Say Hello to The Muse Chef + New Years Quiche

Happy New Year Muses! With a new year, you know I’m always going to have something new to share with you all going into a new year.

This year, I’m excited to share more of one of my passions with you. That passion is food. I love food. I love to eat, I love to visit new restaurants and pop-ups, I love to cook, and I love to watch various avenues of food content.

I grew up not only watching Food Network (Emeril Lagasse was my favorite!) but, I grew up in a house whose primary love language was food. My family is all about sharing food and loving through food. How food goes back generations, how you can feel the love through every bite, how the stories begin to flow and the memories that you can see through the years through food, I love it all. As a kid, I was in the kitchen with everybody; I stayed in the kitchen with my grandparents, my dad, my mom, and then eventually started doing it on my own. Fun Fact about me, my great-grandfather was a chef and actually was a chef to Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack back in the day.

Naturally, your girl has to have some cooking skills in her bones and I do. If you follow me on Instagram; I’ve shown off my Roasted Potatoes, Salmon, Country Style Ribs, Pot Roast, French Toast, etc. But, it’s about time I bring this foodie style to the blog.

In addition to this, I plan on also bringing my Foodie Escapades to the blog as well. When we go out to eat, ya’ll go out to eat. I want to highlight some of the amazing food we’ve eaten while we’ve been out.

So make sure to be on the lookout for all the Food content to come in 2024. Also, another quick thing about me is that I don’t cook in exact measurements. I cook with the spirit – and a good eye. I also live by the rule of you can always add but can’t subtract. So, take these things into account, but I will try to add measurements where I can.

Now, to start things off, let’s see what I made this morning to kick off 2024.

Usually, for New Year’s morning, we have my mom’s Hashbrown Casserole. Which is bomb by the way. This year, since I’ve been back at home during postpartum care, I decided to treat my parents to one of my favorite quiches. I love quiches and frittatas for how quick and effortlessly delicious they are. The coolest things about quiches and frittatas is that you can throw just about anything into them and make it shake.

For this quiche; all you need is breakfast sausage, some white onion, a bag of baby spinach, shredded cheese, and of course, eggs.

So your shopping list is going to look like this:

• Six Large Eggs
• Milk (optional)
• 1 Roll of Ground Breakfast Sausage (Jimmy Dean is my fave, but you can also use Tennesse Pride or Impossible/Beyond Meat Sausage, as long as it’s ground/patty sausage)
• 1 Bag of Shredded Cheese (I typically use Colby Jack or Mild Cheddar, Sargento)
• 1 Bag of Baby Spinach (you can use adult spinach if you want to)
• 1 White Onion
• A little Oil or Butter (you won’t need much, just a little to ‘wet’ the skillet)

As far as seasonings, I have a cabinet full but here’s what we use for this:

• Black Pepper (Cracked or Ground)
• Onion Powder
• Tony Chachere’s

Now, here’s what we’re going to do:

1. Preheat your oven to 350.
2. On medium heat and in a large skillet, preferably a non-stick one, add a small amount of oil or butter. Add your sausage and start browning your sausage and breaking it up as you go.
3. Once the sausage starts to brown about halfway, start adding spinach. I go a handful at a time. One handful, mix with the browning sausage, and then so on and so forth until the whole bag is in with the sausage. Spinach shrinks up as it cooks.
4. While the sausage and spinach are marrying in the skillet, add two handfuls of your shredded cheese and mix into your sausage and spinach. Just letting the cheese melt a little before taking it off the heat.
5. In a bowl (I like using a measuring cup,) crack your six eggs. After cracking, add about a ½ cup of milk to your eggs (makes them fluffy, works with scrambling eggs too,) along with your seasonings. Whisk them together, you can use a whisk or fork. I like using a fork.
6. In a casserole dish or baking pan, lightly oil your pan.
7. Add in your sausage-spinach dish before pouring your eggs on top. Top the mixture with 1-2 handfuls of cheese and pop it in the oven.
8. Bake for about 20 minutes or until the edges are slightly brown.

Let it cool for a while and you can either choose to put toppings or eat as is. Sometimes we add a little sour cream and diced tomatoes on top or just hot sauce.

You can even make this ahead of time and refrigerate it for the next morning to just pop it in the oven.

If you try this recipe out, let me know what you think!

Lovingly yours,