Quick and easy breakfast mini quiche

I have a confession: I am a lazy person before the hour of 10 a.m. Naturally, my 7:30 a.m. class time is at war with my preferred sleeping habits. My bed and I have a love-hate relationship; I love my bed and hate to leave it.

This usually leads to me racing around the apartment trying to shovel breakfast down while getting dressed and grabbing my materials for the day. To avoid having to actually prepare a breakfast daily, I make mini quiche in advance.

When I first made these, I had NO idea what a quiche was. However, after a little Pinteresting, I discovered that this idea was not original and had a name. With no further ado, I give you the breakfast mini quiche!

Gather your supplies! I eat two of these every morning, so I usually make an even dozen. This means I use about 12 ounces of breakfast turkey sausage, a dozen eggs, and a sprinkling each of green onion and cheddar cheese:

Really, you could add just about anything you want to these! I've been meaning to experiment with just egg whites, feta, basil, and roma tomato... but bacon would be an easy substitution! Next, brown your meat and whip those eggs! I recommend really breaking up the sausage into small chunks - the larger pieces make the next step difficult. In case you wanted to know what a dozen eggs looks like when beaten, it's about 2.5 cups:

I use a non-stick cupcake pan with a little veggie oil spray to bake these. Using a spoon, I put in just enough sausage to cover the bottom of each cup.

Next, I pour in the egg! I suppose that I could add the green onion and cheese first, but I prefer to have those at the top just for appearance. Luckily, with this cupcake pan, I have never had to allot a certain amount of beaten egg per cup; it always magically works out in the end.

Top 'em off with the green onion (which I grow on my kitchen counter in a large test tube) and cheddar cheese:

And here is where cooking fails to be a science. I bake these for 20 minutes at 350°F. If you like your eggs well done, go for 25 minutes... but when these are reheated in the microwave, they tend to take on a spongy texture. The sponginess occurs before they're fully warmed when I bake these for 25 minutes. To avoid eating cold, spongy eggs, I opt for the shorter baking time and microwave for 25-30 seconds. Here is the final product:

You can see that they have risen quite a bit in the oven. I was quite surprised with how fluffy they are, despite being baked.

Depending on your preference, you can leave them in the pan to cool or remove them from the pan before cooling. I usually remove them as soon as they leave the oven. With a rubber spatula, they pop out of the pan with no resistance whatsoever. Too cool.

See? A delicious army of on-the-go breakfasts. Once these bad boys are cool enough, I will bag them in pairs and put them in the fridge for the week. Even if I roll out of bed especially late, I can always pop these in the microwave and take them to go!

Alright! Back to studying!

Remember - breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Date Jar

Tonight, I finally tackled a project that the husband and I have discussed for a couple weeks. During the school year, he and I are both busy. We both have classes, I have curricular and extracurriculars after class, and he works a part-time job most evenings.

After some time, we realized that we weren't really getting enough quality time, and that we were bored when we did find something to do together. He just wants me to tell him where I want to go, and I just don't want to have to make more decisions. So we decided on a date jar! We both put in suggestions for our next date, and we can pull out one when we are too exhausted to come up with something new. It's also a great way to keep track of all those restaurants you pass and want to try.

Supplies: Old peanut canister, colored paper, Modge Podge, extra ribbon (optional), sharpie and gel pen

It all started with these nut canisters I stashed away with the excuse that I would *totally* find something to do with them.

 

 First step was to remove the current label: 

Then, I designed a label using some colored printer paper that I had laying around. It was too short to wrap all the way around the canister, so I made a smaller piece and decided to cover the 'seams' with some ribbon I had used to relace a pair of oxford boots. The design on the paper is inspired by Sweet Verbena's "Birds On A Wire Art" tutorial:

It probably took me less than a minute to draw the lines and the birds. As I said, the paper wasn't long enough, so I added ribbon trim to cover up the seams where I added an insert that said "DATES" :

Everything was attached with Modge Podge to the canister, even the ribbon. Once I trimmed the ribbon down, it was time to add some dates!

It was my husband's idea to have some element of surprise, so we decided to add a few symbols on the outside of the dates to give us an idea of whether this date met our needs for the week. Money is represented as cheap to expensive, weather-dependent will be labeled with the conditions needed, time commitment is given by the clock, and the crummy mug is my attempt at hinting at drinks. We write the restaurant/date inside, then fold it in half, so only the symbols show. Here is an example of our favorite 'fancy' restaurant, the Red 7:

So there it is! An easy date jar. I've seen some Pinterest ideas that recommend following date jar cards militantly, but as students, Chris and I need more flexibility. If we don't like the date we pulled, we put it back in the jar. If we really enjoyed the date and want to do it again, we'll put it back in the jar.

I like having it out in the open (this is in the corner of our dining area). It reminds me every day that romance needs to occur daily.

Cost: $0.00

Total cost if you have no supplies on hand: $18.70

Jar of mixed nuts - $5ish, plus some man hours

Modge Podge - $4.86

Paper - $5.84

Ribbon - $3ish