FFwD, sort of. Quiche Maraichere.

This week, for French Fridays with Dorie, we're scheduled to make lovely-sounding honey-glazed duck breasts. After harassing three different meat-department employees as to where I might find the duck breasts, I was informed that they're seasonal, and the store won't have any until the week before Thanksgiving. Bummer. The man then showed me frozen whole ducks that were set up next to the turkeys, and said I could get one of those and just cut the breasts off.  I don't thinks so, buddy.

How can duck breasts be seasonal, but whole ducks are not? I'm confused. Maybe the whole ones are still frozen from last year. Ew.

Needless to say, that threw a great big wrench in tonight's dinner plan. As far as keeping up with the group goes, I'm moving things around so that I'll mostly be on schedule. Since Thanksgiving week was set to be a free choice, I'll use my freebie this week, and make the duck during Thanksgiving week. Boom. Problem solved. Even better, I inadvertently already cooked a different dish from AMFT this week.

A friend came by for lunch yesterday. I've made Quiche Maraichere (pg 158 of Around My French Table) before, and I made it again, because it's delicious. I must have made this for myself pre-blog, though, because I don't see a post about it. That worked out nicely.

I like this quiche because it's light and non-greasy. The vegetable (diced carrots, red pepper, leeks, and celery) to custard ratio weighs heavily on the vegetable side. With a light coating of melty gruyere on top, this quiche tastes like a treat, but really isn't so bad for you, as far as foods that involve a tart crust, heavy cream, cheese, and eggs go. Hmm...I wonder if I can eat all my vegetables this way?

Conclusion: Love it. It's a great dish to prepare ahead of time and serve to company.

On a side note, I'll be posting less often this month. When I think of what I want to be doing with my life, writing novels has always been part of the picture. I earned my masters in fiction writing, published one story, wrote an AWFUL first draft of a novel, had a baby, and got totally sidetracked by life. For two years, I've barely written any fiction. To kick myself in the ass, I signed up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which is some psychotic enterprise that people set out on to write 50,000 words (a 175 pg novel) during November. The focus is more on quantity than quality, but I'm a big slowpoke of a writer, so pushing myself to just forge ahead and stop staring off into space will be good for me. I'll consider it a huge success if I even make it halfway to goal, since I'm starting from zero, and my time belongs to Charlie.

Point is, one obvious place to find time is right here. I'll still be cooking through my book, and will post about the recipes, but I'll probably do shorter posts, less often. Wish me luck! I did pretty well today.