Wait. You can grill pizza?

A couple of months ago Tommy's cousin Molly wrote a blog post about how to grill pizza. Being the novice that I am in the kitchen, I'd never heard of grilling pizza but I knew it was something that I would eventually want to try. Then I started seeing recipes for grilled pizza everywhere. In my Better Homes and Gardens magazine. On blogs. On the Food Network. Everywhere. We finally decided to give in and try it. 

We had a play date scheduled with one of Aidan's friends this past Sunday and as we were leaving I mentioned that we had to go to the store to pick up yeast and a few other ingredients to make homemade pizza. It was suggested that instead of making the dough from scratch I should just go to a local specialty store instead and grab already made dough that just needed to be rolled out. (Friends, check out Sendiks! For $1.79 you get a HUGE ball of dough) This is definitely more my style anyway. I was freaking out about adding dry active yeast to flour to try to make a pizza dough.

Once we were home, we prepped all of our ingredients. Tomato sauce. Shredded mozzarella. Green peppers. Basil. Fresh mozzarella. Pepperoni. Mushrooms. Crushed red pepper.

Once the ingredients were prepped, I rolled the dough out on a floured surface. Don't worry about making it a perfect circle. There is no need for perfection here! We also poured two tablespoons of olive oil and minced two cloves of garlic into a little ramekin and brushed some on the grill and then on the dough. Don't you love the pretty grill marks?

Once the dough was grilled on both sides, we brought it into the house to add the ingredients. We cut Aidan off his own little section so he could choose his own ingredients.

Cheese and pepperoni were his choice.

I went with fresh mozz, basil, green pepper, pepperoni, mushrooms and crushed red pepper.

Once all of the ingredients were added, we put the pizzas back on the grill. The fresh mozzarella was super melty and gooey. The crust had the perfect crunch to it from the grill. We loved how our pizza turned out. What I loved most about making this was that it was something fun for all of us to do as a family and we could cater it to our tastes.


Give grilled pizza a try. I promise you won't regret it!

Lemon Raspberry Coffeecake

I was in the mood to bake this weekend...so I set out to make a lemon raspberry coffeecake. I spotted the recipe in my Better Homes and Gardens magazine (yes, I am secretly an old woman. I love BHG)

Peep the ingredients..minus the beer. Apparently, I like drinking beer and baking. It was Saturday night and the kiddos were sleeping. I'm allowed ;)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup buttermilk
3 ounces cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel
1 egg
1 cup fresh raspberries
powdered sugar (optional)

Preheat oven to 375. Lightly grease bottom of 9x1 1/2 inch round cake pan

In a medium bowl stir together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In mixer, beat 1 cup of sugar and butter on medium to high until combined. Add one egg and vanilla. Beat on low to medium for one minute.

Alternately add flour mixture and buttermilk to sugar mixture, beating just until combined after each addition. Set aside.

For cheesecake filling, in small mixing bowl beat cream cheese and remaining 1/4 cup sugar. Add lemon peel and egg. Beat until just combined.

Spoon half the cake butter into prepared pan, spreading to the edges. Pour cream cheese mixture on cake batter, spreading to the edges.

Dollop remaining batter onto cream cheese layer, carefully spreading to the edges of the plan. (dollop. ha. Those look bigger than dollops to me...but it worked). I must say though, it was really hard to add the dollops on top of the cream cheese layer. The two layers definitely combined. Perhaps there is a way to do it so that the cake batter doesn't combine with the cream cheese layer but I'm not aware of how to do it.

Ready for the oven!

Bake for 20 minutes or until puffed. Gently press raspberries into cake. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes. Loosen edges of cake from pan; remove pan. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired. 

Finished product! I did not sprinkle any powdered sugar on ours. I thought it was unnecessary. I also let the cake get a bit browner than I would have preferred but it still tasted lovely. Serve with coffee. Muy delicioso!

Sweet & Spicy Chili Pork Chops with Crunchy Asian Vegetable Salad

Sounds delish doesn't it? I haven't posted a recipe in quite sometime, so I thought I was due. Plus, I am on this new, "try to eat better and be active" kick...we will see how long it lasts. Maybe this little blog here will help me to be more accountable. Who knows!  I recently bought a new cookbook to help me with this little endeavor... Cooking Fresh Food Fast.  The problem I encounter in my house is the timing. After working a ten hour day, I don't want to come home and have to do all of this prep for a meal and then cook it and eat an hour and a half later. I need something quick. On Sunday my husband and I made these pork chops and salad.

I have to be honest though, this is actually the picture from the cookbook, not my "final" result. I don't know how you food bloggers do it. I forget to take pictures and don't remember until my meal is half gone. Who wants to see a picture of a half-eaten meal? So this photo will have to do. Ours looked similar, with the exception of the pork chops being a bit darker. 

Sweet and Spicy Chili Pork Chops
4 boneless center cut loin pork chops
1 tablespoon brown sugar
2 tablespoons low sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons chile paste
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
2 teaspoons rice vinegar
1/4 cup green onions 

Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add pork, cook three to four minutes on each side. (ours took longer than that because our pork chops were thicker)  Remove pan from heat; let pork stand for 30 seconds. 

While pork cooks, combine brown sugar, soy sauce, chile paste, hoisin sauce and rice vinegar in a small bowl. Add sauce to pork, scraping pan to loosen browned bits.  Turn pork over in sauce to coat. Sprinkle with green onions.

Crunchy Asian Vegetable Salad
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced red cabbage
1 cup sugar snap peas
i cup sliced cucumbers
1/2 cup sliced carrots
1/2 cups light sesame ginger dressing
1/4 cup cilantro
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds

Place first six ingredients in a medium bowl, tossing to coat. Divide salad among four plates, sprinkle evenly with sesame seeds. 

The cookbook wasn't kidding! This meal only took us twenty minutes from start to finish. Prepping of the vegetables took the longest amount of time.  My favorite part about this meal was actually the veggie salad. HOLY freshness. Every bite tasted super crunchy and fresh...a little party in my mouth. I loved it. In fact, I said to Tommy that I could just eat the salad alone and be totally satisfied.  A word of warning though, Aidan LOVES pork chops and we thought he would eat this with us but it was much too spicy for him. 

Happy cooking!

The Best Banana Bread. EVER

This week has been a bit crazy in our household so the idea of having a glass of wine and baking alone in the kitchen sounded very appealing last night. I had bananas that needed to be used up so I decided on banana bread. Added bonus:  yummy breakfast this morning! Did I mention it is virtually impossible to mess this up? Super easy recipe to follow. Easy ingredients and easy directions. Give it a try!

The ingredients:

Three over-ripe bananas

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1/4 cup butter

1 or 2 handfuls of chocolate chips, walnuts, cranberries...whatever YOU want (I used choc chips this time)

Preheat the oven to 325

Mash bananas

Add flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and the egg

Melt the butter

Add the butter to the mixture and stir until blended

Mix in the choc chips, walnuts, etc

Pour into greased loaf pan

Bake for 70 minutes

ENJOY your delicious bread 

I told you it was easy!

PS. This baking/cooking thing and taking pictures at the same time of every. single. step is HARD. I inevitably forget to take a picture or two. Thank goodness I'm not a food blogger...I'd be no good :)

Shrimp Fra Diavolo

In my latest InstaFriday post, I have a picture of a fantastic dish that Tommy and I made for dinner one night this past week. I will post the picture again here, for your viewing pleasure! Before I give details of our delicious meal, I should probably start off with some disclaimers. For starters, I am NOT this woman...who is absolutely amazing, so if you are interested in reading a serious foodie blog, check hers out. However, what you will find here are recipes but they will probably be accompanied with some silly and ridiculous story of an almost catastrophic event because that is how we roll in our kitchen. We are no experts but we are certainly having fun trying to figure things out. Second, if you've read my journey list you know that I am trying to be more creative and adventurous in the kitchen. In order to keep myself accountable, I thought I'd share the little attempts we are making at becoming more comfortable. I promise to share even the embarrassing moments.

Back to business...the recipe. And, I will have you know this recipe went off without a hitch!
For starters...the ingredients.
You will need:

a pound of large shrimp, peeled and deveined
salt
crushed red pepper (CRP)
olive oil (about three tablespoons)
medium onion, sliced
1 can (14.5) oz diced tomatoes
1 cup white wine
3 garlic cloves
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
fresh chopped parsley
fresh chopped basil
pasta (we used whole wheat linguine)

Start off by boiling water for the pasta and cook the noodles as directed on the box.
Toss the shrimp in a bowl with the salt and CRP. We just eyeballed the salt and CRP. If  you like it spicy, add more CRP. Heat the olive oil in a skillet, then add the shrimp and saute just until the shrimp are cooked through. Remove the shrimp from the skillet and set them aside. Add the onion to the same skillet. If needed add more olive oil to the pan. Once the onions are translucent, add the can of tomatoes, wine, garlic and oregano.  Simmer until the sauce has thickened (about ten minutes). Return the shrimp to the pan, toss to coat and cook for a few more minutes. Then add the pasta to the sauce. Stir everything together and ENJOY!! Oh, don't forget to sprinkle with fresh parsley and basil.

We served our pasta with a crusty french loaf and of course wine! This recipe was relatively easy for us and is loaded with flavor. We will definitely be making again!

EnJOY!