Quiche and Construction By Andrew Birden

For those of you who are not living under a rock for the past two months, you may have noticed there is a lot of road construction going on these days. I suppose it’s the state using the new stimulus money we borrowed from our children’s children’s children’s Chinese bankers to hire hundreds of people to build a road that will be full of potholes by the end of next winter. It’s not the construction company’s fault the road will deteriorate so quickly. Potholes are like another symbol of the state and her amazing weather; “Welcome…crunch!...to Maine,…bang!…the way life…wham!…should…thud!…be”. Lucky for us, once all those potholes have peppered the road, all we will have to do is wait for the following winter. Then Mother Nature does her seasonal schtick and fills in all the potholes with ice for 8 months.

The many men and few women who work those jobs have a thankless task. But I am here to thank them for all the work they are doing. I’ve seen these folks working on clear sunny days, in driving rain, in blistering heat, and they work from sunrise to past sunset. This group is working their butts off. Right now, the whole crew of rumbling dozers, front-end loaders, trucks, surveyors, and all the other multi-super-sized equipment that rolls around on large metal treads is apparently decided to park itself in my front yard.

I know it is difficult to lay down new road, and I know that at some point I will appreciate the work these folks are doing. But right now, all I can think is that this whole operation is making me lose sleep.

I’ve been having to get up earlier and earlier each morning just so I will have enough time to stop along that path of destruction…er…construction in the road while some guy in a yellow bib holds up a stop sign in one hand and a cell phone in the other. I’ll dutifully watch this man while he carefully avoids looking me in the eye because it would probably make him or her feel weird, and all I want is for him to turn that sign around so that the magic word “slow” is displayed in front of me.

When it says slow (the equivalent of “open sesame”), then I can cruise along over pothole-peppered roads , zipping by cranes that are swinging loads of dirt and watery muck about and generally just trying to get my sleepy carcass to work.
But no, this project is freaking huge, and there seems to be umpteen flaggers controlling the traffic between my house and the nearest town. I find myself stopping three times on my way to work, and three times on my way home from work. And here’s the weird thing, the same people are always operating the flag stops.

I was riding with Mrs. Chef the other day, and she pointed to one of the morning flaggers.

“It looks like he’s having a better day today.”

“Who?”

“The guy with the sign. When he first started doing this job he smiled a lot, but last week he was frowning whenever I drove by in the morning, and when I came back in the afternoon, he was looking pretty annoyed. He looks like he is in a better mood today.”

So I guess Mrs. Chef notices the construction workers as well.

When we got to the other end of this particular construction area, I noticed the opposite flagger talking into a radio as she flipped her sign around. It was that pretty construction lady with the huge ear protectors that I happened to notice every morning. I could guess why our first flagger was in a better mood, but I didn’t say anything to Mrs. Chef.

All I know is that eventually I will have an extra hour returned to me each day. Instead of sitting in my car as it idles endlessly in the heat of summer, or it sits in the rain that seems to be falling every freaking day lately, I know that in some distant future I will be cruising along a nice new roadway. I’ll someday be able to zip back and forth, and the construction equipment and the workers that operated all that equipment will be like the memories of helpful and noisy friends from a particularly busy summer.

Until I hit the first pothole.

Roadbed Quiche

WHAT YOU NEED

1 package of frozen tator tots
1/4 cup of butter
1 sweet onion
3 cloves of garlic
1 cup of chopped portabella mushrooms
2 teaspoons of Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and drained
1 (6 ounce) package of feta cheese, crumbled
2 cups of shredded Cheddar cheese
salt and pepper to taste
5 eggs, beaten
1 cup milk
salt and pepper to taste

1. Here’s how you make the road bed. Cook the tator tots according to the package directions then use a potato masher to crush the tator tots into a potatoey dough. Spray two 9-inch pie pans with cooking spray and spread the mashed tator tots into the two pans, forming the crust for the quiche.

2. Now we go back to a pretty zippy quiche recipe. Set the oven to 350 degrees.

3. Using the butter and medium heat, sauté the onion, garlic, and mushrooms until the onions are starting to brown (about 5 minutes). Sprinkle the Italian seasoning and salt into the pan and continue cooking for two more minutes.

4. Add the spinach, feta, and half of the cheddar cheese to the skillet and stir the whole thing together.

5. Spoon half the mixture into each pie crust.

6. Whisk the milk, eggs, salt and pepper together and then pour half of the eggs into each pie shell, carefully combining with the vegetable mixture.

7. Bake the pies in the oven for 15 minutes, then sprinkle the rest of the cheddar cheese across the top and bake another 35 minutes or until the quiche has set. Let the pies cool for 10 minutes before serving.