Morning Quiche

Daniel and I always go to The City Market in Kansas City several times during the summer every year.  It's a farmer's market that sells lots of fruits and veggies and other stuff.  Some of the people are genuine farmers, selling their home grown, organic goods (including baked items... yesss!), while others have mass quantities of non-regional goods that are clearly imported.  Sometimes it's a good deal, sometimes not.  Because I am a deal hound, I usually go to Aldi the day before to see how much their produce is so I can compare prices (sad and ridiculous, I know).  Sometimes, though, there is nothing like fresh corn, peaches, and home grown tomatoes.

LOVE Produce!

Seriously, green bean heaven.  So good!

My sissy on one of our dates a few years ago.  Time flies!  How gorgeous is she?

We went a few weeks ago with some friends and I bought some lovely spices from this guy:

He has everything from toasted sesame seeds and whole pepper corns to smoked paprika and lemon pepper.  Even whole star anise (which, by the way is "licorice" flavored and is a core spice in Chinese Five-Spice).  It looks like this:

I hate licorice, so I don't use or buy it.  But I think it looks so cool!

Almost all of these spices are only one dollar per scoop, which is 1/2 cup or more!  Crazy!  I bought some smoked Paprika, dried mustard, and sesame seeds.  Such a good deal.  You could seriously stock your spice cab for pennies.  My sis-in-law (who is having a baby GIRL in January!) buys her stuff here all the time!
Which brings me to the purpose of this post:  Morning Quiche.
I know it's not a traditional quiche, but this is what my mom always made in the morning on the weekends when we had a "fancy" breakfast.  It is so good and so easy.  Now that school has started and me=no life, I've started whipping out all of my organizational tricks to keep my sanity during the week.  This recipe is one of them.
I'm a pretty strict cereal/skim milk/fruit gal every single morning, but Daniel needs some protein.  Sometimes I buy Jimmy Dean D-Lights sandwiches and he really likes them (Aldi has their own Fit and Active version that he said are better and were 1/3 of the price!  They were on special, though, so I can't find them anymore).  The only drawback is that they're really expensive.  To cut back, I started making this quiche on Sunday nights and it keeps great all week in the fridge.  Daniel heats it up every morning and it's way cheaper than frozen breakfasts.  Make life even easier and use pre-cooked sausage links (I use low sodium turkey sausage, of course!) instead of frying up a chub!

Ingredients:
2-3 pieces of whole-wheat bread
1/2 lb or 1 package of 10 pre-cooked turkey sausage links
1 cup cheese (I usually use Cheddar, but I ran out and used pepper jack this time)
4 eggs
1 cup milk
Salt/Pepper to taste
1/2 tsp dried mustard (from the farmer's market spice man!)
Foil

Directions:

• Cube bread and place in bottom of sprayed 8*8 pan.  You just need enough bread to cover the bottom.  I used some whole-wheat home-made bread I made last week, so I don't know how many slices I used. 2-3 should be enough!

•  Chop up sausage.  You can fry up your own (you will only need half of it, though!), but I like to buy the precooked turkey sausage links.  They are cheaper anyway!  Place on top.

•  Sprinkle Cheese on top.

•  Mix eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and mustard together and beat well.  I just used a good ole fashioned whisk.  Pour over the top.  It won't cover everything, but when it bakes it will rise!

•  Bake, covered, at 325 for 30 minutes.  Low and slow for eggs makes them tender, not rubbery!  Take the foil off and bake another 10 minutes.

Done!  Keep covered in the fridge all week, cut and microwave each morning.  Love.
Family walk time and then school time.  Gotta love middle schoolers!