Last weekend, I was starting to get tired of the recipe sources I use all the time.  It’s not that they’re bad.  I love them, and they’re my go-to sources for excellent reason.  But I wanted to branch out and do something different.

Enter Julia Child.  I read Julie & Julia, and I loved it.  I watched the movie, and I loved it even more, because it devoted more time to Julia Child’s life.  She seems like exactly the kind of kitchen role model I would want.  Granted, I know almost nothing about her, but she seems kind and funny, with some serious spunk and determination thrown in.

Some friends got us Mastering the Art of French Cooking as a wedding present, and while I have enjoyed looking at it on the shelf, I haven’t had the guts to try it out yet.  I’ve gotten confident in following the lingo of modern recipes, but there sat Julie Child on the shelf.

This weekend, I looked through the different sections of the book, searching for one simple recipe that could work as a weeknight dinner, and I landed on Quiche Lorraine.  Everything seemed to go well until the end of the baking time, when it was still a pie crust filled with warm cream and eggs.  Not at all solid.  The ten minutes between when the quiche was supposed to be done and when it was actually done were kind of scary.  It might have been 20 minutes.  It was a long time.

The quiche guts did eventually puff up and turn semi-solid.  I don’t, however, feel good enough about my quiche results to share a recipe with you at this point.  Someday I’ll make a great quiche, and it won’t give me a mild heart attack, and I’ll tell you how to do it, too.  For now, I’m glad I tried something different and that it turned out well enough that I didn’t have to make back-up omelets for dinner.  Whew.

Fortunately, we also had lots of home grown beets to cook last night, and I went with an “old reliable” resource for those.  Giada’s Beet and Goat Cheese Arugula Salad was the inspiration.

While the quiche almost killed me, the salad sat there looking comforting and tasty.  I did make a few changes for budget reasons, but it was still delicious.  Instead of shallots, I used really thinly sliced yellow onion (the cheap kind from a bag-o-onions).  I refrained from using avocado.  Why are avocados so much more expensive here than 4 hours away where we used to live?  No idea.  And instead of arugula, I used spinach.  I couldn’t bring myself to cut out the goat cheese, because I think goat cheese might be the most perfect food in the world.  I’m sure feta would work though.

Also, did you know that there are different colors of beets?  Ours came from a family veggie garden that isn’t our own, and they were a pretty yellow color.  They were tasty.  I had no idea until yesterday that beets could come in any color other than deep purplish red.