5 o’clock panic

Yesterday was a quiet day. Wrote up a blog post, made up a custom t-shirt design for my upcoming half-marathon. There was also some general time-wasting. I couldn’t actually tell you exactly where my afternoon went. I think I did a load of laundry? I know I stopped people from eating their body weight in popsicles. Did some coloring. Fashioned a bridal veil out of a purple polka-dot scarf and a sparkly red headband. Picked up more dinosaurs than one household should own. Ate some imaginary “donuts soupplay”, with a cup of real coffee. Texted with my little sis.

Next thing I knew, it was 5:00.spinach_pie-04 - Copy

Once I sent that last text (which remained unanswered, as sis was probs in the middle of making some homemade baked mac&cheese), I wandered around the house trying to figure out what we had ingredients for. I settled on the easiest, yummiest, I-keep-these-things-on-hand-at-all-timesiest recipe of all: my mom’s Spinach Pie.

Or as I now call it- “Oh shit, it’s 5:00, what the hell am I making for dinner, oh yeah I know Spinach Pie”

But you should probably just still call it Spinach Pie, lest you be tempted to shorten the name to “Oh shit… Pie”

Step one: Gather ingredients and recruit a 19-month-old for the free labor. Bonus points if she’s wearing more than a half-dozen strings of mardi gras beads.

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Spinach Pie

Ingredients

  • 5 large eggs
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1 cup shredded cheese (I usually use mozzarella, but cheddar or swiss works too)
  • 1 box frozen chopped spinach, thaw and squeeze out excess water (I buy my spinach in a big bag, so I use a little over a cup or so?)
  • 1 packet dry veggie soup mix
  • 1 frozen deep dish pie shell (sometimes I also make up some in little tart shells for the kiddos but I didn’t have any last night)
  • Sausage, browned (I don’t know the exact amount. About a handful? Last night the only sausage I could find was those mini breakfast sausage patties. I defrosted and browned 3 of them. Just eyeball it.)

As you can see, this is a very forgiving recipe. It’s just a quiche. Nothing fancy.

Instructions

  1. Preheat oven and cookie sheet to 350 degrees.
  2. Beat eggs.
  3. Mix in all the rest of the ingredients.
  4. Pour mixture into shell, put shell on cookie sheet.
  5. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes.
  6. It’s done when the egg looks solid (and don’t burn your crust like I did a little bit last night).

Number of servings: I usually get 8 slices (one deep dish pie) and about 4-6 mini tarts out of this recipe. Enough for dinner and leftovers.

 

Grab your 3-yr-old (who is having a meltdown because SHE wanted to help make dinner but she was down in the basement eating goldfish and jumping on the trampoline when you put dinner in the oven and I’m not some kind of wizard, I can’t just time travel back to before dinner was already made, child) and convince her that setting the table is just as helpful as making dinner. Everybody may eat off of bitty little plates from the toy section at Ikea, but that’s okay because this is a simple dinner.

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Done. Dinner on the table right at 6:30 when the hubs walks in the door because you are freaking amazing at this thing.

If you play your cards right, you can have enough leftover for lunch. It warms up beautifully.

Thanks for the recipe, Mum!