The picture of quiche caught my eye and and held it, showing it off.  “Look at yourself,” it said, “I’m all the things you want.”

I was paging through the vasts collection of Cooks Illustrated that my father had given me, looking for the biscotti recipe that I had used only a few months ago. Keeping an eye out all the while for a recipe for custard or pudding or something that would use up all the eggs and milk I had on hand, something I could pour the whey into, that unwanted byproduct of a paneer experiment. And then, suddenly, there was the quicehe. Eight eggs and 3 cups of dairy. It was exactly what I wanted. Still, as I made my way into the kitchen, I worried. Two cups of onions. Why do I never have onions around? Bacon – had this house ever had bacon in it? I couldn’t remember ever eating it here. I glanced at my fridge, seeing its insides by memory. My mind, always anxious to clean out and make room for new opportunities, whispered into my ear. “The kmichi, the kimchi. It’s over four months old now. You’ve got to find a place to use it. You know you’ll never get around to making kimchi soup – not with a flatmate to be considerate of.” Kimchi had as much flavor as onion – as much as bacon too. Though I thought of it as cool and crunchy, my favorite application of it was actually on grilled cheese. Preferably with some kind of crusty bread, broiled in the oven. Maybe with thick slabs of ham. Next to that I did primarily eat it cold, for breakfast.

I rustled around in my freezer for some spinach and came across a ball of pie crust. Perfect. And so the quiche was begun. The pie crust was rolled out and stretched to fit the cake pan. It was much too small, but I stuck it too the edges here and there and put a plate on it to keep it from puffing up. Into the oven it went. I started to close the door and the edges collapsed onto the plate. Two seconds to decide what to do, three to lift the plate up with butter knives and then put it back down over the sides. The bottom was really all I needed for a crust. I mixed the eggs and the milk and the fatless whey together and wondered if this would work without the heavy cream. I added in the potato starch and the nutmeg and the crushed korean red pepper in lieu of cayenne. I chopped the kimchi. I pulled out the cake pan with it’s golden crust and dumped out the shredded cheese – packets from the freezer stowed to keep them from going bad. I shoveled in the kimchi and spinach, started pouring the egg mixture. It was not all going to fit. How much could I get in? I poured a little and stopped. A little more. A little more. Feeling recklessly nervous I lifted the pan into the oven. One small river of liquid teared over the edge onto the hot oven door. Instant scrambled eggs. I tried to scrub it up with cloth and sponge while the whole time the pan kept weeping in one solid streak. I put a cookie sheet under it, the one I didn’t like. The rimless one.

Idiot.

The egg pooled and diverged and spilled over onto the oven’s bottom. I snatched out that pan and replaced it with the one I used as a tray. Then I closed the door and turned on the vent fan. The smell and the noise drove me upstaris. Twenty minutes late I came down and switched out the pans. The pool of egg was temptingly yellow, with brown, ugly edges. I dug into it with a fork – custard perfection! So delicately flavored. So well balanced. Now I mourned the half cup of egg mixture I had poured down the drain, to keep myself from the temptation of adding just a wee bit more.  I finally sighed, knowing that whatever its past this quiche would be just fine.

Later – when I pulled it out and, impatient again, cut it whille still burning hot and marveled that it did not weep or fill the pan with liquid, and then sat and ate, in forty seconds flat, one peice and ran down the stairs to get myself another – that’s when I wondered how  I could be so silly as to think anything could ruin quiche. Not half frozen spinach, not kimchi, not the smell of burning eggs mixed with the smell of freshly baked chocolate cookies. Quiche was a wonderful metaphor for life, I decided, exhausted but justified. No matter what goes into it, life is a precious thing, and only sad when it ends too soon or, worse, passes by you with only a whiff of heaven and the sight of a buttery-gold crust.