Sunday Brunch

This past Sunday, my sister and I invited some folks over for brunch. Is there anything better in the whole world than Sunday brunch? Saturday brunch comes a close second but just isn't quite the same. The Twin Cities abound with really excellent brunch options. My favorites are:

the Chatterbox Pub (St. Paul location),

the French Meadow Bakeryhttp://www.frenchmeadow.com/cafe.htm,

the Uptown Diner,

and Hell's Kitchen http://www.hellskitcheninc.com/HellsKitchenWelcome.html.

However, although I don't especially enjoy getting up early, it is so much cheaper to make brunch than to buy it. Seriously, the price mark up on restaurant breakfast food is ridiculous. Six dollars for a plate of scrambled eggs? Eight dollars for french toast?

For this brunch, I kept it pretty simple (due to the previously mentioned loathing of getting up early). I made a spinach quiche, slightly adapting Mark Bittman's recipe from my battered copy of How to Cook Everything. I use this book constantly and highly recommend it to people who are just starting to cook. You can look up things that you are too embarrassed to ask your cooking/baking friends (like how to boil an egg or cook rice, or to find out what a kumquat is - not like those are my own personal examples or anything).

I used a store bought pie crust but I balanced that by using this great artisanal sheep's cheese I got at the Mill City Farmer's Market a few weeks ago from this seller: http://www.shepherdswayfarms.com/

The rest of the brunch was pretty basic : Fried potatoes with onion + yellow squash + green peppers, a fruit salad of pineapple + nectarines+ Honeycrisp apples (yay! they are in season, finally!) and a chocolate loaf cake. I meant to have bacon, as I think it is vital to any successful brunch (or, really, any successful meal), but forgot completely as I was rushing around the grocery store Saturday night.