Cheese, scones and quiche, oh my!

Yesterday was a foodie day.

First, we enjoyed the last two Lemon-Lavender Scones from Saturday's mini-bakefest (I was so frustrated that because of my baking and pastry classes, I never have time to bake at home anymore, so I woke determined to make whatever scones I had the proper ingredients I had on hand for, plus a crust for a quiche-to-be-made-later.), along with a nice hot cafe au lait. Oh, the scone recipe is from the completely excellent Macrina Bakery cookbook. Buy one today!

In the afternoon, I attended a short seminar at the Art Institute of Seattle about starting a restaurant. The speaker was chef Ethan Stowell, who opened his first restaurant, Union, about 18 months ago.

He gave a great talk, with interesting tidbits about putting together a business plan, getting investors, etc., but the one thing that sticks with me the most is that he said he owns 600-700 cookbooks, and that "I've literally read every one of those recipes backwards and forwards at least three times." Yowza! I thought I had a lot of cookbooks, but I don't think I've topped 100 (didn't have time yesterday to count, though). I'd better get shopping. Of course, I do own about 5 million back issues of Food & Wine.

After the seminar, I grabbed He-Who-Puts-Up-With-Me and our dog Doofus and headed down to the Pike Place Market for the Seattle Cheese Festival. We fought our way up to enough tables to satisfy our cheese tooth with samples. We even bought a couple tasty wedges to take home, accompanied by crackers from Beechers. Yummy!

Dinner was so easy: A rotisserie chicken from Costco and sauteed fresh asparagus. For dessert: wedges of the cherry pie I made in class Saturday night. Sigh.

I tested out the grater attachment on my new food processor in order to grate the 4 ounces of Gruyere for my quiche. Wow. Drop in a block of cheese, you get grated cheese...presto! How did I ever live without this contraption?

I had never made a quiche in my life until last week...now I'm addicted. They're so easy...the crust is the hardest part, and even that's not that hard (especially with my trusty food processor). I already have my eye set on a spinach and feta quiche for next week (great way to use up the feta in my fridge). A wedge of quiche, heated slightly in the microwave (like, one minute or less), makes a great brown bag lunch, along with a green salad. Yum, yum, yum!