and a big, fat pizza pie!

A couple of weeks ago, I began working as a baker for a local catering company. I'm not the most enthusiastic baker in the world, I actually don't care for cookies very much. As with most food related things, I'm comfortable with baking, it's just tedious. I enjoy making things pretty, which baking lends itself to, and there's a certain amount of creativity there. At any rate, I spend my days baking tons of cookies, a few pies, and the occasional cake. There are worst ways to make a buck.

Anywho, after a long first week, I wanted nothing better than to come home and stuff my face with pizza and nurse a glass of Shiraz. I've taken to buying boxed wines, I'll let you know how that's going in another post.

While frozen pizza does have it's convieniences and can be tasty, I'm a scratch girl. It's healthier and you get exactly what you want on your pizza. I was also craving garlic in a big way (when am I not, really?). The pizza began forming on my 30 minute commute pack to the ol' homestead. I stopped by the store and grabbed a bulb of garlic and some mozzerella cheese. Once home, I reached for my quick and easy pizza dough recipe, it has seriously changed the way I eat pizza! I started by mincing 4 garlic cloves and sauteeing them in a little butter. I threw that down atop the pizza dough, then quickly sauteed the canned tomatoes in the same pan to catch left over garlic flavoring, tossed some sugar and italian seasonings in, gave it a quick stir, then it too went on the crust. I mixed my cheeses then they crowed my lovely pie. After 14ish minutes in a 450 oven, my pizza was cooked to perfection. It took only 25 minutes, start to finish!

Can we say tasty? It married beautifully with my Shiraz. My belly was all kinds of happy!

Pizza dough in a flash!

2.5 cups all purpose flour
1 packet (1 Tbs) active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
2 Tbs oil (preferably a good olive)
1 tsp sugar
a couple of pinches of salt


Mix the yeast, water and sugar in a small bowl. Add half a cup of the flour, and mix until it's smooth. Add the remaining flour, and knead until the dough is a nice, smooth ball...maybe 2 minutes. Let the dough rest while you get the rest of the ingredients for your pizza together. The oven should be at 450. I always like to put a nice thin sprinkling of cornmeal on my baking sheet or pizza stone. It helps the pizza slide off and I like the texture. After you've added your tasty-goodies to the top of the rolled out dough, it only takes about 15 minutes for it to bake to perfection. ****Caution**** When the oven temp is this hot, DO NOT walk away! Keep careful watch over the pizza!!

Just in thyme

I love going grocery shopping early in the morning. If you've never done it; you should. It's so luxurious to go in, and feel unrushed. You actually have time to compare labels, prices, and make a more thought-out decision. I tend to feel like I have more freedom to be creative and let the food speak to me. I also find I tend to make less impulsive buys, because I can walk around slowly and really think about each purchase. Seriously gang, give early AM shopping a try.

Anywho. this morning, I heard some good things coming from the pork chops that were on sale, so I snagged a pack. It was a pretty good deal. I got 8 nice sized chops for under $5! With a find like that, you have to do something tasty to celebrate!

Garlic-Thyme Pork Chops

What you need:
1 stick of butter
pork chops
1-2 tsp garlic powder (or granules)
1-2 tsp dried thyme leaves
salt & pepper

What you do:

Melt about half of the butter in a large pan.

Season the chops with the thyme, garlic, salt & pepper.
Place chops in the hot butter. There really should be a nice layer of melted butter, maybe as much as 1/4 inch thick, but definitely enough so that it comes up the sides of the chops.

Make sure you've got the pan under a low fame. We're not trying to fry the chops, just make a little butter hot tub for them. Let everything hang out for about 5-7 minutes, depending on how thick your chops are. Turn the chops over. They should have some good browning on the first side. Allow the other side to cook another 5-7 minutes, and you're done!

You can toss some chopped or sliced onion into the pan after you remove the chops, with a bit of extra oil or butter, for a tasty topping for the chops.

Slowly cooking the chops in butter makes them SO tender and yummy! I hope you give this recipe a try. If you do, let me know how it goes!

Happy eating!

Stir fry heaven

Tonight I made a very yummy stir fry. I went all out (labor-wise...not really cost-wise). I got some good terryaki sauce and chicken breast was on sale $1/lb! I shaved the chicken, so it would cook faster and soak up more of the sauce during cooking. I added zucchini (also on sale, 99 cents a pound), button mushrooms, julienned red peppers, sweet snap peas, water chestnuts (FREE with the terryaki sauce), and green onions. I paired the stir fry with brown rice/Bulgar wheat. SO TASTY!

I do have one word of caution to you, dear readers, PAY ATTENTION AT CHECKOUT! I had this AMAZING coupon for Kashi cereal bars, $2 off just ONE box! They happen to be on sale at the store for $2.99/box...so with my lovely coupon, they're less than a dollar! Well, as the cashier was scanning all my coupons (I'm proud to say I had a nice little stack of them), I noticed my $2 coupon wasn't showing up on the screen...but a little 20 cent off thing had popped up. I quickly pointed this out to the cashier and asked to look over all the coupons I just gave her to make sure I was getting the proper amounts off.

Okay, maybe another word of caution, PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR RECEIPT! I was just looking at mine, to bask in the savings when I noticed I'd been over-charged for my zucchini by 53 cents. It's very easy to be mischarged for produce since it seems many cashiers know nothing about that particular department. Some of them seem to be unable to tell the different between spinach and a bag of carrots. My zucchini were rung up as cucumbers, not really a terribly hard mistake to make, but I'd even been nice enough to weigh them and print out a little price sticker. All the checker had to do was scan it like she'd done with all of the other produce. Eh well, I think I'll let this one go...for now. I'll just say this, don't be afraid to fight for the price you want (though do try to be reasonable about it). About a month ago, I got 4 apples for 40 cents before because they were accidentally marked as 33 cents/lb instead of 33 cents/each. That felt good.

Anyway, remember the prices of things, so that when you get to the checkout stand, you can make sure you're charged what you originally intended to pay. All too often things that are on sale don't ring up that way, and you can be grossly overcharged, sometimes by more than a dollar an item. Some cashiers may try to make it seem like you're really putting them out if you insist on getting the correct price for something, just ignore them. They shouldn't make you feel awkward about getting a good deal.

Happy eating