Cooking for yourself means making whatever YOU want. Cooking for others on a regular basis can be tough because you can’t always do that. When I lived alone, my dinners usually consisted of something with eggplant. It is easy to stir-fry, saute, grill, roast, bake, you name it. For someone who could just barely make a complete meal, eggplant was my key ingredient. Plus I love the stuff!

Mike doesn’t like eggplant. That’s fine because I know how to cook much better than I did back then, but sometimes I miss it. I pondered for a while about how I could make him love it, but I didn’t get very far. So, I rarely buy it for myself. Happily, my CSA box has included an eggplant for a few weeks now. I have been grilling it and using it for lunches, but this week I wasn’t going to be bringing my lunch as often as usual. I needed to have it with dinner. But how? I was not interested in cooking two dinners. That’s just a lot of work. Then I had an idea…

As I mentioned before, I don’t care for tomatoes but Mike loves them… and I just so happened to have four from my CSA box waiting to be eaten. Maybe I could make a quiche, half topped with tomato and half topped with eggplant. Would that work? Would it stay separate like on a pizza? Ruining dinner is highly frowned upon in my house as you can imagine.

I had a pie crust in my freezer, so I decided to go for it. First thing’s first… what needs to happened to these tomatoes to get them ready for quiche? They seem awfully wet and goopy to just go in raw. I mean, they could get their goop on my eggplant! I looked at a few tomato quiche/pie recipes and saw that you do need to cook the tomatoes first to dry them out a bit. Good. I sliced some tomatoes (about one and a half) and sauteed them in a pan with some oil. Sort of a “now you stay here until you can learn to keep your hands to yourself!” And it worked.

When the tomatoes were done, I cubed the eggplant and sauteed it too. Something to know about eggplant: the little cubes are just pretty purple sponges. They will suck up all the oil immediately, but that’s ok! Don’t add more oil. Just keep sauteeing until they’re golden brown. You could easily stop here and eat these little brown eggplant nuggets as-is. But let’s keep going…

I also sauteed the purple pepper from my CSA box with a couple cloves of garlic. (Note: purple peppers turn a whitish-green when you cook them. I was pretty disappointed when I figured that out.)

When all that was done (well, sort of while it cooked), I mixed the quiche filling:

• 6 eggs
• 2 cups of cheese (I used cheddar and a little Parmesan because that’s what I had)
• 1.5 cups of milk
• pinch of salt
• pepper to taste
• I also added some fresh herbs to add some flavor — oregano and thyme

Usually you would add all of the veggies and stuff to the crust before adding the filling, but because I wanted the eggplant and the tomatoes to remain on separate halves I didn’t want to do that. I put the pepper/garlic in the pie crust first. Then I poured in the egg mixture. Then I carefully added the tomatoes to one half and the eggplant to the other. Then I laughed out loud. Look at it! It looked like two picky children were eating here! Nope, two picky adults (although not generally picky). Anyway…

Into a 350 degree oven for 30-40 minutes or until it sets. It should be lightly browned on top and be just a little jiggly in the center, but not raw or runny.

My plan worked perfectly! I mean, look at this quiche! Half for him, half for me. Everyone was happy… REALLY happy.

But it didn’t end there! I picked up a few peaches at the store over the weekend and noticed they had ripened very quickly. They needed to be eaten pronto. Last year for my birthday I was in Boston, and one of my friends made me a strawberry/rhubarb pie with this amazing crumble topping. Ever since, I have used that crumble topping for all of the pies I’ve made. I figured I could basically make a peach pie with that topping minus the crust (I didn’t have another pie crust). And what do you know… it was fantastic!

Peach Crumble

• 6 large peaches — sliced
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg
• 1.5 tbsp of cornstarch or 2 tbsp instant tapioca

Mix the dry ingredients and then toss with the peaches until coated. Put them in an oven save dish — a casserole dish or something is fine.

Crumble topping:

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup quick-cooking or rolled oats
• 1/2 cup cold butter

Mix the dry ingredients. Cut in the butter until you have a crumbly topping. Sprinkle over fruit. Bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, then lower the heat to 350. Bake for another 20 minutes or until the topping is browned. After you let it cool and set a bit, grab a couple of big spoons and devour this delicious dessert. I promise you’ll love it.