Sunday was an incredibly busy day for me.  Kyle was working one more day for his old boss to pay off his new cross-country ski boots (only had to work two days for some wicked nice boots) so I had some time to kill.  He didn't have to be at work until 10:00, so in the morning, we worked together on the new kitchen pantry that Kyle's been working on for the past week.  We're so close to being done, really only need the doors to be made and hung, but our quirky, old house is definitely making things difficult with the slightly slanted ceiling and floors.  Oh well, we're quirky, too, so it all works out.
After Kyle headed out I made myself a quick "to do" list (these things are the only way I can find to keep myself on track) and set a few old movies to play on my laptop while I worked away in the kitchen.

To Do:
Make Quiches
Make Bread Dough
Make Pasta?
Make Flour Tortillas (aka, wraps)
Do Dishes
Strip meat off chicken for dinner (we had roasted a week ago, then I made stock a few nights ago)

After a couple weeks of not selling eggs and not seeing any family/friends (therefore not giving away any eggs either) we found our fridge loaded down with too many full egg cartons.  So my first order of business for the day was to make a few quiches for the freezer.  To start things off, I made a double-batch of pie crust:

2.5 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup shortening
enough cold water to just bring it all together with some work

You know the drill: cut in the shortening until you have little pea-sized pieces then carefully add water to bring it all together. 

I split the chunk of dough in half, rolled each piece out to about 1/8" thick, pressed them into a couple glass pie plates, and threw them in a 450 degree oven (covered in foil) for 8 minutes, then for another 5 minutes uncovered.

While the pie crust cooled I whipped up 16 eggs with about 2 cups of milk.  Then set 2 cups of chopped mushrooms, a tablespoon of butter, salt and pepper, and a teaspoon or so of dried thyme in a pan to saute.  When that was set I poured it into one crust, topped it with a couple handfuls of shredded mozzarella cheese, and covered the whole thing with about half of the egg mixture.

In the second crust I had about two cups of chopped spinach, and some quartered, canned artichokes that I had on hand.  After adding a handful or so of shredded mozzarella cheese and the rest of the egg mixture I tossed them both in the oven (at 325 degrees) for about an hour (just until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean).

These little beauties came out looking delicious, smelling amazing, and I set them on some wire racks to cool completely (after all, these were for later, last-minute meals, not for a day I had all the time in the world).  Once they cooled, I covered them in two layers of tin foil, then wrapped with plastic wrap before throwing them in the freezer (marked with the date and description of the quiche) with the last of our chickens and apple cider.

After quickly scrubbing all my used bowls, utensils, etc, I threw all the ingredients for my bread dough in the mixer and got it kneading away while I got to work on the rest of my list.

By the end of the day my 'to do' list looked like this:


Make Quiches
Make Bread Dough
Make Pasta
Make Flour Tortillas
Do Dishes
Strip meat off chicken for dinner

On top of that I made two apple turnovers for dessert with the leftover pie crust (there's ALWAYS a little leftover when I roll out my crusts) using just a diced up apple, a tiny bit of honey, and a splash of vanilla extract.  I was pretty happy with myself.  Though, I was a little bummed I didn't get to try making pasta, but seeing as I'd never made wraps before I was pretty psyched to have been able to try something new that day.  Wraps and english muffins are the only two bread products we buy anymore.  One down, one more to go.

Tomorrow I'll post how I made the tortillas- because they turned out AMAZING and weren't all that difficult.  I'm hoping to make another batch or two soon so we can have some stored in the freezer.  Have I mentioned how much I love our chest freezer?  Well, I do.