Day Thirty-nine--Calzones

Hello all. What a great weekend was had by all. Last night we enjoyed what we were supposed to have on Friday. The kids had been begging for calzones again.

Sausage, shallot and mushroom calzone, with vodka sauce

My dough was really great to work with this time. I think it might be because our house is closed up and dry. It rose beautifully and rolled out with no problems at all. It almost looked like professional dough. It felt amazing in my hands. I rolled out four individual rounds. Aidan just likes cheese in his, so that is what he got. I made sure that I drained the ricotta this time and it made for much less sloppy calzones. I mix ricotta, a ball of fresh mozzarella, and some freshly grated Parmesan cheese together. I used an egg rub around the edges of the round and folded the dough in half. I put in on the stone and started Connor's. Connor just wanted cheese and sausage in his. Last time he had onions and peppers and he didn't like how sloppy it was. While theirs were in the oven, I started on Tim's and mine. While I was making the kids, Tim had fried up some sliced shallots and mushrooms. We both had cheese, sausage and the onion mixture in ours. I drizzled a little olive oil on the tops of ours and then grated a bit more Parmesan cheese on top and I put oregano on mine.

These were so much better than last time. Draining the ricotta for a few minutes really helped a lot. We enjoyed these while watching Tremors with the boys. We all have leftovers for lunch today. That is always a plus in my book. The only bad thing is that I never got to making up menus for this week or go food shopping. That should make for an interesting dinner tonight. Can we say oatmeal?

Until later, happy cooking!

Friday Night...Lack of post

I wasn't sure how to go about posting for Friday night. The original plan for Friday night was calzones but I took the boys to see the new Shrek movie instead. I had made the decision to not cook dinner before we went to the movie because I knew we would be full of popcorn and I also knew that we would be walking around the art festival. We had a backup plan of eating at Circles. Tim eats at Circles a lot during the week, usually when we don't have leftovers from a previous night's dinner. It's a local little deli in our local public square that has been around for over 20 years. I was looking forward to having one of their sandwiches that Tim always raves about. Long story short, by the time Tim was done with work and we got down there they had stopped serving sammies. Boo.

We walked back over to the festival and the boys had visions of fair food dancing in their heads. We wandered by all of the little tents set up. We smelled all the smells. Two major smells jumped out at me. One was of the amazing cinnamon smell that comes out of the nut vendor and then the other smell (out of the rest of the vendors) was grease and oil. Not very appetizing to me. The boys chose Italian. I'm not surprised because it WAS Friday night and we usually have pizza or calzones. Aidan had a slice of cheese pizza and Connor had a calzone. Tim couldn't figure out what he wanted so we walked around looking at the amazing art. After about 3o minutes of wandering around, I settled into a little booth. I spent some money (a lot) and Tim decided instead of seeing how much I spent that he was going to find something to eat. He came back with a bbq sammie and some fried oreos. I finished up my purchase and met up with him. The boys were thrilled with the oreos and against my will they made me take a bite. I took a small bite and wasn't too impressed. Again, with the oil. Eewww.

I ended up not eating anything at the festival and we came home. I couldn't figure out what I wanted so settled on a shot of tequila and called it a night. It all worked out. The boys got a treat of eating pizza/calzone out, Tim got a sammie and I honestly wasn't hungry after the movie. Saturday we will be back on track. We have some friends coming over to share dinner with us. We are going to wow them with some of our grass fed beef. I just hope that: A. it doesn't rain and B. Tim doesn't overcook the steaks. If all else fails, we have a couple of large bottles of red wine.

Until later, happy cooking.

Day Twenty-four--Calzones

It's Friday! In our home, we love Friday nights. Friday means pizza and movie night. We are watching Jaws: The Revenge. Good times.

We switched from having pizza to making calzones.

I made the dough early in the afternoon so it had plenty of time to rise. I then cooked up some spicy beef italian sausage. Chris and Amanda gave us a couple of samples of the grass fed sausage and we decided to give it a try tonight. It was very good and very spicy. Perfect. After the sausage was cooked, I fried up an onion, a red pepper and a green pepper. While those were cooking, I mixed some ricotta cheese, some mozzarella and some parmesan cheese.

I had enough dough to make four individual calzones. Aidan just had the cheese mixture in his. Tim, Connor, and I had the sausage and pepper mix. I pulled out the extra tomato sauce I had from earlier in the week and used that for dipping. It was delicious. They were really easy to put together and we have lunch for tomorrow too. It was also nice to have a switch up from pizza, although a calzone is basically a pizza pocket.

I don't have much else to report for now. I'm reading Animal, Vegetable and Miracle still and I will have a lot to "talk" about when I get done with it. I am really leaning towards eating seasonally though. It will be interesting to figure out what is really in season. When you go into the grocery store there is always a great variety of every fruit and vegetable. I never really thought too much about what was really in season. I'm happy with where we are right now with the eating of real food and not processed food. Sure, there is a little extra work involved, but it's worth it to be able to pronounce what is in my food.

I have a menu to do for next week, so until tomorrow...Happy Cooking!