CSA Cooking: Week 1 Swiss Chard and Cheddar Quiche

This year the Hubby and I decided we wanted to try signing up for a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where we pay them a lump sum at the beginning of the season and we get however many weeks of fresh produce. The produce varies week to week depending what is in season and what the farm is growing. Since it is just the two of us, we decided to split it with my parents- which worked out this year because we can admit we wouldn't have been able to afford signing up for it by ourselves.

Anyway this week is the first week of our CSA and we are SO EXCITED! We pick up our box of goodies on Tuesdays and on my way home from work I drop of my parent's half at their house. This week we got strawberries, green onions (gigantic ones), beets, sweet potatoes, asparagus, radishes, spring greens and swiss chard. We ate the spring greens the first day but we had never cooked, or even eaten, swiss chard so we had to figure out what to do with it.  I decided on this Swiss Chard and Cheddar Quiche from Real Simple. However, we didn't have ALL the same ingredients they called for, and some additional ones, I altered it some.

This is what I started with :

Ingredients: 

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 bunch swiss chard (we actually had half a bunch)

1 green onion chopped (ours was huge)

1/2 cup regular egg substitute
1/2 cup egg white subtitute

3/4 cup evaporated milk

kosher salt and black pepper

1/2 cup cheddar cheese, shredded

1 prebaked 9.5 inch pie crust

If you have to make your pie crust, do that first. That is what I did- and I used dried out chickpeas to weigh down the bottom of the pie crust when I baked it so it didn't puff up. Then on to the quiche itself!

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 

2) Chop your swiss chard and green onion(s) into bite size pieces. Heat the tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chard and onion and cook until tender. 

3) In a bowl, beat the egg substitute, evaporated milk. Season with salt and pepper (I would suggest around 1 teaspoon salt- I used less and it was not enough). Add the cheddar and the chard mixture and mix it all up. Pour into the pre-baked pie crust and bake until set, 35-40 minutes. 

After the quiche is done baking let cool for a few minutes  before cutting into it. Then serve it up and enjoy!

So far we are enjoying the CSA, but it is also only week one. The only problem that I have encountered is that usually I do my grocery shopping on Friday and I have the next week's meals planned before I go shopping (we've cut our grocery bill down by a little more than 1/3 by doing this); however, with the CSA we don't know what we're getting until I get it on Tuesday. So I'm having to plan a few more options so that the meals are more flexible. I'm finding that a little frustrating, and it makes it harder to stick to the meal plans, but we're getting there!