Archive for the ‘food’ Category

What I Ate Wednesday – Pizza

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Posted by Michael, February 16th, 2011

Pizza.  Yeah, I know, real original.  But hear me out.  Back in the day when I used to visit Rebecca at college, we always ended up making a quick, easy and cheap meal.  The pocketless pita pizza.  Say that a few times fast.  It was your traditional pita pocket (but without the pocket kind) with some pizza sauce, cheese and whatever toppings.  Slip em in the oven for a few minutes and time and time again, we had a great meal.

But it wasn’t that crazy good pizza pie that you sometimes crave.  And as we moved into the condo, we began making pizza more and more.  We would often pick up fresh dough from a local pizzeria, roll it out ourselves, apply toppings and bake as needed.  Even these pies, though, were missing something.  We like our pizza thin, crispy and well done; something that is incredibly hard to get using a traditional oven.  Doing some googling and what not, we came across the ever-popular pizza stone.  The stone did help our pies get a bit more crispy, but not enough. Our residential ovens just do not get hot enough like a pizzeria oven.

That’s when I got the idea to bake the dough by itself for a few minutes on the pizza stone.  This would allow the bottom of the dough to get nice and crispy without soaking in the moisture from the various toppings.

I typically bake the dough just enough so that it’s slightly turning a tannish-brown; as seen below.

I’ll then rub a bit of olive oil around the entire surface.  This allows for the crust to get even more crispy and well done; just the way we like it.

At this point, it’s time to get creative: add whatever sauce you like, whatever cheese and whatever other toppings you can come up with.  We typically go with Don Pepino’s pizza sauce.  I know, I know, I should be making the sauce homemade.  But honestly, Pepino’s sauce is the closest sauce to an actual pizzeria sauce.

Pizza with peppers and onions has long been one of our favorites, so it’s almost always a must when we’re making pizza.  We like to dice our veggies small so they, too, get a bit more crispy.

When we have fresh ingredients, we try to make margherita pizza.  Unfortunately on this day, we only had fresh mozzarella to use.  But otherwise, we would have put on some chopped tomatoes and fresh basil.  Instead, we stuck with the regular sauce and some dried basil.  Still pretty damn good.

And finally, we did get a bit creative.  We decided to do a white pizza with ricotta and mozzarella cheese.  Can’t wait to make this one again!

Now I’m hungry again, but I do have hockey tonight so more pizza making will have to hold off until tomorrow night!

ps- We’re linking up to Jenn’s What I Ate Wednesday party over at Peas & Crayons, go check out the other meal ideas!

Pausing For My Loves

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Posted by Rebecca, February 14th, 2011

I had a post planned for tonight (in my head), but about eh, 5 minutes ago I decided to can it.

It’s 9:15, and I just finished my second round of homework. I had the most awful stiff neck in the history of the world this weekend, more than likely from stress and the fact that I spend at least 12 hours a day on a computer. So when I looked up and saw this guy staring at me….

MoMMmMa! Hewwo? Get off computer and listen to meeeee!

…I knew it was time to call a time-out. I mean, Valentine’s Day is about being with the people you love right? And I don’t get nearly enough time with them these days. So I’m about to close the laptop and sit on the couch with Mike. We go all out for these holidays 🙂

Oh and I’m also about to eat one of these…

Mmmm! I think I’m going to go with the Cookies n’ Cream one!

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone, hope you had some cupcakes on the couch time 🙂

What We Ate Wednesday- Beans & Macaroni

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Posted by Rebecca, February 9th, 2011

Yay another post for Jenn’s What I Ate Wednesday link party over at Peas and Crayons!

Last night (I guess this series should really be called “What we ate for dinner Tuesday”?), Mike made a variation of his grandfather’s pasta e fagioli recipe. Mike’s isn’t soupy at all, so we normally refer to it as beans and macaroni. In fact, today I had the leftovers for lunch and I ate it with a fork.

Okay so! The ingredients:

Half of a medium sized onion

2 cloves of garlic

1-2 stalks of celery

3 cans of cannellini beans (white kidney beans)

1/2 lb smallish pasta

1/2 can tomato sauce (15 ounce or so can)

Directions:

Put some olive oil in a pot, adding the onion and garlic. Cook until onions are clear and add 2 and a half cans of beans (with juice). As this cooks, stir and smash beans, add half of a can of tomato sauce and salt and pepper to taste. In a separate pot, boil water and add chopped celery until soft. Cook pasta and set aside. Once beans have condensed and are creamy, add remaining beans and juice into the pot, along with the chopped celery. Cook for an additional ten minutes or so. Add pasta to mixture, stir and done!

If you prefer the more traditional soupy route, when you add the celery to the bean mixture, add the water that it was cooked in as well.  Cook the pasta in the same mixture until soft.

We sort of forgot that we had What We Ate Wednesday in the middle of cooking this, so we didn’t take pictures along the way. Sorry about that, but it’s the end result that counts, right? 🙂

What We Ate Wednesday- Blackened Mahi Mahi

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Posted by Rebecca, February 2nd, 2011

My first post for Jenn’s ‘What I Ate Wednesday’ link party was such a success (and fun) that we decided to do it again!

I know there are some vegetarians out there whose heads are currently spinning. You eat fish? Well, yes, kinda sorta. I have never really liked fish. I don’t like shrimp or even fried calamari. My dad is an avid fisher so there was always a lot of fish around when I was growing up.. and I hated it. But I like Mahi, it is the only fish that I like.

So why would I choose to not eat meat but to eat fish? Well for me it’s the “I don’t know what kind of life these animals lived” factor that ruins meat for me. We eat Mahi and Yellowfin caught by my father. It has roamed (swam?) the ocean and was no doubt killed humanely, since my father is a huge animal lover. What, did you think I was just born like this? I was raised to respect every animal out there as another life.  Growing up we rescued cats, squirrels, chipmunks, birds, turtles, ducks and I’m sure I’m missing some. Though I personally don’t think I could fish, I know my dad does it as humanely as possible.

So on to the menu!

Mahi filets…

The standard broccoli…

Some peppers and onions…

And perhaps my favorite food of all time, mashed potatoes…

We put some melted butter on the filets and sprinkled them with Phillip’s blackening seasoning…

Then we put the filets on the griddle that sits over the 5th burner on our stove. This griddle is fabulous. Cooks great, super easy to clean and convenient. We also have a $15 electric griddle we’ve used for years that works wonderfully.

(ps- please ignore the filthy burner in this picture, if you can even spot it. We had a spillage issue somewhere along the way…)

Mmm buttery goodness, I never said this was necessarily healthy 🙂

We added the peppers and onions, which we cooked for a little in a frying pan (somehow cause of dirty burner) to the skillet for a few minutes…

Then all done! We skip to Mike’s partially consumed plate because we were so anxious to eat that I forgot to take pictures…

I’m pretty sure we’re obsessed with blackening seasoning. We now use it on fries, veggies….practically everything!

Be sure to visit Jenn over at Peas and Crayons for some more cooking fun 🙂

What We Ate Wednesday

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Posted by Rebecca, January 26th, 2011

I’m back! Mike saved my life with his posts this week. You’ll probably be hearing from him a little more from now on, since my workload this semester is much larger. Just call us John and Sherry 🙂

Anywho, my blogging buddy Jenn over at Peas and Crayons is hosting a What I Ate Wednesday link party today. She threatened me asked me to post some things we eat around here. Since Jenn is wonderful, and also happens to be my #1 and #4 most frequent commenter (no really Jenn, you hold 2 spots in the top 10…), the least I could do was post a little recipe from last night!

So a little foodie background, Mike and I don’t eat meat and haven’t for about 2 years now. I was never a big meat eater and I originally decided that I wanted to do a grass-fed/free-range diet. We did it for a week and it almost bothered me more to think about what the animals I was eating, were eating! It made them more real to me, so I decided I would rather not eat meat than go the grass-fed route. I never expected Mike to join me, but he decided he was up for the challenge and would see how long he could go. Much to both of our surprises, it’s been almost two years. A major misconception about us is that I have somehow forced Mike into my lifestyle, which could not be further from the truth. Mike loves to cook and was open to trying out new things, so if anything, being vegetarian has made us expand our horizons and try new things. Plus Mike maaay have eaten a rib at a recent bachelor party and I did not kill him in his sleep. See that? I am not the crazy vegetarian lady.

We often get funny looks and comments such as “You don’t eat meat? What do you eat???” So I’m pretty excited to share some of our recipes 🙂  Though I can’t promise that there aren’t some nights where I eat Froot Loops for dinner…

Okay onto the food! Last night we made some stuffed peppers with white wine risotto. And by we I mean Mike..

The recipe, which is from here:

  • 4-6 red bell peppers
  • 2 tbsp olive oil + 1/4 cup
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp garlic powder
  • 3 scallions
  • 4 cloves garlic
  • 3 cups vegetable broth
  • 1 cup white wine, separated + 1 tbsp
  • 1 cup Aborio rice
  • 1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes (re-hydrate if necessary)
  • 1 portobello mushroom, halved and sliced
  • 1 tbsp margarine
  • parmesan cheese (vegan or dairy, optional)

We substituted the portobello mushroom for some steak cut mushrooms, removed the sun-dried tomatoes and added some onion.

Directions:

Slice tops off of peppers and scoop out seeds. Place in baking tray. Drizzle with 2 tbsp olive oil, garlic and salt and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until just barely tender.

Meanwhile, heat vegetable broth and 1/2 cup wine over low heat til hot, just before simmering. In a separate large skillet, sautee scallions, garlic cloves in 1/4 cup olive oil. Add rice and mushrooms until rice is toasted, but not burnt, stirring frequently. Add 1/2 cup white wine and simmer one more minute. Add 1/2 cup of the broth and wine mixture to rice. Allow to cook until the liquid is almost absorbed. Continue adding broth mixture 1/2 cup at a time until rice is cooked, about 30 minutes.

Add 1 tbsp margarine and 1 tbsp wine just before done cooking.

Stuff into peppers. Sprinkle the stuffed peppers with parmesan, if desired, and bake 10 more minutes.

We served them with some broccoli (because I was craving it) and some corn (because that was the vegetable Mike chose). I’m sure a salad would have been a much more normal choice. And tada! A delicious meal on my lovely Ikea Dinera plates. I had to throw a touch of decor in there for you guys 🙂

Don’t worry, the remainder of that bottle of white wine was put to great use, we don’t waste…

For more recipes, crafts and cute animals, head on over to Peas and Crayons!

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