Adventures of a healthy-ish pseudo-foodie

100% worth the effort to boil and egg-wash them before baking. For New Years' Eve, I like to make party appetizers for just our family dinner. This year, we had cold veggie pizza (on crescent dough with sour cream and cream cheese) and pigs in blankets, which are one of the few items that I like. I've made them before and I know I prefer them with pizza dough. But when I searched online to remember how long to bake them, I noticed a trend. There were many mediocrely-reviewed recipes that involved just wrapping and baking, as I had previously done. And then there were some really well-rated recipes that involved an extra step of boiling them before baking. Like bagels, if you live in a place where bagel stores serve actual boiled bagels instead of rolls with a hole in the center. So, I worked from  this recipe  and it was just right. I mean, look at them! I was also armed with extra-special malden salt (my new love) and good local mustard. Success. The Recip

FINALLY, I made good french onion soup. This post comes after many attempts at making good french onion soup. I got hooked on french onion soup back when Panera was St. Louis Bread Company and their french onion soup was delicious (it's not worthwhile anymore), and in the 16 years since I left St. Louis, I've been trying to find a decent recipe. Thank you, instant pot. The recipe is from  Gimme Delicious  and I followed it exactly, except that I halved the entire recipe but kept the full quantity of garlic. It only gets pressure cooked for 5 minutes, so I don't know if the pressure cooking is the secret. I think part of the instant pot magic here is that the "saute" function is at the perfect temperature for caramelizing onions. Normally, when I do that part in a pot, I get impatient and turn up the heat too high and it doesn't work. This took just under an hour but it came out perfectly. I think it would have been quicker in a big instant p

Way prettier crust than I could make myself. I had convinced myself that frittatas were just as good as quiche, but then I found myself with some extra frozen pie crusts (I had bought backup before making the Thanksgiving pie), so I decided to make quiche. And, yes, it's better than a frittata. I worked from  this SimplyRecipes recipe . I substituted almond milk for the milk and cream, and I used red onion this time because I didn't have shallot, but I'll use shallot when I have it. I skipped their step of sauteeing the onion/shallot first, and it was fine. The only other change I made is that I had way more egg filling than would fit in one crust, and since I happened to have two frozen crusts, I spread it out into the two. It was almost enough to fill both. So I've adjusted the recipe to have just two more eggs and fill the two crusts. It's easy enough to freeze an extra quiche. (I read that the best reheating instructions are to heat it at 350, from f