#48 – Homemade Pizzas – Check!

Do you love crossing things off of a list as much as I do? I think it comes from my Mom carrying a list around with her for years and watching her get satisfaction out of crossing things off…but that’s just a guess. It could also be my own Type-A personality at it’s best!

This past weekend, I was able to highlight/bold an item off of my 101 in 1001 list, and it felt soooo good! After we picked up all the chitlins from their various pick-up places, we went home to make…

Homemade Pizza!!

I don’t know who was more excited…me, or the kids! In a pinch, I’d say it was me that was the most excited, but that’s just my dorkiness coming out…

I found a recipe for the crust from here that sounded too easy not to try. The recipe for the sauce came from here, and I made it ahead of time since it takes a while to cook down. I assembled the rest of the ingredients, organized my “helpers” and got down to making some pizza crusts. For my first attempt, they weren’t bad…but they weren’t great either…too much like bread, not enough like pizza crust. But still yummy!

Tanner wasn’t interested (read trying to be cooler than most in his 13 year-old angst) in forming his own crust, so I made both his and mine. That was totally fine with me, since that gave me one to “practice” on before making mine! LOL! Jenna was all about making her pizza crust, and Brent got all fancy with some tosses and throws just to show off his skills…

Everyone topped their own pizzas and we got ready to put them in the oven. Right before we slid them in the oven, we took out the breadsticks that I had also made (Recipe found here!) We just used the pizza sauce as a dipping sauce, along with some Ranch, for the breadsticks and viola! we had an appetizer to hold us over while our pizzas cooked.  The breadsticks were ah-mazingly delicious, even if I forgot the kosher salt...I think that I'd try this bread as a pizza crust next time, just for grins!

Here’s the final product…mine and Brent's...



Don’t they just look yummy?





Like I said, I want to keep looking for a pizza crust recipe that I like, but the sauce recipe was wonderful…I would agree with her that it might be the best pizza sauce!  As a dipping sauce it was a bit spicy (which you could tone down by eliminating some of the crushed red peppers that it calls for), but on the pizza itself no one complained about anything being too spicy. It must have been good, because not much was left on anyone’s plate!

I’d also like to try some pizza cooking tips – like warming my pizza stones first, scary! – the next time that we do this…which will probably be next weekend. We’re big on pizza around here! 

Becoming a Kitchen Goddess...

Do you ever fall into a rut cooking dinner at night? You know what I’m talking about…you can’t decide what to cook…you finally make a decision and start cooking it all up…then you’ve made something and it’s tasty and edible, but nothing to really write home about? Yeah, that’s my life for the past few months. I cook when I have to, or feel that I should because we’re eating out too much…but most of the time, I’m ok with just grabbing something quick because it’s easier.

I’ve cut myself some slack on that for the most part. I do work full time and have a “newborn” at the house…but since he passed the 6 month mark this past month, I sort of feel like a charlatan when I say that I have a newborn at home…he’s technically closer to being a toddler now than a newborn, even though the toddler stage is still far away. But still, you get what I’m talking about, right?

So I cook when I have to. It’s good, yummy and edible and I get lots of compliments to the chef from the family…but at the same time it’s the same stuff that I’ve always cooked. Basically, I was bored with my dinner selections. That’s when I turned to food blogs. By following some links from blogs that I already read, I’ve managed to find some new sites to peruse (which is always a score!) and most of them post weekly or daily recipes. Some of them have been catching my eye and I’ve been branching out a little bit in my cooking. It’s been noticed at home and appreciated…and as I’ve tried some new recipes that were hits with the family, I’ve gotten a little braver with my selections to tryout next.

Well, let me tell you…the other night? I hit one out of the ballpark. I became a kitchen Goddess. Literally. A Goddess. Not kidding. I was a hero in my husband’s eyes.

I found a recipe for Chicken Tortilla Soup that looked super easy to make, and with the cold weather we’ve been having here, it seemed perfect. It was just Brent and I (and Jax, of course) at our house that night, but we BOTH went back for seconds…and he even had thirds! And the best part? All canned ingredients, which means little to no prep time and very little work on my part, which makes it a great weeknight meal! Double points for that, right? As with most recipes, there are a few things that I would/will change the next time that I make it, so I’ll wait until I perfect it a bit before sharing my version of the recipe with you. But here’s the original recipe, if you’re interested.

We’ve also been on a cornbread kick lately, so I’ve been trying different ways to make that and I thought that I found a winning recipe for it but it seemed a bit too crumbly to me, even though Brent really loved it. I saw a recipe one day that was similar but looked a little less crumbly, so I whipped up a batch of that to go along with our soup. (It was REALLY yummy, but I would cook it a bit longer next time…it was maybe not firm enough.) Not only did we both stuff ourselves at dinner, but then instead of just dropping the leftovers (what little was left!) into the fridge to sit there uneaten, I went ahead and packed it into lunch portions for both of us. I didn’t really expect that we would both want it again the next day for lunch after eating so much the night before…but we both brought our lunch “bags” to work that next day! It was yummy with a capital “Y!”

It was so good that I totally forgot to snap a picture of it…I suppose that I could have taken a shot of my empty bowl – that’s got to mean that it was good, right? LOL! But seeing what a big hit it was, I’m sure that it will be requested again pretty soon, so you won’t have to wait long to see my modifications. And maybe that time I’ll remember to take a picture!

Baked Ziti

Here’s another easy weeknight meal that can be made partially in advance, if you like to prep some of the food over the weekend. I don’t typically plan that well, so it’s also easy to make with little to no planning at all! My kids were all over this…which makes it a WIN in my recipe book!!


Baked Ziti

Ingredients:
1 pound dry ziti pasta (you can use any type of pasta)
1 onion, chopped (I only did half an onion)
1 pound lean ground beef
2 (26 ounce) jars of spaghetti sauce
6 ounces provolone cheese, sliced
1 ½ cups sour cream
6 ounces mozzarella cheese, grated
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

Directions:
1. Bring a large pot of slightly salted water to a boil. Add pasta, and cook until al dente, about 8 minutes; drain.

2. In a large skillet, brown onion and ground beef over medium heat. Add spaghetti sauce, and simmer 15 minutes. (I added a pat of butter to sauté the onion a little before adding the meat.)

3. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Butter a 9x13 inch baking dish. Layer as follows: ½ of the pasta, Provolone cheese, sour cream, ½ sauce mixture, remaining pasta, mozzarella cheese and remaining sauce mixture. Top with grated Parmesan cheese.

4. Bake for 30 minutes in the over, or until cheeses are melted.

(Recipe/Image found here)

We normally make our own sauce, so if you do that, you could easily make the meat/sauce portion of this recipe over the weekend and put it away to use later during the week and cut the prep time for this dish by half.  When I cooked this recipe last week though, I cheated and used store-bought jarred sauce.  Get creative with the flavors that are offered to change the taste of the dish around...I used one jar of HEB brand Four Cheese and one jar of HEB brand Marinara sauce...the combination was tasty. 
Like I said before, this recipe is wonderful! It makes enough for a family of four to eat it twice, and the leftovers were maybe better than the first time we ate it! You know a recipe is good when it’s just as good or better the second time around…

Enjoy!

Homemade Toffee

Before I show off my awesome-ness with my treat/goodie bag reveal, I have to have to HAVE TO share this super easy recipe for Toffee with you. If you’re like me, with a sweet tooth the size of a small pie, you will LOVE this homemade treat. You’ll love how it tastes, but more importantly, you’ll love how EASY it is to make! I promise…delicious homemade candy without all the work? Sign me up!



Best Toffee EVER – Super Easy

Ingredients:
2 cups butter
2 cups white sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (one bag)
1 cup finely chopped almonds (or less chopped, to your preference)

Directions:
1. In a large, heavy bottomed saucepan, combine the butter, sugar and salt. Cook over medium heat, stirring until the butter is melted. Allow to come to a boil, and cook until the mixture becomes a dark amber color, and the temperature has reached 285 degrees F (137 degrees C). Stir occasionally once boiling.

2. While the toffee is cooking, cover a large baking sheet with aluminum foil/parchment paper/freezer paper (shiny side up).

3. As soon as the toffee reaches the proper temperature, pour it out onto the prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top, and let it set for a minute or two to soften the chips. Spread the chocolate into a thin even layer once it is melted. Sprinkle the nuts over the chocolate, and press in slightly. Putting a plastic bag over your hand will minimize the mess.

4. Place the toffee in the refrigerator to chill until set (I left mine overnight). Break into pieces, and store in an airtight container.

(Recipe found here)

That’s it! It’s really that easy, and here are some things that I did/didn’t do and it still turned out GREAT!

I don’t own a candy thermometer (mine broke) and wasn’t going to buy one just to make one thing as nothing else I was making this year called for one. You can easily go by color alone (if you know what toffee is supposed to look like) and not mess this recipe up.

I didn’t press the almonds into the chocolate – sounded just too messy, and since I sprinkled them in while the chocolate was still wet (not set) they seemed to stick good enough. Sure, some popped off when I broke the toffee up, but I think that would happen anyway.

You can replace the almonds with any nut of your choice if you don’t like almonds. And chop them as finely or as coarsely as you prefer. It won’t matter either way.

You do NOT have to stir this stuff once the mixture starts to boil like you do a lot of other homemade candies. Literally just stir occasionally like the recipe says. Without any milk product in the recipe, there’s no chance of scalding, so you can prep the pan and chop the almonds and such after you get the mixture going on the stove.

Overall, this recipe was easy to make and SUPER yummy to eat! Brent doesn’t even like toffee and he liked this…if that tells you anything!  Now get to cooking!

Bowtie Pasta

Goodness…I really meant to post this two weeks ago…you know, back when I actually MADE it…Then again, if I hadn’t told you that I didn’t cook it last night, I guess you wouldn’t have known, huh? Silly me!

Anyway, this is a quick and easy and so, so, SO yummy recipe that I make when I need something good and fast/easy that is also a crowd pleaser…and it never fails. The thing that I like most about this recipe? It’s so versatile. The way that I make it? It’s not the way that I’m supposed to make it or the way that it was served to me many years ago by my good friend, AmandaW. But it’s a staple pasta dish at my house that you can “mix and match” the ingredients with until it’s to your liking…which makes it a winner in my book!

So I thought that I would share…everyone say thanks to AmandaW for introducing me to her Bow Tie Pasta recipe…thanks!

Bow Tie Pasta
(this is the original recipe…I’ll share how I change it down below!)

Ingredients:
1 (12 oz) package of bowtie pasta
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 lb ground Italian sausage or beef
½ tsp red pepper flakes (optional)
½ cup diced onion
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 (28 oz) can Italian-style diced tomatoes (drained)
1 ½ cups heavy cream
½ tsp salt

Directions:
Boil water to cook pasta. Cut the casings off of the sausage (or beef) and crumble. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook meat (and pepper flakes if used) until sausage is browned. Stir in onion and garlic and cook until tender. Stir in tomatoes, cream and salt. Simmer until thickened (8-10 minutes). Stir pasta into sauce until mixed well and heated through out.

Ok – now for my version. The original recipe is FABULOUS. Seriously. But I don’t like sausage. And if you just use beef like the recipe calls for, it turns out a bit bland since beef doesn’t have the flavor that sausage does.

Add another ½ tsp of red pepper flakes.

I don’t measure the salt…I use WAY more than ½ tsp though…more to taste than any exact measurement and I might throw in some garlic salt just for fun.

Add black pepper to taste.

I use half a bulb of garlic – between 5-6 cloves…and I don’t mince it, I just press it into the skillet.

I totally skip the olive oil…I use a pat or two of butter because it's more fattening!

That’s all the extra stuff that I add…but I also sauté the garlic and onion first before adding the meat in, whereas the original recipe does it backwards. You can also choose from a variety of diced tomatoes now…when AmandaW and I were first making this delish dish, there was only regular tomatoes and Italian…now there’s all kinds! So experiment with it and see which one you like best.

I think that’s all the changes that I make. Ummm…I maybe use 2 cups of heavy cream since I like mine a little saucier…oh, and I like the mini bowtie noodles. They’re just cuter!

The only other thing you need to know? Mix the sauce in with the pasta in a BIG pot…this recipe makes a good amount of pasta and you can’t pour the cooked pasta into your skillet…not unless you’re cooking with the world’s largest skillet.

Oh, and serve with garlic bread. Everything is better with garlic bread. You can also have salad, if you’re trying to be a little healthier. My family? We no likey the salad so much…give us the carbs!!

Try it out and let me know how you like it! My whole, entire family LOVES this dish…and that’s a feat unto itself! LOL!

My Mom's Lasagna

I've never done a post like this before, but Brent keeps telling me what a good cook that I am...so I thought that maybe every once in a while I could share some of my recipes with you all! Sometimes I find good ones on blogs that I read, so here goes my first attempt!

My Mom has made a killer lasagna my whole life. And it's mostly homemade from scratch. I put a spin on the one that I made tonight and actually made my own sauce instead of using store-bought, and it was Yummy!

Oh, correction - Brent tells me that I made HIS sauce tonight, not my own sauce...and he's territorial about his spaghetti sauce! He told me that I couldn't share that portion of the recipe with you - what a stinker!

Well, here's the rest of the recipe, and like I said, I've always made it using just normal Prego sauce, so it's good either way. And it's super easy to make, just takes some time and planning.

Mom's Lasagna
Ingredients:

Box of lasagna noodles (oven ready, if possible)
Large jar of sauce (possibly even two jars, depending on how saucy you like your lasagna)
small white onion
fresh garlic, pressed (optional)
3 Tbsp butter
1 lb of ground meat
small curd cottage cheese (small container)
1 egg
1-2 packs of shredded mozzarella (depending on how cheesy you want it) Cut onion, using either half of the onion (if you don't care for onions all that much) or the whole thing. Put in a saucepan, along with the garlic if you opted for it and add the butter.

Saute the onions to your liking. Add hamburger meat and brown. Once browned, turn heat down to a simmer and add spaghetti sauce to the pan. (Depending on the type of meat used, you might need to drain the grease off before adding the sauce.) Let simmer for an hour. While you're waiting, if your little one is still sleeping, you can enjoy some of this to pass the time: At least, that's what I did!!

In small bowl, combine cottage cheese and egg together. Mix well. Set aside. Taking your lasagna pan, cover the entire bottom of the pan with a light layer of sauce. A very thin layer, just enough to put something on the bottom of the pan. Next, add a layer of uncooked noodles, covering the entire surface of the pan. Note: if the noodles don't "fit" into your pan, just break them apart and cover the whole area, overlapping as needed. Add a layer of the cottage cheese/egg mixture. Cover with a layer of sauce, thicker than what you put on the bottom of the pan. Top with cheese, depending on how cheesy you want your lasagna, use a heavy hand or a light one here. Repeat the layers, leaving off the bottom of the pan layer of sauce. So the order of the layers is: noodles, cottage cheese/egg, noodles, sauce, cheese. (At least, that's the order that I used tonight...you can play with the order to your own liking.) Repeat to the top of your pan.

When you get close to the top of the pan, put down one last layer of noodles, then sauce and then cheese. You should now be at the top of the pan. Cover with foil and place in the fridge for 6-8 hours. Note, if you buy the oven-ready noodles the time it needs to sit can be cut in half. You can also prepare this the night before and let sit in the fridge overnight.

When ready to cook, bake on 350 degrees for an hour to an hour and a half. Remove the foil for the last 10-15 minutes. Cut, serve and enjoy! Like I said, this recipe is YUMMY! And easy, as far as homemade lasagna goes...the hardest thing is planning ahead of time to make it. I always seem to decide to want it two hours before I would want to eat it, and that can't happen!

Another note that I'll add: I like to put toothpicks into the lasagna before I cover it with foil so that the foil doesn't touch the cheese. It can/will stick to the cheese as it cooks, taking off the top layer of cheese when you remove the foil! Just a helpful hint from me to you...

Let me know if you try this recipe out and what you think of it...I'd love to hear!