Grilled Pizza

Friday night is pizza night. However, since this has been the case for a long time, we sometimes get sick of pizza. Rather than give up on our tradition, we decided to try something new. Grilled pizza! We watched videos on youtube of that Steven Raichlen dude, you know, the grill king, to learn how to make your dough not fall through the cracks. Turns out there is really no trick. You have to make it thin, but that is about it. Cook it till you get the fancy lines on one side, then flip it and put your toppings on. It is faster and way less messy in my kitchen.

Another fun development is baby pizza! We make a baby sized one and the kid scarfs it up. He will eat his whole pizza. He likes mushroom, pepper and onions, if you are curious. For my new style of pizza, I have been using BBQ sauce instead of Italian style, with chicken, bacon, onions, mushrooms and sometimes peppers. It is super good, and it compliments the smoky flavor from being grilled. I am all about pizza night these days!

Thank you, Martha

My mother raised me to hate Martha Stewart's guts, but I just can't do it! I love her. I think she can do no wrong. Recently I subscribed to the Everyday Food magazine, since I buy it at the store so much. This recipe came from there, and even though it is simple, it was incredibly good. It is a buffalo chicken wrap. With julienned carrots and celery, and ranch sauce. Should I have thought of this myself? Totally, but I didn't. And Martha did. that is why she is a bazillionaire and I am not. I had it on a plain old tortilla. I grilled the chicken first, and then tossed the cut up pieces in the hot sauce. It was really easy and did I say delicious?

Buckwheat

Now don't laugh, but I learned about buckwheat from a Wii game! Ok, you can laugh. Harvest Moon taught me that buckwheat must be good because you can get a lot of money on the game for growing and selling it! So I went and got some from the store. There are all different forms, and things you can do with it. The kind I have experimented with most is just regular cracked buckwheat. I make "oatmeal" (buckmeal? that doesn't sound very good) with it. With cinnamon and cloves and nutmeg, and sometimes apples, it is warm and nutty and tasty. The baby likes it too. If you take the dried form and mix a raw egg in, and cook it in a pan until it is dry before you boil it, it keeps the grains more separated and gives them more of a texture. Or you can skip straight to the boiling, which makes the grain more mushy. That is my preference for buckmeal.

Asparagus

Asparagus. How I hated thee. Until about 4 weeks ago. For some reason, I decided to make it and eat it, no matter that I didn't like it. And then? It was good! I don't know what has changed, but I like it now. I've made it at least once a week since. Ive done it with just some olive oil, salt and pepper... maybe some lemon juice. The time that is pictured here, I did it fancy style, where I marinated it in all kinds of things. Soy sauce, pineapple juice, teriyaki sauce, ponzu, ginger, garlic, sriracha.... that's all that I can remember. Basically anything I could find in the fridge that had that sort of flavor. And man, was it extra good. Woohoo for a new staple!

Artichokes

I had a request (like 3 months ago or something) to tell the story of what I do with artichokes. So here it is! Boil them. The end. Just kidding! Well, sort of. First you have to trim them. I cut off the stem until it's about an inch long. I cut off the top 1/3 of the whole artichoke so the boiling water can get into all the leaves, and I peel off any leaves that are on the stem or lower than the rest on the body part. To cook them, I just boil away, in the biggest pot I have, for 45 minutes or so. Sometimes I salt the water, sometimes I don't.

I never used to like chokes, but got the taste for them a few years ago. This came in handy when I was pregnant, seeing as 90% of my diet consisted of artichokes and ceaser salad. They come in all different sizes. We found these monsters a little bit ago. There is many a night where we will make up huge chokes, one for each of us, and that is our dinner.

Part of the fun of chokes is the dip. You can make anything you want. Some people use melted butter, but I prefer a mayo based sauce. In a little food processor (you don't have to use it, but it makes it easy) I start with some mayo. Maybe a cup or so, that we will split. I always put garlic powder and the juice of half a lemon. I add chives if I have them (and boy do I have them right now) and some sort of herbs. Maybe rosemary or thyme. Oh and pepper. Tons of pepper. Salt helps too. Then, you just have to buzz it for a second and thats it!

Birthday Party

So, after all those trials about which birthday cake to make, it came time for the actual party. I made a big spread, much too big for the amount of people there, and of course forgot to take a picture of the whole thing. Here is part of it at least:

I had chips and salsa, chips and a few dips, cheese and crackers, fruit salad, veggies, pigs in a blanket (pigs in blankets? how do you pluralize that?) and cupcakes! 2 kinds of cupcakes, to be exact. Chocolate with chocolate frosting, and maple with maple frosting.

The chocolate definitely was the winner. The baby ate 1 of each, but whatevs. You only turn one once, right?! Next year, I will just plan on chocolate though, to save myself trouble. Anyways, who am I kidding? Nobody wants to eat stuff that isn't chocolate.

Reminds Me of Prince

As my bestie would say, ohmigosh! I can't believe I have slacked this much on my writingz. Well, what better place to start back into it than purple potatoes! We picked these up at a farmer's market. For no other reason, really, than because they were purple. We ate them baked, although I had the desperate urge to make mashed potatoes out of them. I wish they tasted as awesome as they looked. There weren't bad by any means, but very plain. I know, duh. But I mean even more so than a regular potato. Still. A+ in the looks department.