Lighter Vegetable Quiche

I love quiche, but it is not a very healthy meal option.  Remember when I was talking about Chicken Pot Pie, I told you how the crust was my favorite part, but I managed to do away with a traditional crust for that recipe.  Well, I just couldn't do away with a crust for this quiche so I had to figure out another way to lighten it up.  I used my trusty cookbook to help me with ratios and then I took it from there.

I figured out that I can cut out the half and half by replacing it with a combination of low fat cottage cheese and milk, use reduced fat vs. regular cheese, cut back the quantity of cheese and bulk up on vegetables.

 

It took me several tries to get a consistency I liked, and I was very pleased with this one.  You can definitely play around with the flavor combination here, even add meat if you'd like, but I love to stick with a simpler vegetable and cheese version.

I know there are a lot of cottage cheese haters, but this doesn't taste or feel "cottage cheesy" at all.  Plus I'll let you in on a little secret, if you've eaten my lasagna, it's in there too.  Yep, you didn't know, and you live to speak of it!

Here is what you'll need:

• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
• 1 green pepper, sliced
• 1 red pepper, sliced
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 tsp dried minced garlic
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 cup chive and toasted onion cottage cheese
• 1/4 cup 1% milk
• 1 tsp dried mustard
• 1 cup reduced fat shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 pie crust
• 1 Tbsp all purpose flour

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Place crust in oven and bake for 10 minutes.

While crust is baking, add oil to a nonstick skillet and heat to medium high.  Add mushrooms and cook until browned, stirring occasionally.  Add peppers, onions and garlic, salt and pepper to taste, and cook until softened, stirring occasionally.  Once done, remove from heat and set aside to cool a bit.

In a bowl combine eggs, cottage cheese, milk, and dried mustard and stir until thoroughly mixed.

Spoon vegetables into bottom of pie crust, layer cheese on top of vegetables, and layer egg mixture on top of the cheese.  Sprinkle flour over the top of egg mixture.

Place in oven and bake 45-50 minutes until knife inserted come out clean.  Allow to set for 10 minutes before cutting.  Serves 8.