For breakfast on Monday and into the week, I baked the pumpkin muffin recipe that I tried last week and found had too much spice. So, in addition to my other changes, this time I use ¾ tsp. cinnamon, ¼ tsp. allspice, and 1/8 tsp. cloves. I chose this spice combination, as it is what I use in my spiced cider. Scott and I much prefer this version of the recipe, since the cider flavor comes through, along with the pumpkin and the spices.

After dinner on Monday, I baked a new recipe, "The Perfect Zucchini Quiche," which I printed from a Williams-Sonoma email some years ago and had not yet gotten around to trying. It uses grated, cooked zucchini in the quiche, with slices of zucchini on top. I substituted my usual oil-buttermilk crust for their butter one, which also saved me a lot of time. (Those instructions were half the recipe space!) I replaced shallots with onion, as that is what I have, and used olive oil instead of butter to sauté them and the grated zucchini. I replaced the recipe's combination of a cup of heavy cream plus a cup of milk with 12 oz of low-fat evaporated milk and 3 oz. of regular evaporated milk that I had left over from when I baked the pumpkin pie. I added a bit of water (rinsing out the can) to get the 2 cups. I replaced 2 Tbs. fresh basil with 2 tsp. dried basil. I cut the salt in the filling from 2 tsp. to ½ tsp., since there is plenty of salt in the Parmesan. The directions said 1 cup of grated Parmesan, or 4 oz., but 2 oz. would have easily filled a cup when compacted. I went ahead and put 2 oz. into the quiche filling (they said to divide between the filling and the topping) and just grated some Parmesan over the top. The recipe called for using a blender to mix the egg and the cream and milk. I only get out the blender if it is really needed, so I used a whisk. It also called for slicing the zucchini for the topping very thin with a mandoline. However, I've never used the one I had and was not going to start now, so I sliced half of a larger zucchini (recipe called for a small one) with a serrated knife and got them pretty thin. It was not stated how the slices should be arranged; I covered the top, then put a few slices overlapping. I grated Parmesan on top--definitely not 2 oz. more! The quiche took 50 minutes to bake. The instructions stated to cool for an hour, then loosely cover with foil and refrigerate, but after an hour, even on an elevated rack, the quiche seemed too warm to me, so I gave it more time before refrigerating overnight. I will be eating it for lunches during the week.