New Zealand Spinach Flan; And I Baked Blueberry-White Chocolate Chip Cookies!

This came out very light in texture and pleasant to the eye.

This past Saturday, Kat and I attended a Backyard Crop Swap, where we gave away citrus and took with us some greens, including New Zealand spinach, a milder-tasting leaf than regular spinach.  We also received a large-leafed green that is tart to the taste, and is used sparingly to flavour other things.  I don't remember the name of it, but I added a couple leaves to the spinach and onion:

New Zealand Spinach Flan

about four to six ounces of New Zealand spinach leaves, washed and dried
several green onions
about 8 cubic inches of sharp cheddar (measure and cut before shredding), shredded
4 jumbo eggs
about 1/2 cup pasteurized egg whites
about 1/2-3/4 cup of buttermilk
1 teaspoon olive oil

Preheat oven to 350º F.

Heat oil in large pan or wok (larger surface area is better).  Add spinach leaves and green onion and sauté over medium heat.  Keep cooking on medium heat until most of the water evaporates from the leaves.  This will take a while, depending on how wide your pan is.

Take out a glass 8x14" baking pan with about 2" high sides.  Butter the bottom and sides of the pan liberally.  When spinach and onions are almost completely dry, spread them on the bottom of the pan.  Cover with shredded cheese.

Beat the eggs and egg whites.  Add buttermilk and continue beating.  Season with nutmeg, ground white pepper, celery seeds, and a pinch of salt.  Pour over everything, making sure you coat the top surfaces of all of the cheese.

Bake for about 45 minutes.  The top will be a nice golden color with spots of brown.  Cool for several minutes before cutting into squares for serving.

The flan came out really well.  I also baked a batch of blueberry-white chocolate chip cookies, mixing dried ginger into the batter to give it a hint of flavour.  The original recipe calls for adding chopped crystallized ginger, but I didn't have any in the place.  When I'd made them before, with the crystallized ginger, the cookies are really quite delicious.

Later in the afternoon, I followed Alton Brown's recipe for Seedy Crisps (the recipe is on the Food Network site) and they came out well, too.  This morning, I concocted a batch of hummus to go with the crackers, since the crackers have sesame seeds as well as poppy seeds.  I wish I had an eggplant to make more baba ganoush, but I don't, so I'll just look for a recipe for butternut squash, since I still have two aging butternut squashes on the kitchen counter, looking forlorn in the company of the pumpkin we'd received as part of our share in either October or November.  Good thing winter squashes keep so well!

I just joined a Meetup that is called 2 Pages.  Members meet weekly to read their writing out loud, and receive criticism and encouragement from the rest of the group.  It sounds like a good way to keep my writing practice up, especially fiction writing, since my writing on here is definitely in the non-fiction category.

In other news, I've managed to pick up Peter's cold, which consists mainly of a sore throat and raspy coughing.  I feel a little tired, but otherwise all right.  I hope it passes quickly because I want to get back to the gym.

I phoned the Department of Rehabilitation and my appointment to meet with a counselor is not scheduled until the second week of April.  I guess they must have quite a backlog there, since I think I gave them pretty open availability.  They chose the late morning of the 9th.  Until then, I'll just keep doing what I've been doing, which amounts to some writing, some reading, cooking, baking, and thinking about what the next step may be.  I think at this point, I'm able to rule out becoming a pastry chef, but not only because I was warned away from becoming a pastry chef by a younger single mother at a Meetup who'd gone to school to become a pastry chef and is now unemployed.

Like I told a friend, I think I might enjoy baking too much to turn it into a business.