Day Sixty-seven--PIzza night

Yes, I know. I'm two days late. I have two posts to do. Sorry. I couldn't get any time on the computer yesterday. Between my being busy all day and Connor hogging the computer, it just didn't happen. I am going to do two posts right now instead of being lazy and lumping two dinners into one post. That's good, right?

So Friday...that is our pizza night. What a pizza I had. Oh my. I was afraid I had missed my opportunity of asparagus pizza this year. I thought asparagus was done for this season. Imagine my surprise when one of the farms at the market had beautiful bunches of asparagus. I snapped up two bunches. I would have my pizza after all.

Asparagus Bacon Pizza

This pizza, I think, is my new favorite pizza. I was scared to try it because well, it's asparagus on a pizza. Fear not. Try it, when it's in season again. I tweaked my recipe a bit to add the bacon but I had a little bit of uncured bacon left in my fridge and I didn't want it to go bad. I fried up the bacon and then discarded most of the grease. In what little grease that was left I fried up some sliced onions. While I was doing that, Tim was kind enough to roll out the dough for the pizzas. I made the kids pizza and threw it in the oven and then got to shredding my asparagus. This was not an easy task. I think it was because the stalks were thin tender little guys. I did my best until I had a big bowl of shredded asparagus. I tossed it with the tiniest bit of olive oil and salt and pepper. My pizza crust was waiting for me and I got to building my pie.

First thing that went on the crust was some of my sauteed onions. I didn't use any pizza sauce, just put the onions right down. Then I had cubed up a little ball of mozzarella cheese and scattered that over the onions. Then I dropped all the shredded asparagus on top of the cheese. I finished by crumbling a couple of strips of bacon over the top. That's all that I put on it.

Oh. My. God. This pizza was so good. The crust came out perfectly too. I don't know if it was because I had my oven hotter than usual or if it was because there was no pizza sauce on it, but my crust was perfect. I love making my own pizza dough. It always does so well.

So there you have it. Friday night pizza night. The kids and Tim made different pizzas and we munched on the leftovers yesterday. Everyone was happy with this meal. We always are.

Day Thirty-eight--Friends over for dinner

What an amazing dinner we had last night. I'm sorry I'm posting later than usual but I'm slow moving today. Our good friends came over yesterday to spend the day. We spent a couple of hours wandering around looking at various artistic endeavors on display out our Fine Arts Fiesta. We had fun explaining to our boys the point behind "punch bug" punching...it's NOT just picking a color of a car and then punching, but when you see a VW. We came back to the house and I got a couple of loaves of bread rising so that we could have fresh bread with dinner.

Around 4 pm we started getting things ready to roll. I had made a big batch of couscous salad earlier and the bread was baking. Tim got the steaks all ready and then he and the boys head out to the grill. Carrie and I set the patio table and I got the asparagus all dressed with olive oil, salt, pepper and minced garlic. For once, everything was done all at the same time. It couldn't have worked out any easier.

Steak, Couscous salad and roasted asparagus

We ate outside and enjoyed a beautiful bottle of wine. Then we enjoyed an amazing port wine. Then we enjoyed some of Tim's favorite whiskey. Then we enjoyed some tequila. Yes, it was one of those nights. The kids entertained themselves and let us adults have some "play" time. We stayed out until it was dark the mosquitoes were swarming. It really was a perfect evening shared between good friends and we all enjoyed some great food. Who needs anything more than that?

I hope everyone is having a great weekend. It's time for me to now figure out what will be on next week's menu and figure out when I want to get out of my pajamas and go to Wegmans. That might be tomorrow. Until later, happy cooking!

Day Eighteen--Burgers!

This will likely be a short post because, well, I'm tired and cranky. I'm trying to cool off too. It's hard to believe two days ago it was a high of 49 and I had the heat running and today it was 92 out while we were out shopping. Not a happy camper.

I didn't put up a post last night because we were at a fantastic presentation by a friend of mine. Pizza was served after the presentation. I had one piece of it and then had to come home and suck on the Pepto bottle. Yes, I drink it straight out of the bottle. After that we went back over to another friends house and hung out until almost 11, drinking margaritas and just chit chatting under the stars. It was fun. I didn't feel the need to post the dinner because it wasn't home made and it was most certainly not good for us.

Tonight though, we are back on track. I knew that I wanted to do something on the grill because it was supposed to be nice out. I just didn't realize it would be that hot. Tim did the actual grilling and it only took him a couple of minutes, so I say I had the worst end of the stick. I had to make a Mississippi Mud cake for Connor. That was his choice for his 10th birthday. It's funny, because it's the third year in a row he has chosen this as what he wants for his cake. Thankfully, we only make it once a year. It is crazy sweet. It's good, but almost too sweet, and I'm a sweet eater. So, I made the cake, I made potato salad for dinner, and I made burger buns from scratch. I was in the kitchen all afternoon and it was hot.

That leads us to dinner:

Burgers, grilled asparagus, and potato salad

The asparagus was easy. I just used a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper on them and threw them in a grill basket and Tim threw it on the grill for a couple of minutes. Some of them got a little crispy because he made himself a martini while they were grilling. The potato salad is just a typical potato salad with potatoes, eggs, mayo, mustard, salt and pepper. I didn't put any onions or celery into it because of Aidan. He did eat the asparagus. He had a few pieces and then said he wasn't sure he liked it or not. I was cool with it because he had already had a bunch before he came to that realization.

I think that is all I had for now. I want to rant about my shopping for groceries today but I will save that for tomorrow. I'm not sure how tomorrow's night dinner is going to get pulled off. We will be spending the day in Syracuse with some friends, going to the zoo. I have do it yourself pizza planned, but I don't think I have the gumption to go make the dough right now. I suppose I'll have to wait and see what time we get home in the afternoon and if I'll have two hours to spare for the process.

Ok, now I'm done. Happy cooking everyone. I'll leave you with a picture of Connor's cake.

Mississippi Mud Cake

Day Six--Crispy Asparagus Potato Tart

I realized that when I made the menu for this week that out of six nights, four of them are things I've never made before. This might have been poor planning. We could all be really grumpy by the end of the week from not eating any tasty food.

Tonight I made Jamie Oliver's Crispy Asparagus and Potato Tart. Can you tell I adore Jamie? I love how he uses real food. Yes, some of it might be fatty but you use such a tiny bit of that to get such a crazy intense flavor. This recipe called for Lancashire cheese. I asked the cheese lady at Wegmans and she said that they used to carry it but no one ever bought it. I had done some research on it when I was making my menus last week and learned it was a harder cheese. I picked up some Gruyere cheese instead. The lovely lady at Wegmans said it would be a suitable substitute. I've never had Gruyere cheese and while it is very expensive, it is very delicious. I used half of the small brick that I got for this dinner. Tim has already claimed the other half to munch on with apples through next week. So presenting:

This recipe said it makes 4 servings. Uh, more like 6 or 7. That's great for us though because it means lunches tomorrow. That's always a plus. It was fairly easy to make. The worst part was working with the phyllo dough. I love how it bakes up but it is a royal pain in the arse to work with. It always tears on me when I'm working with it. I suffered through layering it trying not to get too upset with it. It was going to be covered with potatoes so that helped. I would say all in all it took about 25 minutes to prepare. While my potatoes were boiling, I was able to blanch my asparagus and shred my cheeses, and get my layers of phyllo in the pan. Once the potatoes were done it took 5 minutes to get them mashed and everything pulled together. It baked for 20 minutes and I took advantage of this time to clean up the kitchen.

I did go food shopping today and I did keep my receipt so I'm hoping that I can try to start getting cost per meal going here soon. So, all in all, this dinner was great. All four of us liked it and Aidan said that this needs to go into our weekly rotation. He even liked the asparagus. That is huge for him. I don't think it will go into the weekly rotation though due to the cost of the cheese. Connor and I also had a little bit of coleslaw with ours that was left over from a couple of days ago. It was still tasty.

Well, that's all I have for you now. Until tomorrow. Happy cooking.

**edited to add cost: Last night I was able to figure out the cost for this meal. It was hard to figure it out. I figured what each egg cost, what each ounce of milk cost, and then I came to the cheese. Obviously that was the most expensive part of this dish. Tim said I should count the whole cost of the cheese even though I only used half of it because I wouldn't have bought it if not for this recipe. That is what I did so the total meal was $24.29 split up between 6 servings which comes to $4.05 per serving.