Pizza
January 26, 2021 10:32 PM
Another thing that has been sitting in my freezer is marinara sauce. I made a large batch when I made fried mac n cheese, and since I couldn't finish it all, I figured I'd use it to make pizza later. In the meantime, I've been seeing so many pizza commercials on TV. Even Panera has pizza now! I was almost half tempted to buy some! But I didn't. Panera is expensive and you get tiny portions and I spent way way way too much money there when I was in college.
I was trying to think of some good pizza toppings. I feel like pizza should have mozzarella on it, but all I had was a leftover block of cheddar cheese and I did not feel like buying more cheese. And then after thinking about this for five minutes I thought "Forget this. I'm making BBQ chicken pizza." Cheddar and BBQ? That's a great combination.
Now, I'm not much of a baker. Dough kind of scares me. And since my sister isn't here, I of course bought pre-made pizza dough. You'd think this would be easy. Just flatten it out on a pizza pan and put toppings on. But I was struggling. It was so lumpy. I don't know how people make pizzas into such perfect circles. Maybe it's the tossing thing. I'm not gonna toss my pizza dough. That sounds even scarier.
When I took out the block of cheddar, I actually noticed a little bit of mold on it. I contemplated my options. I was wearing sleep clothes already. I did not want to go out and buy more cheese. I went and cut the moldy part off. I ate the pizza with the cheese. I felt fine. I guess it was okay.
Really, it tasted pretty good. But after I ate it I realized something. I forgot pineapples! I bought a can of pineapple chunks solely for this pizza and I totally forgot to add that!
Well, now I have pineapple and marinara sauce that I need to use up.
Social Distancing: Days 57 - 59
May 19, 2020 8:00 AM
Day 57 (Thursday): At this point we're just trying to clear some random foods out of our fridge. One thing that always works for this is pizza. We've already done "normal" pizza and BBQ chicken pizza, so we decided to have some Hawaiian pizza this time.
Oh, my sister also made some cheesy bread sticks to go along with it. I don't think she was terribly happy with this dish, but it still tasted good. And it made a great breakfast a couple of days later. I love leftover pizza.
Day 58 (Friday): For the first time in three weeks, I finally started to relax at work. I had been working so much that I actually ended the day at 2pm! This meant that I was able to cook dinner again!
We bought a few eggplants when we last went to the Asian store without knowing what we'd do with them. But eggplant is always good in stir-fry, and I haven't had stir-fried eggplant in a while. My sister really likes it with egg, so we used that instead of ground pork. We ate all of it that night! And since we had a lot of that honey garlic pork left, we ate that as well. Delicious.
Day 59 (Saturday): I was so excited to make some pork tacos, but when I took out the piece of pork, it smelled kind of funky and after pondering about it for a while, my sister and I decided it was best to just throw it out.
But obviously I still wanted tacos, so I walked to Aldi and bought a whole other pork butt.
Hey, I really wanted tacos. Pineapple and pork go really well together. I was also going to make some sriracha mayo, but I decided to make it interesting and put sriracha in sour cream instead. I'm never doing that again. It was weird.
The tacos were delicious though.
Social Distancing: Days 39 - 41
May 4, 2020 8:00 AM
Day 39 (Sunday): So my sister really wanted to make Korean pizza. I don't even know what makes this pizza Korean except for the fact that we put some marinated beef on it.
But whatever. This was delicious. She even stuffed the crust with sweet potato!
Day 40 (Monday): The start of a busy workweek. So busy that I had my sister pretty much make all the dinners for the week. Starting with a Mediterranean-ish meal with some meat, roasted veggies, and a chickpea salad! I did prepare the dressing, so I contributed something! At first I was going to get some ground beef for this, but we decided to be way fancier.
Yup, look at how good that piece of lamb looks. It was a bit fatty but we like it that way.
Maybe not the most aesthetic dish when it's all put together, but it was delicious.
Day 41 (Tuesday): Before all of this coronavirus craziness, my sister, mom, and I were planning a trip to Ireland. Of course, that had to be cancelled. We were feeling a little sad about it, so we decided that we should make something Irish: Shepherd's Pie.
I didn't even know this was an Irish dish, but it's filled with meat and potatoes (and little bits of vegetables, even though I know you can't tell from the picture), so it makes sense. We may have had it under the broiler for a tad too long, but I think it tasted great.
Social Distancing: Days 12 - 14
April 6, 2020 8:00 AM
Day 12(Monday): We still have a decent amount of Thai basil leftover, and I figured it's due time for some stir fry. Plus I don't think it's going to last another day. I'm scrolling through recipes from The Woks of Life and I come across one that looks good. It also looks familiar. I made it last year! So I check my old posts, and it says to double the amount of basil. Well, that's not happening. Doesn't matter. This was still delicious.
We also realize that even though we bought a ridiculous amount of groceries the week before, that we were running out of fruit! So we go back to the grocery store an pick up more stuff. Hey, we lasted one extra day this time!
Day 13 (Tuesday): I have a friend of a friend that apparently works at a local restaurant, and they've got a ton of food (ingredients) that they're telling their employees to take home. So what does that mean for me? I get a surprise box of produce! It's like Misfits Markets again!
I mean, really all I specifically asked for was avocados, but she asked me if I was also willing to take limes, and so I said, I'll take anything! But these avocados are super ripe, so they need to be used today.
And what else can we do with avocado? Put them on some BBQ chicken pizza!
We half the dough recipe this time since we had super thick pizza two days ago. But this turns out super thin. Next time we'll go with 3/4 the amount of dough. And maybe one day I'll actually buy a circular pizza pan so we can have proper circular pizzas.
Day 14 (Wednesday): Yesterday we had chips and guac. Today we decide to have chips and queso!
But what about dinner? We have so much food. Why did we buy so much food? What do we have that looks like it's going bad? The green beans are looking a little sad. Let's make green bean casserole! I have this can of Cream of Chicken that has been sitting in my cabinet for who knows how long. It looks like it expired last year. But it's canned, so I assume it's fine.
In making the pizza and the cheesy bread a few nights ago, my sister learned that I have a large amount of cornmeal just sitting in my pantry, so this inspires her to make some cornbread.
Now all we need is some protein in this meal. I did buy a family pack of chicken breast from the store on Monday. So I look for some chicken breast recipes, and found this super basic one from Budget Bytes. Chicken breast is kind of boring, but as long as we absolutely do not overcook it, it will be delicious. The recipe says to cook for 20 minutes. I think we cooked it for less than 15. Perfectly cooked chicken breast.
Social Distancing: Days 10 - 11
April 5, 2020 8:00 AM
Day 10 (Saturday): It's the weekend! My sister is losing track of the days as every day feels the same. But since I don't have work, I decide that it would be a good time to make dumplings since it takes me a while to make dumplings.
Of course I didn't think about the fact that my sister is an amazing and super fast dumpling wrapper. She probably wraps four dumplings in the time it takes me to wrap one.
She actually wasn't as happy with this batch as she usually is. I think we need a larger meat to veggies ratio. But I still thought it was delicious. So delicious, that we forgot to take a picture immediately and didn't remember to do so until we ate half of them.
Day 11 (Sunday): In keeping with the theme of making more elaborate meals on the weekend, we decided to make pizza. From scratch. That's right: homemade pizza dough and homemade pizza sauce. I used half a can of crushed tomatoes in our soupy pasta on Friday, so I turned the other half into pizza sauce. It was really easy!
My favorite pizza is BBQ chicken, but if I want a more traditional cheese and tomato sauce pizza, my favorite topping is tomato. I love tomatoes on pizza.
Not only that, we also made cheesy bread! I used to eat cheesy bread all the time when my work would order pizza from a place called Giovanni's which made the most amazing cheesy bread. Unfortunately, one time they were super late with their delivery so the admin team decided to never order from there again ):
But, who cares! I can make my own cheesy bread! Well. My sister can. Dough still kind of scares me.
It was kind of awkward making both since the pizza needed to cook at 425 and the cheesy bread needed to cook at 375 but we made it work. We actually have a decent amount of pizza sauce left! Maybe we'll make more cheesy bread later?