Sweet Potato Quiche - I made it...I tried it...I liked it!!!
To understand my food journey please read my post Fall is in Full Force from November 19th, 2023
I did it! Can you believe it? I know some of my friends are cheering me on as they read this.
I tried a new food… a vegetable in fact, and I liked it.
After zooming with my functional nutritional counselor this week, she suggested I introduce one new food into my….I hate to say the word diet…it has such a negative connotation to it and whenever I’ve tried to ‘diet’ I always end up gaining more weight than what I had before the diet…I’m absolutely not on a diet. Maybe I will say meal plan. She had me introduce one new food into my weekly meal plan. There, that sounds better.
She took one of the foods I had listed as a ‘maybe’ food and suggested I give sweet potatoes a try this week. Then she sent over two recipes to nudge me even further into eating this vegetable I had never even tried before. Sure, I’ve swiped a melted marshmallow or two off the top of the hot sweet potatoes at Thanksgiving, but I’ve never actually tried a bite of sweet potatoes.
What could happen? What would happen? Would my body go into rejection convulsions for the mere thought of me putting a vegetable in my mouth? Would it send me into a vegetable coma? Is there such a thing as that? I’m sure there is and even if there is not, I don’t want to be the first to experience it.
One of the recipes she sent over was for a sweet potato quiche. In addition to the sweet potatoes, it also had sausage and eggs along with spices to make it, hopefully, taste wonderful. I had a few doubts, but I am actually excited about this part of my life journey. If I could get over this hurdle, it could open up a whole new world to me.
In addition to my food phobias, I also have a pretty good list of food allergies, one of them being egg yolks, so I knew I would need a few extra eggs since I would only be using the egg whites for my quiche.
We’ve been living in Portugal for just over a year and one of the stores we frequent is Pingo Doce, the closest one is about three quarters of a mile away from our apartment, so it makes for a good walk in the evening.
It was Thanksgiving. We (my husband, Rick, and I) were both struggling. All of our kids, grandkids and parents are all celebrating Thanksgiving without us, and we are here in Portugal eating pizza and trying not to cry all day…at least I know I was. I’d been working on our budget, and we also kept checking flight prices for a trip back to the states in April. Rick has a Journey conference to go to in April, and I will be going back with him to visit family. We’ve also been checking tickets for a flight at the end of June when we will be leaving Portugal and heading back to the USA, probably for forever, minus trips back when finances and family commitments allow.
We landed on a good price through Azores Airlines for our trip in June, so for now we will be able to get to Boston, from there, at this point in our life, we have no idea what comes next.
We didn’t get a grocery cart or even a basket because we were only going to grab a couple of items, but by the time we got to the checkout our arms were barely able to hold all the groceries we managed to find. None of which was a frozen turkey bird, they are hard to find here, but wouldn’t that have been nice. Next year I think I will travel to all of our kids’ houses at Thanksgiving and eat turkey from Oregon to Utah to Oklahoma, just to make up for missing out on this year’s turkey. Of course, we will have to make up for all the laughs, smiles, hugs and tears we missed too.
We made it through the checkout, our backpack and reusable grocery bag full of things like, sweet potatoes, eggs and sausage for the sweet potato quiche, and I got some gluten-free bread and a candle. Rick got some apples and bananas and some ham and cheese sandwiches out of the bread case. That was about it. We headed toward home, crossed the bridge that spans the Rio Gilao, then climbed the hill to our apartment. Just before we reached our building, Rick offered to go get us pizza. We had planned on having pizza for our Thanksgiving dinner and after our brisk walk we were both more than ready for a delicious cheesy pizza, even if it was a day usually celebrated with ham, turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy…and sweet potatoes.
I made my way up the 35 steps to our apartment on the third floor (here in Portugal it is called a T-2 apartment, the ground floor is known as the 0 floor) and Rick walked around the corner and down the street to the pizza place.
By the time he got home it was still Thanksgiving. I still wasn’t done with our budget, and we still weren’t sitting around a table with family or friends. Yes, we had the two of us and so often that is enough, but on this day, this Thanksgiving day, we were pretty grouchy with each other. All of our plans we had for Thanksgiving somehow got lost along the way. Our plans to set an extra plate at the table, our plan to write postcards to our kids telling each one why we are so thankful for them, our plan to create a prayer journal to keep on the front room coffee table…none of our plans for Thanksgiving Day even came close to materializing. This day was a dud! Yes, we only have ourselves to blame, but some days just get a person more down than usual. It makes me think of how lonely a day like Thanksgiving can be for many people who are also separated from family for far less glamorous reasons than we are. We have it so good. We have a wonderful relationship, and, on most days, we are as happy as can be spending time together living life to the fullest. This was just one of those days where we just weren’t in sync.
We did talk with just about all of our kids, grandkids and parents, so that helped ease our feelings of missing out. My oldest daughter talked to me with the phone propped on the kitchen counter while her and my granddaughter peeled eggs for deviled eggs. My daughter was in her zone! She loves Thanksgiving and they were having some friends over who are in the middle of struggling with what life is dealing them right now. I am sure the dinner my daughter prepare was a huge blessing to them.
I spent 30 minutes watching a video game my grandson was playing. I kept commenting on how detailed and pretty the carpet was in his wild game filled with a little bit too much for this grandma to handle, but it was fun knowing this was something he enjoyed and wanted to share with me. He was showing off his video game skills, so I kept watching and would say, “oh that carpet is so pretty” every time the ‘good guy’ walked across it. I talked with my son-in-law, reliving old memories and appreciating the fact we’d been in each other’s lives for more than 15 years now.
When I video chatted with my middle daughter, she was showing off her plate of Thanksgiving wonderfulness that my 15-year-old granddaughter had created.
Rick talked to all the Oklahoma kids and parents while I was talking to our son, who was taking his family to Leavenworth in Washington State for the Christmas Light displays. If you have never gone to Leavenworth, it is so worth the trip to this amazing Bavarian Village right in the heart of Washington.
I also talked with my dad right before they were headed out the door to go to Eugene to my brother’s house, and I also spent some time texting with my older sister, who was enjoying a peaceful Thanksgiving watching her daughter’s dog, so her daughter and family could all take a trip to Idaho to enjoy a meal with their oldest daughter.
So, while we were feeling like we were missing out, we were also feeling very loved and also very thankful for the technology that lets us communicate so easily, on video, from thousands of miles away with our friends and family.
It is now the Saturday after Thanksgiving and today was the day I decided to make the sweet potato quiche. The only sweet potatoes Pingo Doce had were more purple than orange and the sausage was shaped like a thick hamburger patty. It had a picture of a pig, and the word hamburger sprawled across the package.
I poured some olive oil in a skillet, placed the four, thick, sausage patties into the olive oil and started poking them with my wooden spoon until…..
I just had a brilliant idea…please bear with me as I digress for a moment, because I want to get this out of my mind and onto a page to help me not forget about it….
I’m a young grandma (I was the youngest of the family, so I think I will always think I am young. I’m only 56, edging closer to 57 with each passing day. I am blessed with grandbabies, grandkids, grandteens and even an amazing grandwoman, who made me a great grandma a couple of years ago. (Don’t do the math, it doesn’t add up in our case, I’ve been blessed with this grandwoman through Rick, who happens to be older than me, so his child/grandchild/great grandchild math equation adds up perfectly.)
It seems like there has been a lot of death in my circle of friends lately and when that happens it makes a person think of their own mortality. I’ve been trying to think of something meaningful I can leave to my grandchildren when I pass on to the next phase of my life…you know the phase, the one where I die…but it’s also the one where, even though I am dead on earth, I will be very alive and happily dancing with Jesus. So, here is my brilliant idea that just came to my mind when I wrote down wooden spoon in the paragraph above (sorry for the sidetracked story, I promise I will take you all back to me cooking the quiche in a moment). I am going to get a crock, fill it with wooden spoons, each with one of my grandchild’s names written on them and cook with them for the rest of my life. Then, once I’m all done using them and am no longer in need of any wooden spoons…because I’m dancing with Jesus and definitely not cooking…each one will have a spoon to remember me by. One I’ve cooked with for years, one where I thought of them when I used the one with their name on it. I love, love, love this idea and I think my grandbabies will love it too. I can hardly wait to tell some of them who are at the age where they will appreciate the gesture already.
Okay, back to the quiche.
So, I started poking the patties with my wooden spoon until the meat was all crumbled and browned. While it was cooking, I sprinkled it with garlic powder and pepper. I also peeled the sweet potato, made thin slices out of it, then layered an olive oil covered glass dish with the sweet potato slices. After that I poured the crumbled sausage on top of the sweet potato layer. Once that was done, I cracked the eggs, pouring the yokes back and forth into each side of the shell until only the egg whites dropped into my mixing bowl. I beat the egg whites, along with rosemary, thyme, sage, with my handy dandy kitchen gadget pictured below.
After I poured the egg white mixture on top of the sausage and sweet potatoes I put it in the oven, checked Google so I could convert the 400-degree Fahrenheit recipe into the correct degree for my Celsius oven and asked Rick to set his timer for 20 minutes. He said he would and eventually he did set it…for 15 minutes, since about five minutes had already slipped away when I asked him how much longer…...
Once 20 minutes had gone by it was time to take this new creation out of the oven. It looked delicious and it smelled delicious…would it be delicious??
I scooped out about a quarter of the quiche for both of us and we made our way to the front room where we always eat. I didn’t even feel nervous about trying it. I took my first bite. It was good. It was really good. In no time at all I had eaten every last bit of this vegetable quiche!!!
I can seriously hear some of my friends cheering in my mind. This is such a milestone for me. I am excited to continue on this food journey. My youngest grandchild is a year old, maybe if I play my cards right, I can be on track to learn how to like foods as quickly as she does. Only time will tell, but thanks to my functional nutritional counselor I feel like I am finally, for the first time in my life, on the right track toward healthy eating. Thank you Julie!! There are no such things as coincidences in this world and God put me in her path at just the right moment and somehow…somehow… in our brief five-minute conversation we discovered we needed each other. God is so good.
I will be sure to put the sweet potato quiche recipe at the bottom of this post. I think I will also start a separate page in this Loving Life Like Lori Substack to hold all the recipes I use in this new and somewhat intimidating journey.
I hope you continue to follow along with me on Loving Life Like Lori. I started this as a website years ago and I will continue to pull some articles from that website (which is no longer live) to share here. I will also continue to touch on all types of topics, from health habits and traveling…I’ve been so blessed to be able to travel to so many places in the US, Canada and Europe, so I will be sharing about those adventures on here as well. I will also be adding my photography to posts and will also be talking about my books and notebooks that are available on Amazon.
My hope is that once we go back to the US, I will be able to continue building my Studio 6 business by creating content on here and selling my artwork in various forms. Making it successful enough that we can spend time visiting all of our kids, grandkids and parents even though they are scattered from Oklahoma, to Utah, to Oregon, while finding new stories to write about and new sceneries to photograph.
Thank you so much for reading my Substack newsletter. My mission is to continue writing stories that will inspire you in one way or another, and hopefully the words I hammer out on my keyboard will make a difference in your world.
May Peace surround you on this day.
Your friend, Lori
Sausage Quiche with Sweet Potato Crust
extra virgin olive oil
1 medium sweet potato peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 lb. sugar-free breakfast sausage
1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
10 eggs
3 tablespoons coconut milk
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/8 teaspoon cracked black pepper
A dash each of Rosemary, Thyme and Sage
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
Brown the breakfast sausage in a frying pan then season with rosemary, thyme and sage. Add olive oil if needed. Coat your glass dish or pie pan with a thin layer of olive oil. Wash the sweet potato, slice it into thin slices, then arrange the slices so they cover the bottom of your dish. Spread the browned seasoned sausage on top of the layer of sweet potatoes. Place the eggs, coconut milk, salt and pepper in a bowl and whisk vigorously. Pour the beaten egg mixture into the dish on top of the sweet potatoes and sausage. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until the center is set and the eggs have puffed up.