i made pizza

YEA! I made pizza! It was pretty good. I started out by making a green onion "cream" sauce. I know! I have green onions up the wazoo so I thought what the hell? Might as well give it a try. It was very similar to pesto! All I did was put a bunch of green onions and a couple garlic cloves in the food processor with a little bit of olive oil and a little bit of water (just for moisture). When it's a pasty goo, start cooking it up a bit in some "butter". After a few minutes add the flour to make a rue. Slowly add your milk and whisk it all together until desired creaminess. Add salt and pepper to taste.


After the sauce was all made I let it cool for awhile while I got my dough all prepped. It was just a Trader Joe's pizza dough. I love that stuff. I only used half of it though... since I'm just one person. ANYWAY. I rolled it out into a lovely umm artistic shape and proceeded to top. First the sauce! Then some red onions, topped with fresh mozzarella cheese. Top that with some fresh basil leaves and chopped hazelnuts. THEEENNN sprinkle over some parmesean and gorgonzola cheese. YUM. Drizzle a little olive oil on the crust and top just so it gets a nice crisp to it. Bake it in a preheated 450 degree oven for 12-14 minutes, or until it looks done to you. :) ENJOY!

i'll butter your nut. whoooooaaaa.

some people came over, there was food, and it was GOOD.

butternut squash mac n cheese!

first, to roast the butternut squash you'll need:

one hot oven
1 butternut squash (medium sized), peeled and cubed (about 1/2" x 1/2")
1/2 tsp of nutmeg (a little goes a looong way)
1 1/2 tsp sage
salt and pepper
olive oil

take your cubed squash and toss the hell out of it in the nutmeg, sage, salt and pepper, and olive oil. lay out on a PAMmed pan (better safe than sorry right?) and put into a preheated 450 degree oven. since the cubes are so small, this shouldn't take too long -- about 20 minutes. after about 10 minutes get in there and just shake the pan a little. you don't need to turn every single cube, that takes too long, a good shake oughta do it. you know it's done when you can stick a fork in it and it's squishy. take it out and let it cooooool.

for the mac n cheese you'll need:

2.5 tbs "butter"
2.5 tbs flour
2 cups milk (1% is fine if you're lookin to avoid fatassery)
1 tbs minced garlic
1/2 white/yellow onion
1/2 cup gorgonzola cheese
1/4 cup fresh grated parmesean cheese
1 fairly large ball of fresh mozzarella cheese, cubed
salt/pepper
box of your favorite pasta (i used penne)
bread crumbs (italian or regular)
preheated 375 degree oven

get your pasta water boiling first, that way you can assemble your beschamel (fancy word alert!!) while your water heats up. in a saucepot, heat up your butter on medium to medium low heat. when it's almost all melted add the garlic & onion. i like to add garlic early because garlic + butter = yummy. i feel like it helps release the flavor of the garlic more if i saute it for a minute or two. after that, add your flour and whisk it all together. it should look like a nasty looking paste. good. if you're a novice like myself, add your milk in slowly, in portions, to ensure that there aren't any clumps of flour. if you're a pro then... go balls out and dump all the milk in there. fancy pants.

turn your heat to low (not simmer, but like... 1 or 2) and start adding the gorgs. if you LOVE gorgonzola, add more than 1/2 cup. just do it. add your parm too. salt and pepper to taste. you could also add sage/rosemary to this if you wanted. it should be thick enough that if you pull your whisk out there is a good amount still stuck to it. if it's too "watery" add some more flour, a tsp at a time, and let it cook through, whisking a lot.

for the pasta, cook it to al dente. about.. 8 minutes. it's going to finish in the oven by soaking up the milky cheesy sauce. drain the pasta and return back to its pot. hopefully you've used a fairly large pot because you're going to mix everything together in this pot. (oops, shoulda told you that first huh? my bad). pour the sauce in over the pasta, and add your cubes of mozzarella cheese (save a few to top it with) and butternut squash. stir it all up and pour the whole kit and kaboodle into a large corningware or baking dish that has been PAMmed. if it looks like the pasta has already soaked up a whole hell of a lot of the liquid, add about a 1/2 cup of milk to the whole thing. it'll be fine. cover the top with a few handfuls of bread crumbs, mozz cubes, and grate some more parmesean over it. drizzle with olive oil.

bake it in the oven for about 15 minutes with the lid on, then about 10 minutes with the lid off. it's done when you can see goodness bubbling on the sides, and the top has a nice crisp to it. mmm. spoon and SERRRRVE!

i can't find the other pictures i took, but here's one of my plate. yum.


UPDATE! I found the pictures!

makes me wanna soup, soup ba doop

sooooo i said that i made a soup with my veggie broth right? RIGHT! so here it is:

tofu soup:

1 tbs each fresh basil and cilantro
1 tbs chili paste
2 tbs minced garlic
2 tbs minced ginger
2 tbs sriracha (mmm)
2 tbs brown sugar
1/2 onion, julienned style
about a 1 1/2 cups uncooked cabbage (bok choy would be nice too)
block of tofu, cubed
somen noodles (or rice noodles)
2 cups broth
1/2 cup low sodium soy sauce
green onions/chives

so start off by sauteing the onions in some vegetable/canola oil. olive oil is a little too heavy for this dish. you could also use mushrooms in this... but i hate mushrooms, so i didn't. so YEAH! anyway, get those onions going and then after 2-3 minutes add the garlic, ginger, sugar, herbs, and chile paste/sriracha. oh, throw the tofu in too. BUT make sure your tofu has been squished and drained of excess water. (don't know what i'm talking about? wrap your block of tofu in a clean dish towel and squeeze. WHOA HULK not that hard. just hard enough to get the moisture out.)

ok so you've got all your goodies heatin up, excellent. toss in your cabbage/bok choy and stir it in, then add your liquids. bring it to a boil, and then simmer for about... 15-20 minutes? you shouldn't have to add too much salt, but salt and pepper to taste. when your cabbage starts getting soft and wilty-like add your noodles. i used somen noodles because that's what i have. rice noodles would have been great, maybe even better. both of these noodles only take a few minutes to cook. so, leaving the heat on simmer add your noodles. it should all be ready within 5 minutes. at this point add some sliced green onions or chives for a little freshness. YUUUM.

we stalk because we care. wait. what?

today i made my very first veggie stock. i think it turned out really well! i wanted to make a tofu soup and the canned broths/stocks are too strong for it, so i made my own. next time though, a lot more herbs and onion. but... i was out of onion, so yeah. ha.

in my stock:

an onion, quartered
a few cloves of garlic
handful of basil, cilantro, thyme, rosemary, dill
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
some cabbage
3 or 4 green onions
little bit of salt, and pepper

i just let it cook for a couple hours til it had some good color and then strained out all of the veggies and stuff. and BAM! i had veggie stock. and i got to use my dutch oven for the first time. jessica called it my double dutch. hahaha. so from here on out, my d.o.'s name is double dutch.


there was a lot more of it, this was after i used some for my soup.

yum yum.

garden update

this was last week:



this was today:


have i told you about my rebel pumpkins? so i had this pumpkin right, and it ended up rotting and exploding outside. all the seeds just went all over the place. and apparently they made their way into one of my green planters. i planted some extra tomato seeds in a planter and a few days later i go outside and there's a giant leaf that's sprouted. NOT A TOMATO. i also saw another lil guy sprouting in the planter, and there were two leaves bound by the shell of a PUMPKIN SEED. so yeah, apparently i'm growing pumpkins now. so TOP in the first set of pics are those pumpkin sprouts and TOP of the second set are those pumps this week. crazy lil growers man. and yes, those are my little flinstone feet.

ANNNND see how much my little tomatoes have grown in my upside down grower (that's not upside down yet... it's the thing with the 3 holes).

AND see that empty pot in the bottom right pic of the first set? my green beans are in there! the top pic of the second set is of my green beans today! man, they grow so fast. chomp chomp chomp!

OHHHHH and my cherry tomatoes are blooming!!! see those little green globular guys!? so cute. they're gonna taste so gooooood.

dont judge, i have a looooot of time on my hands. i l<3ve my garden :D

might as well wish out loud

I wish I had all-white dishes. The designs on my dishes are too distracting in pictures.
I wish I had better lighting in my house. Neon doesn't do anyone or anything justice.
I wish I had the money to go out and buy a bunch of different kinds of oils, just to see what they taste like.
I wish Canon would fix my camera so that I don't get that stupid line in my pictures anymore. I don't even know how that got there!

peppah!

i almost didn't even post this meal. i was just going to sit my happy arse on the couch and enjoy it while watching a little cougar town (don't judge me). but michelle insisted that i take a picture and blog it. so here it be. last night's dinner!

i was inspired by something i saw on the Food Network's The Best Thing I Ever Ate. It was this soup that was brought with just the fixins in the bowl, and then the broth was poured around it from a hot kettle. looked BOMB. so i decided try my own variation.

first, the soup part. i made a simple potato soup. i used:

2.5 small potatoes, sans skin
olive oil
garlic & onion
dill and thyme, salt and pepper
veggie broth
splash of milk (thanks jess! :D)

i cubed the potatoes very small (for quicker cooking) and sauteed them in olive oil. i also added half of a chopped onion and a few cloves of (minced) garlic to the sautee. after a few minutes of that i added the veggie broth, just enough to cover everything in the pot. let it cook until the potatoes fall apart at the touch and then blend the hell out of all of it. if it's super thick, add a lil more broth. finish with a splash of milk for creaminess.

for the other part i made a stuffed bell pepper. the filling consisted of some quinoa and onion and green onion that i sauteed in some olive oil with salt and pepper. when it was done i cracked an egg over it, just to hold it together. then i stuffed all of that into a yellow bell pepper and tossed it in the oven, at 375, for about... i dunno.. 15 minutes or so. i just kept an eye on it and when the top was browning and the pepper was squishy i considered it done.

i placed my stuffed pepper in the middle of my bowl and then poured my soup around it. so yum. and you could either just go crazy and break the hell out of that pepper, or you can do like i did and just spoon out the filling and get some soup in each bite. mmm.


sorry the pictures kind of suck, i have bad lighting. =/