Comfort Food to Keep Us Warm (because baking makes everything better!)

This week we felt the collective sigh of all the teachers and students returning to school after a long, cozy winter break (don't worry, we were sighing right there with you!). Winter break was so long we almost forgot what school was. But now, at the end of the week, it feels like break never happened! Isn't it weird how quickly our brains adjust to our environment??

It didn't help that the start of school was paired with MISERABLY low temperatures (for Oklahoma at least). At 7 a.m. Tuesday morning when I got in the car to drive Josh to work, my car proudly informed us that we were sitting in 13℉ temps. You know it's cold when my memory foam car cushion is a frozen solid brick instead of its usual cushy self! 😂

Josh wasn't feeling good this week, which meant my personal chef was out of commission. So, to combat the freezing temps this week and to give Josh a break from cooking for a bit, I faced my kitchen fears long enough to whip up some warm and cozy comfort food. Starting with a new quiche recipe! I'm not gonna share the actual recipe here since it's not mine to share. But if you want it for yourself, the recipe I used is from a cookbook called Hope's Table (please note: we don't get money from anything linked in this post; we just don't believe in gatekeeping yummy secrets 😊). This cookbook is full of super yummy Mennonite recipes and has become one of our all-time favorites ever since we found it stashed among all the other goodies at the Amish Cheese House in Chouteau, OK.

But let's just say... Josh was a little suspicious of this whole quiche venture. Back when we met at Bible college, Josh always dodged quiche night in the cafeteria. So besides the anxiety of not knowing if  this new recipe would work, I also knew there was a fairly good chance that in the end Josh might not even want to eat my quiche, no matter how well I followed the recipe. No pressure... 😅

First things first, I shredded a TON of potatoes for a potato crust (with our KitchenAid shredder attachment— God bless whoever invented that little shredder thingy!!). Then I realized I may or may not have only been supposed to shred HALF a ton, but since I kind sorta just guesstimated (how am I supposed to know how many cups a potato is gonna be after it's shredded??), so I accidentally ended up with two potato crusts instead of one. Thankfully I had enough other ingredients to quickly change plans to make a double quiche recipe! (*sarcastic tone* ohhhhhh nooooooo, we have double the yummies, what *ever* will we do?? 😆)

While the potato crusts were baking, I cooked up some sage pork sausage and mixed up all the other ingredients (cheese, eggs, tomatoes that sort of thing). Then I suspiciously pulled the half-baked potato crusts out of the oven and crossed my fingers.

And then the moment of truth! After layering all the yummy things together inside the crust, I finally started to feel a little confident that maybe this was gonna turn out all right after all. Don't the tomatoes and parsley make it look so cheery? 

Now for the final test— would the oven bless or destroy this undertaking?? I shoved my two little quiches into the warmth and then, of course, immediately flicked on the oven light so I could impatiently stare at them and breathe words of encouragement along the lines of, "Why aren't you cooking faster??"

Boredom set in pretty quickly. I still (amazingly) had a little kitchen energy left, and 40 minutes to kill while waiting to see if my quiches would live or die, so I decided: some dessert could never hurt, right?

Cue lots of apple-chopping. Apple crisp coming up! 

The hand-jotted recipe I use for apple crisp has been scribbled on and evolved over time from multiple sources to the point where it's so unrecognizable that I actually don't have link to share for the recipe. I guess that makes my own recipe now! 😅 If you're nice to me I might even share it with y'all in a later post... 😊

The reason for all my scribbles tho— have you seen how much sugar goes into a normal apple crisp??

Having a diabetic husband makes you think twice about all the sugar hiding in recipes, especially since apple crisp is one of Josh's all-time favorite desserts (2nd only to apple pie 😂), and I really wanted him to be able to enjoy it with me. So I developed my own recipe that uses wayyyyy less sugar than normal. I also use whole wheat flour instead of white flour, since the high fiber content of whole grains helps Josh's body process sugar a little better too.

I filled a baking pan chock-full with the chopped apples and then careeeefulllly stacked all the crisp topping over it. (I totally stuffed the baking pan to the max... let's just say I like to live on the edge. 😏)

The baking pan filled with apple crisp was ready just in time for me to swap it out for the two fantastic-looking quiches that had just finished in the oven. Can you believe how good these look?? And the way they smelled... mmmmmm. Bless. I actually successfully made a new recipe!

The real test tho: would my hubby eat it?? Josh had been feeling nauseous and unable to eat all day, but his nausea finally dissipated right around the dinner time and now he was STARVING from not eating all day. So I crossed my fingers and cut a piece for my quiche-hating hubby.

Josh: "What is this?"

Me: "Quiche."

Very Suspicious Josh: *makes a face but tentatively tries it*

....

Newly Quiche-Loving Josh: "I'm so hungry that I'm not even gonna question what this is made out of because right now this is literally the BEST thing I've ever tasted in the entire world." 😋

Happy dance time. I did it, y'all!! Definitely adding this one to my list of kitchen wins. 

And— we can't forget about the apple crisp! Crispy, gooey, cinnamony apple goodness. Perfect for bringing some hygge to our little one-bedroom apartment in the midst of a gloomy polar storm. 

(And in case you were wondering, Josh very much was not suspicious of the apple crisp AT ALL and definitely devoured his fair share of it. Along with many more pieces of yummy quiche. 😅)

Stay warm and cozy this week!

-Bonjé

P.S. Have I sufficiently made your mouth water with yummy food pics? Now it's your turn!! This is your sign to go whip up something yummy in YOUR kitchen. And report back in the comments with more yummy ideas!