Quiche, Tortino's Quesadilla, Egg Spaghetti, and Banana Bread

I've been trying to cook more lately because I realized several things: 1. Eating out is expensive and not very healthy. 2. Cooking really isn't that hard. 3. I'm behind on my project by about 30 recipes.

I made a Quiche for breakfast on Sunday. It turned out very well. Thanks to my handy-dandy Pampered Chef pie crust shield thingy, the crust was perfect. I did use a store bought crust instead of making my own, but I was very pleased with how it turned out. I really liked the recipe, but Adam and I decided that next time we make it, we'll add some sausage and bell peppers.

Monday night, I made Tortino's Quesadilla. It is just a chicken quesadilla, but instead of cheese, you use a sauce of nacho cheese and chicken broth. I put way too much sauce on the first quesadilla, resulting in a mess in the pan when I tried to flip it. Thank goodness for non-stick pans. I also used enormous tortillas, and even though I have an enormous spatula, they were still difficult to flip. I made 3 quesadillas and each one suffered at least one chicken casualty during the flipping process. Luckily, we have dogs specially trained in the disposal of such casualties. These quesadillas were a little messy to make and eat, but we really enjoyed them.

Last night, I made Egg Spaghetti and Banana Bread. I boiled the pasta before I sauteed the kielbasa, so I was a little worried that the spaghetti wouldn't be hot enough to cook the egg/parmesan/parsley mixture, but everything turned out great. The only problem was that I ended up with a lot more spaghetti than kielbasa, but the spaghetti tasted so good on it's own that we didn't mind the minimal amount of sausage.

I also made Banana Bread because I bought a lot of banana's last week, but we didn't eat them fast enough. I called my mom before I started making the bread because the recipe called for buttermilk, which I didn't have, so I wanted to know how bad it would be if I just used regular milk. I'm glad I called because she told me to just add a little lemon juice to the milk to sour it, and I learned that because the recipe calls for baking soda, it needs some kind of acid to counter-act it, otherwise the bread would taste like baking soda. I'm glad my mom used to be a Home Ec. teacher. She knows everything! (Everything about cooking, anyway). After I hung up with her, I started gathering the ingredients. I thought I had brown sugar somewhere, but I couldn't find it anywhere, so I just used white sugar instead. When Adam got home, he found the brown sugar hidden in a corner of the cabinet behind a bunch of cans. I think the banana bread I made has been the only thing so far that has turned out absolutely perfect! The outside crust was just a little crunchy, but in a good way. The inside was soft and fluffy, and the flavor was great. Adam told me that it would be ok with him if I never used brown sugar when making banana bread again!