, I used shallots that I sauteed in olive oil. For the meat, there was leftover turkey breakfast sausage and bacon. I added baby spinach leaves. Instead of milk or cream there is soy milk, and Daiya non-dairy cheddar style shreds in the place of shredded cheese. I wanted to use almond milk for its creaminess, but I decided to use soy.  That way, the quiche could be a school lunch for my older daughter, and not run afoul of the no-nut lunchroom policy.

The casserole is an improvised layering of cooked brown rice, black beans, leftover "salsa chicken" (chicken stewed in salsa and then shredded), chopped sweet pepper, and more salsa, with some crushed tortilla chips on top.  We will add cheese and sour cream individually at serving, or, in my case, Daiya cheddar and pseudo sour cream.

That was a well-spent afternoon.