eat stuff

fancy pizza night (recipe)

January 10, 2012

**sigh** I fear that I’m not going to have posts this week of “made” stuff. I have a lot of different things going, but nothing finished yet. Sorry guys! More made stuff is on its way. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep your attention anyhow.

It’s funny, one reason I started the blog was to motivate me to actually do some of the things I’ve been wanting to do…somehow the blog holds me accountable. But now I’ve been reading so many other blogs, pinteresting, and searching for various tutorials that my list of things-to-do-so-I-can-blog-about-them is getting crazy long! **sigh** (that’s right, I just sighed twice!) Point being, stuff will get done and blogged about, just not this week.

Luckily, I have to eat every day, at least three times in fact. So there’s a good chance that I’ll make at least one thing worth sharing a week (let’s see 1 out of 21….less than 5% of my food needs to be bloggable! I think can handle that)

I dubbed this past Saturday as “fancy pizza night.”  And boy, what a great idea that was! The plan spontaneously occurred in the grocery store parking lot, so I quickly began searching for “fancy pizza” recipes on my phone in order to make a proper list before actually going inside.

I found this recipe and decided to go for it. I used:

  • smallest package you can find of chicken breast tenders
  • 2+ tbs butter
  • garlic – (I always put in more than the recipe says…)
  • 2 green onions, chopped
  • 2 roma plum tomatoes, diced
  • chopped fresh cilantro
  • 1/2 C ricotta cheese
  • shredded parm
  • pizza crust
The early schemes of my fancy pizza night plan included actually making the dough, too. 5 minutes later I realized that this plan was much too impulsive to let bread rise for 2 hours! I got that just-add-hot-water mix and made a dough in a matter of minutes. Maybe the next fancy pizza night will have fancy dough, because there will be another fancy pizza night…
The recipe says to boil the chicken….boil it?! I cooked it in a skillet with some spices so it had some flavor to it.
Melt the butter with the garlic and green onion in a small skillet and put that aside.
Chop up the tomatoes and cilantro, make the dough and start assembling! Put the garlic butter sauce on the bottom, then the chicken, veggies, and ricotta cheese. I baked it according the directions on the dough package (not the online recipe). I also made two smaller pizzas rather than one large one, (doesn’t that just seem more artisan-like?)
(note: you don’t need much chicken at all. I ended up saving most of it and put it on salads the next day. If you have some leftover chicken go for fancy pizza!)
Garlic Chicken Pizza and Brothers Drake Mead
I didn’t really pre-plan on blogging this so unfortunately I only have one photo for the whole post, but look how good that looks!
monday musings

Music Monday: Ingrid Michaelson

January 9, 2012

Happy Monday!

Now, I know I said last week that I was making no promises about this whole “music monday” thing, but hear me out now, I’m gonna commit to it. I stewed over it all week and decided that it is a great idea! A great way to start the week hearing some music that you may or may not heard before.

This week, let’s listen to some Ingrid. I love her and especially this song. My favorite line:

Let’s get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance

Because who doesn’t like nice sweaters and dancing? Both such happy things.

So without further ado, enjoy. (there isn’t an official video for this song, so no need to sit stare at it while it plays, while you listen, you could go and click around some other parts of my blog if you want…make sure to open them in a separate tab!)


eat stuff

A Winter Stew (recipe)

January 5, 2012

Winter came to Columbus this week, so I found it only fitting to make a hearty warm stew for dinner (plus I got a subscription to a food magazine and it was in there, sounded good, and thought, why not?)

It’s a slow cooker recipe, which I usually try and save for week nights, but I’m glad I did this one on my day off because there was kind of a lot of prep.

My camera battery was charging, so I took all these pics with my phone…I was playing with the fun vintage settings…takes cool pics (and it’s not even an iphone!)

snow on leaves

The Ingredients:

  • 6 T plus 1/2 C flour, divided
  • salt and pepper
  • 2 1/2 # boneless skinless chicken thighs
  • 4 t EVOO
  • 3 pieces bacon, chopped
  • 1 14oz can Guinness or other stout beer
  • 1 # carrots
  • 8 oz package mushrooms
  • 2 C chopped onion
  • 4 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 1/2 t dried thyme (you could go without this much if you wanted)
  • 1 C reduced sodium chicken broth
  • 2 C frozen baby peas, thawed
dredge the chicken

Dredge the chicken thighs in 6 T flour plus salt and pepper. Then cook half of it in a large skillet with 2 tsp oil, (2-4 mins per side) put that in the slow cooker, and cook the other half.

2 1/2 pounds of chicken?! “Hey honey, guess what you’re having for lunch this month?”

thick cut bacon

I went for the real bacon…no pre-packaged Oscar Mayer stuff for this dinner…I went straight to the meat counter.

Guinness winter stew

Cut it up and cook it for 2 minutes or so, add the 1/2 cup of flour, cook for a little bit longer and then add the can of beer.  Pour it all on top of the chicken.

side note: I now have 3 more cans of Guinness, and neither Brandon nor I like the stuff. I’ll have to find something else fun to do with them. Maybe I can find some ideas here: 100 Ways to Cook with Guinness…and perhaps a future blog post? woot!

Chop up the veggies. I had a helper with this. This is seriously what I saw the whole time. She was hoping that some carrots would *accidentally* fall (and sure enough, some did).

lucy waiting for carrots

Put everything in the pot! Add the spices too: thyme, garlic, salt and pepper

Winter Guinness Stew Veggies

Let it cook for 4-6 hours on high or until the chicken is “fall apart tender” and stir in the peas for the last 15 minutes. Bon Appetit!

Guinness Stew

Best enjoyed on a cold night! This made a ton, we seriously had plenty for dinner, lunch the next day and I froze a whole container of it for another night.

make stuff

“Berry Cute” baby hats

January 3, 2012

I love baby hats.

I came across some cute ones a little while ago and proceeded to make a pinterest board titled “I’m in love with baby hats.” If you don’t want to go there, here are some highlights:

knit baby hat

from flickr.com

knit owl baby hat

from myromanapartment.com

I actually want this one in adult size. I love it!

sunflower knit baby hat

from madmonkeyknits.com

I decided to take a stab at making one. I decided on this berry baby hat. (pattern here) and well, it turns out that baby’s heads are tiny and knitting hats for them don’t take very much time at all! (or yarn!) so I made three and now I have myself a little berry patch of baby hats!

knit baby berry hats

I ended up using size 7 circular needles the whole time (I didn’t switch to size 8 like the pattern says)

knit baby berry hat

I made all these hats, but no babies around to try them on! I had to do something about it, so I made another special one for Lucy:

knit dog hat

 

 

monday musings

Music Monday: Listen up!

January 2, 2012

I don’t know that this is going to be a weekly thing, but I am always a fan of alliteration and wanted to share this with you. Cue in: The Barr Brothers

My brother-in-law brought these guys to my attention.  A couple of the guys used to be part of one of his favorite bands (The Slip) and now they have a new band with a harp which makes them way cooler. I am a bit partial to harps and I especially love seeing them in settings where you wouldn’t necessarily think there would be one. The music just good to listen to, but also interesting to watch the video because they are using some unique techniques to play their instruments, especially in the beginning (the harpist is playing with a bow).

It officially feels like winter in Columbus today; there is even a bit of snow on the ground! I’ll be a fan of this weather for approximately 6 more days and then I’ll be ready for spring. If only the weather gods would listen…

p.s. I made a new diy page that’s going to link to all my posts with patterns/directions.  Check it out and let me know what you think!