pizza.

That would be a spinach artichoke sausage goat cheese pizza. What would Mellow Mushroom call that? I have no idea how to make that name any shorter but geez was this good. I discovered a few keys to home pizza making that I think bear repeating, it made the crust on this pizza wonderfully crisp:

• Crank the oven up to at least 450, 500 is probably better but I just wasn't sure my rickety oven could handle that.
• Put your cold pizza stone on the bottom rack of the cold oven before you preheat it so that they both heat up together.  

I believe these two steps together produced a nice crisp crust which I've found is pretty hard to achieve. I blame my lack of a wood-burning oven. For an extensive look at baking pizza at home, the folks at Slice have written miles on the subject and it's an excellent resource for the home cook. I plan to work my way through the recipes whenever I have the forethought to make my own pizza dough instead of buying the dough balls from Harris Teeter.

Here's a loose recipe for Sunday night's version, adapted from this lovely tome:

1. If you're making your own dough from scratch, it should have completed its second rising and be ready to use before you start preheating the oven. If you don't happen to have three hours to kill, take your dough (I go with the dough balls they sell in the deli section because to me it's the best combination of taste and convenience) out of the refrigerator and let it warm up a little.
2. Position your oven rack to the lowest setting, making sure to allow room to maneuver the pizza in and out of the oven later.
3. Place your pizza stone (if you have one) in the oven and preheat the oven to 450. 
4. While your oven is preheating, saute 1/2 lb. of sweet italian sausage until thoroughly cooked. Add 2 cloves fresh garlic, minced and saute until fragrant, 30 seconds or so.
5. Drain and rinse 1 can of artichoke hearts. Puree in a hand blender or chop finely with 2 tablespoons of fresh basil. Mix together with the cooked sausage and set aside until ready to top your pie.
6. I have a pizza stone but no pizza peel, so I waited until my oven had preheated and then placed the preheated stone on my stovetop while I stretched the dough out by hand and plopped it directly onto the stone.
1. To stretch out by hand I hold the dough ball close to one edge perpendicular to the floor, using the thumb of both hands to pinch and form the outer crust, and turn it around and around, letting gravity naturally stretch the dough out.  This is much easier to me than using a rolling pin since you can make the dough do what you want it to but it's also easy to cause tears; it's really up to you. If you do decide to use a rolling pin make sure your dough is room temperature or it will be frustrating!
7. I like to use simple sauces for a base, like crushed tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and basil or plain olive oil and basil or marinara sauce. Just make sure to add a little seasoning if you're using something like plain crushed tomatoes or, at least to me, the finished dish will taste a little tomato-y. For this recipe I used 14 ounces crushed tomatoes (and I didn't season it but I should have. Now we all know better :) )
8. Cover the surface of the pie with a few handfuls fresh baby spinach, just so the pie is covered in a thin layer.
9. Dollop the sausage mixture in rounded tablespoonfuls all over the surface of the pizza dough. The topping mixture isn't very spreadable so it's best do dollop it in small amounts and closely together so you don't have to do too much spreading.
10. Crumble 2-4 ounces (depending on your taste) fresh goat cheese over the surface. (Now would be a good time to add sundried tomatoes; I did not but hey, it's your pizza.)
11. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes, until the crust is evenly brown and lovely.
12. Let cool for at least 5 minutes before slicing up.  

Glory.

Glory.

Hallelujah.

Enjoy pizza night! Break out the pinot noir if you've got it; this guy would really appreciate it.

breakfast.

That would be black bean enchiladas, topped with chili con carne, topped with a fried egg over easy, topped with salsa. For breakfast. Man, typing that made me hungry and also made me think I should have put sour cream on top as well. All straight out of the fridge, just cleaning up the dinner leftovers from the week and it took about 5 minutes to put together. With a good strong cup of coffee of course. It doesn't make sense in my head but I know from experience that nothing tastes better to me with southwestern lumberjack-type breakfasts like huevos rancheros or whatever you want to call that up there than coffee.

Lord knows I don't eat breakfast like this every day, nor would I want to, but for some reason I am always starving when I wake up on Saturday mornings. I had a roommate in college that always ate her takeout leftovers for breakfast: Lamb Rogan Josh, General Tso's Chicken, cold mozzarella sticks, didn't matter. It seemed so odd to me at the time but I think she has the right idea: before cereal and muffins and the like took center stage, people probably ate leftovers for breakfast quite often.That's a good question, actually. We never see them eating breakfast on Downtown Abbey but I know the must have. Perhaps that's for another post.

What about you? Are you a breakfast eater? Savory or sweet? Lumberjack breakfast or muffin and a yogurt?

On Meal Planning

How do you usually make it through the week? Food-wise, that is.  Do you skip breakfast, eat a can of soup for lunch and, exhausted yet ravenous when you get home, have a beer and chips and guac and call it dinner? Because that's exactly what I did my first few years out of college, which is strange when I consider that for the first 22 years of my life I was a three-squares-a-day kind of girl. Then people stopped making food for me and something about figuring out how to work 40+ hours a week and fit in all those things you find personally fulfilling at the same time, like baking (which is another dinner option) and reading and working out, my meals were the thing to go. 

When I got married I discovered that my husband grew up in a household where each night's meals were affixed to the side of the fridge schedule-style, conveniently communicating each night's dinner. The boy also gets hungry, a lot hungrier than I am for dinner so chips and salsa were not gonna cut it. So I started meal planning for the first time in my life. And I love it.

I hear that you can save money by meal planning but I think that's for people who have much more restraint than I when grocery shopping. So far I haven't mastered the concept of buying what's on the list and only on the list. But hey, I would never buy cereal or frozen waffles if I did. I tend to meal plan on a quiet evening while watching Netflix. I love reading food blogs and recipes online, but for some reason I'm very attached to my cookbooks and cooking out of those is much more enjoyable than saving recipes online. Sometimes I don't get much accomplished or nothing sounds good or I end up planning beef every night for dinner and only realize it after the fact, but sitting down and thinking about what's in the fridge and what we'd like to eat next week just helps. It's also nice to come home from work and not have to think about what to make but just have to make it. We ended up eating a lot of meat last week so I went vegetarian with this week's plan:

Monday

Smoky Black Bean Enchiladas

Tuesday

Veggie Burgers

Wednesday

Potato and Chickpea Stew

Thursday

Green Lentils and Spinach w/ Hard Boiled Eggs on Toast

As you'll notice I don't tend to plan side dishes, etc. and I usually only plan 3 or 4 nights a week to leave some flexibility for leftovers or simple meals like spaghetti if I feel like it. Also, the days don't really mean anything to me that's just how my current meal planning template is organized. For instance, so far this week we've had the Green Lentils and Spinach (really, really good) and the Smoky Black Bean Enchiladas (also very good) and I think tonight I'm going to make spaghetti. I'll probably also buy some good bread to go with the stew and some salad to go with the veggie burgers, and we try to always have frozen veggies in the freezer and some quick-cooking grains in the pantry to fill in meals as needed. I will echo the general advice of meal planning, shopping, and cooking on three different days so as to not go crazy. 

For several weeks in a row I did a big cooking day on Sunday and filled our fridge with casseroles. As lovely as it was to know I only had to warm a nice meal up every night, there's only so many types of dishes you can make ahead, casserole and stew-type things, and I try not to spend my Sunday afternoon cooking if it feels like a chore and I'd rather take a walk. So now I leave a little more flexibility in my schedule and my menu for the week.  What works for you? How do you keep costs low and taste and nutrition high for weeknight meals, if those are some of your goals?

Happy Wednesday!

A word on coffee

 I used to drink my coffee black 100% of the time, in the mornings before I left for school. The Christmas I was 15 my mother received an assortment of vacuum-sealed sample sized coffees in a gift exchange at work. We had an old drip coffeemaker at home but Lord knows when we had used it last. Nevertheless my dad made us coffee on Christmas morning (none for my mother) and so it began. Much has been written about ideal coffee brewing temperatures, methods, beans, and roasts and while I enjoy such discussions and the pursuit of coffee perfection, most days a girl just wants a good cup of coffee in her favorite mug with a touch of creamer, no sugar (that's to leave room for the morning cookie. Nothing tastes better with unsweetened coffee than a little sugar).

I have always felt that a person's coffee preference says something, if not about her character, than certainly about her personality.  A black coffee drinker can be friends with a nonfat mocha latte drinker, but there are some obvious differences there. Of course we all have our moments--I went through a nonfat sugar free cinnamon dolce latte phase before the introduction of the "skinny" order; but really, who wants to be the girl ordering a skinny vanilla latte? And forget about a dude ordering a skinny drink in the middle of the morning rush.  Congratulations to all of you secure enough to say that out loud in front of a line of strangers but whenever I do I feel the need to explain my order to the barista and/or the person behind me: "Something about the 2% milk is just too heavy for me.""I drink diet soda so I don't even notice the artificial sweetener." What I really want to say is: just because my drink is skinny doesn't mean I need to be, society and all you corporate marketing execs who decided to name my morning indulgence "skinny" so I'll feel a little less guilty for spending $4.50 on it. Hey, at least I earned a star for my purchase. 25 years old and still extremely motivated by virtual stickers. Now my standard order when I'm out is a soy misto with one pump of [syrup of choice]. No matter how slowly I say it I have to repeat myself at least once and, yes, I do feel like a diva when I order.

College was my french press phase, mostly because the coffee in the dining hall was pretty undrinkable hotel-coffee variety and my thrift store drip coffee maker just made me sad. No use putting expensive coffee in that thing.  Then I got married and one of the wonderful things about getting married is that you get a lot of presents, like the coffeemaker of my dreams from one of my bridesmaids.

It's the only coffeemaker I've found with a conical burr grinder (as opposed to a blade grinder, like those handheld versions that double as spice grinders), which preserves more of the beans' oils and hence their flavor. It also brews the coffee at the optimal temperature and time to extract just the right amount of flavor from the beans. Or at least that's what Amazon tells me and I am happy to believe the marketing in this case. It's a whole lot easier to clean than my french press and when I really have my act together I can program it to start the night before and wake up to the smell of coffee.

How do you take your morning coffee?