A Simply Stress-Free Christmas Brunch

Hello friends! It’s pouring here in Memphis and dad and Kyle are at the duck club, which makes it a perfect day for writing and recipe testing. Thought I would do a little post to tell you about our Christmas brunch and how I tried changing it up this year to keep things stress-free and with more time to sit around the Christmas tree!

Usually for Christmas my family drinks coffee and exchanges gifts first thing in the morning and then we tidy up and start making brunch. This year, however, I decided to try mixing it up a little and seeing if we could enjoy breakfast and each other’s company around the table in the den while doing our gift exchange, leaving more time to sit and chat and not hear our stomachs growling while we open gifts! After thinking about what I could prep ahead, I landed on my Crustless Sage and Sausage Quiche. Because it’s only me, dad and Kyle on Christmas morning, we don’t need to go overboard on the food and so we bought some in-season fruits and our favorite whole grain bread to pair with it. The fruits I selected included grapes, oranges and pears and they were so sweet and juicy diced up as a fruit salad. Our bread of choice these days is Dave’s Killer Bread and it was hearty and nutty, toasted up and served with butter. And that was our Christmas brunch! Both dad and Kyle loved the quiche and I’m assuming they were telling the truth because it was almost all entirely gone by the end of Christmas morning!

The quiche is super savory and so really complemented the sweet winter fruits served along side it. I always have a starch of some sort with a meal and the toasted Dave’s Killer Bread was perfect. I love having home-cooked meals at the table but I don’t think everything has to be homemade, especially if that means sacrificing time with family or friends. I know I could have made some homemade biscuits or bread or sweet rolls but dad doesn’t eat many sweets, and I didn’t want to spend all of my Christmas Eve in the kitchen. So the quiche was my home-cooked item that I prepped on Christmas Eve and placed in the oven Christmas morning and the other items were easily assembled Christmas morning while the quiche baked. It was a fun, relaxing and delicious Christmas morning.

And What About the Leftovers?

That’s another great thing about the quiche! It can be refrigerated and reheated for breakfast, lunch or dinner on any of the days to follow. I cut the remainder of the quiche into small squares, wrapped each square in plastic wrap and stored half of them in the refrigerator and half in the freezer so dad can have a quick protein-packed breakfast once Kyle and I are back in Dallas.

Crustless Sage & Sausage Quiche

This recipe was inspired by dad's most recent visit to Dallas.  First visit after the wedding.  It was so fun and sweet to have him here.  The weekend was filled with lots of laughs, good food, and a few home improvements :)

I always like to cook one good meal when dad comes into town.  Growing up and into college and grad school, one thing mom, dad, and I always enjoyed was cooking together.   We would cook and chat and laugh while we chopped, tossed, grilled, baked and sautéed, creating different dishes ranging from "dad burgers" to grilled beef tenderloin to the very experimental crab manicotti.  Whatever the outcome, good, bad, or ugly, it was at least a learning curve in the kitchen and fun memory to keep with us.  So, when I moved to Texas we always seemed to gravitate towards cooking one meal in, and, because I was in an apartment with a tiny kitchen for most of that time, that one chosen meal was often breakfast.  Fast-forwarding to the present - these days it's only dad, but we still keep up this tradition, now pulling Kyle into that familiar space of cooking, creating, laughing, and troubleshooting. A space where mistakes are just creative twists to a brand new recipe. A space where new memories and new flavors are formed.

On this particular dad visit I wanted to cook at least one meal in and I knew how much dad LOVES a good breakfast (and same goes for Kyle, so it was kind of a win all around here).  I flipped through ideas, searching for good breakfast recipe, which became easier to discover as Dad excitedly volunteered to bring his favorite breakfast sausage that he had stored in the refrigerator at home.  I love the idea of easy egg dishes and I wanted to try some new flavors and go beyond the typical scrambled eggs.  I remembered seeing a crustless quiche in a magazine not too long ago, and so thought I would give that concept a try.  You could get the quiche consistency without spending the time making the crust.  And seeing as we would be making breakfast in-between house projects, less work sounded fantastic to me.  So, I mixed and matched different ingredients in my mind - thinking about what I like, what my dad and Kyle like, what has worked (& not worked) for me in the past and the result was this Crustless Sage & Sausage Quiche (& I threw in some mushrooms, spinach & onion because a dietitian's gotta have her veggies :) ).   Now, I know the sausage isn't my typical healthier dish, but life is really all about balance, right?  And, of course, you can substitute with lean ground turkey breast if desired.  

So here you go, the recipe for my Crustless Sage & Sausage Quiche.

Happy Fueling!

Taylor

Crustless Sage & Sausage Quiche

INGREDIENTS:

• 6 whole eggs

• 1 1/2 cup 1% milk

• 3 teaspoons fresh thyme

• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh sage

• 1/8 - 1/4 tsp. dried ground cloves (or you could use ground nutmeg instead)

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon cracked black pepper

• 1/4 pound ground sausage (or substitute lean ground turkey breast if desired)

• 1 cup diced onion (small dices so you don't bite into big chunks of onion in your quiche)

• 1 cup shredded Gruyere cheese

• 1 cup torn fresh spinach

• 1 cup sliced button or baby bella mushrooms

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahreinheit.

2. Grease a 9 inch pie dish with butter or canola oil.

3. Combine eggs, thyme, sage, milk, salt, pepper, and ground cloves in a large mixing bowl and whisk ingredients together until the eggs are broken up completely and mixture is smooth.

4. Heat a large skillet on medium heat and cook the sausage for about 10 to 15 minutes, breaking it up periodically, until crumbled and no longer pink.

5. Pour cooked sausage onto a plate lined with a paper towel and let the sausage sit and drain.

6. Heat that same skillet back to medium heat and add the onions and mushrooms, cooking about 15 minutes until the onions are translucent and the mushrooms are soft.

7. Add the drained sausage back to the skillet with the cooked onion & mushrooms and mix all ingredients together

8. Spread the vegetable - sausage mixture evenly onto the bottom of the prepared pie dish.

9. Top sausage veggie mixture with the 1 cup spinach

10. Top spinach with 1/2 cup Gruyere cheese

11. Pour the egg mixture evenly over the top.

12. Top with the remaining shredded Gruyere cheese.

13. Cook in the preheated oven for about 35 - 40 minutes, remove and cover with foil and cook for about 10 minutes more (to prevent the top from getting too brown).

12. Let rest for about 10 to 15 minutes before serving.

13. Serve with your favorite breakfast foods and enjoy!

This also makes great leftovers for breakfast, lunch OR dinner.

NOTE: There is some water at the bottom of the pie dish after baking. It doesn't affect the flavor or anything but if you don't like this you could probably cook your spinach and drain it before adding to to the quiche (spinach contains so much water!).

NUTRITION NOTES:

Eggs - protein | vitamin B12 | vitamin D | lutein | zeaxanthin | choline

Spinach - fiber | vitamin A | vitamin C | folate | vitamin K

Mushrooms - fiber | riboflavin | niacin | copper

Onions - fiber | vitamin C | part of a group called alliums, that may reduce the risk of some cancers

Cheese - calcium | protein | be careful b/c also high in saturated fat (and sodium)