Quiche in Prosciutto Cups

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Happy New Year! As I near the one year anniversary of my blog, I've learned a few things:

1) Blogging is more work than you expect it will be. Creating a blog that is interesting, personal, useful, and attractive is a LOT of work and something I am still trying to achieve.
2) The food blogging community is full of incredibly supportive, talented, and creative people.
3) After a lot of ups and downs over the past year, I'm not sure what I want to accomplish with this blog.

I've enjoyed blogging; sharing personal stories, trying recipes I normally wouldn't attempt and learning how to create and share a blog and feel these experiences have allowed me to grow as a cook. I've always enjoyed writing and thought that would be the driving element of my blog, but have found that often to be the most difficult part. Photography is something else I've always enjoyed but didn't realize how poor my skills were until I started posting food pictures. Without a doubt, I have learned, and continue to learn, a lot about food photography and food styling and while I've seen improvements, I want my photos to be so much more. I've changed my blog layout several times and still am not happy with the result. The blog in my head hasn't made it to the computer screen yet although my HTML skills continue to grow.

As we start a new year, I'm not sure what my blogging future holds but I've made the following resolutions regarding cooking:

1) Continue to challenge myself by trying new ingredients, cuisines, and techniques. Try something that seems intimidating like a croquembouche.

2) Waste less food. Our family made some progress here last year but still I'm embarrassed by the amount of food that ends up in the trash can. Use this resolution to help stretch my creative cooking skills.

3) Use more organic and locally grown ingredients. Again, we made steps in this direction last year but I want to use as many organic and locally grown ingredients as possible. Kentucky has wonderful agricultural products and why buy honey from somewhere else when fantastic honey is grown literally down the road?

4) Try new ingredients and learn to incorporate them as often as possible. Greek yogurt was new to me a few months back and know it is my morning breakfast/obsession and is making its way into more recipes.

Below is a super easy recipe that incorporates some of my New Year's resolutions. I found the recipe in an issue of Self magazine recently and played around with it today using leftovers in my fridge to come up with several variations. I only had a couple of slices of prosciutto and found that cutting them in thirds worked fine. I used some thinly sliced deli ham for the remaining cups and that worked well. I left one plain, added chopped sun-dried tomatoes to a couple, Italian shredded cheese to a couple, some herbed goat cheese to one, and shredded sharp cheddar cheese to the rest. All were delicious and enjoyed by our family as a New Year's Day brunch snack. Best of all, they are low-fat!

Quiche in Prosciutto Cups

adapated from Self magazine, December 2009

8 slices prosciutto or thinly sliced ham, sliced into thirds
2 egg whites
1 whole egg
3 tablespoons nonfat plain Greek yogurt
1/2 teaspoon dried Italian seasoning
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Add ins of your choice (sun-dried tomatoes, olives, aspargus, broccoli, etc)

Cheese of your choice

Heat oven to 400°F. Coat a mini muffin pan with cooking spray. Press 1 piece prosciutto or ham into each of 12 cups. Whisk egg whites and whole egg until smooth. Whisk in yogurt, Italian seasoning, and pepper. Divide mixture among cups. Add additional ingredients and/or cheese if using. Bake, uncovered, until quiches are cooked through, 10 to 12 minutes.