pizza

During my last visit to the UK to see the Marders I picked up a really latent tip: it's easy to make pizza.

Alexandria and Andrew produced pre-made pizza dough and proceeded to top with some delicious veggies and cheese. I was ecstatic.

I procured the recipe from the A's and T and Me proceeded to pizza-fy. We've never looked back.

So far we've made:

1) goat cheese & pineapple

2) mexican! (with taco-seasoned beef and cheddar cheese)

3) sun-dried tomato and basil

4) multi-cheese

What's particularly facile about the Marder pizza M.O. is that you can make one big batch of 6 - 8 pizza dough balls and freeze them, which is more than half the battle.

The oven - with pizza stone - preheats and the baking only takes 15 minutes or so. Tastes great with wine of course ...

Eva Bond's Meatloaf

Meatloaf takes a long time to make, and I can't cut onions without crying. (And the Kitty can't eat them without crying; it's quite a sight.) So, I wanted to start early on the meatloaf, but Robert wasn't home. I tried to tough it out, but instead I looked around for a while and spotted Robert's scuba goggles. Donning the scuba goggles got me through chopping up the onion. Combining it it with a green pepper, some ground beef, an egg, and a whole bunch of ketchup, we arrived at a great mixture for meatloaf.

The best part of the meatloaf is definitely the sauce. Brown sugar, ketchup and water. It's amazing. We double it so there's plenty to pour all over the top and in between the slices you cut right before it goes in for the second round of baking.

While it takes a long time, most of it is baking time. The making itself doesn't actually take a lot of effort. Mix up the ingredients, mold it in a casserole dish, and bake. And cover with sauce. Lots of sauce. Have I mentioned the importance of the sauce? Don't skimp. If you do, it won't look as good as this:

Note: Eva Bond was the cook for the jurors in the Malice Green trial in Detroit in 1993. This meatloaf was a favorite of the jurors and they often requested this dish. I found it on Receipezaar several years ago, and this is how we always make meatloaf.

we love potatoes

In fact, we have an entire cookbook devoted to potatoes. This is where we gleaned the recipe for Tuna Cakes. These are made with potatoes and tuna, breadcrumbs and some assorted spices.

It felt a little like making hamburgers though we bathed the patties in flour and egg, then coated them in bread crumbs. We chose the panko crumbs again and later on decided to incorporate some asiago cheese, shredded.

My favorite part of the dish was probably the tomato sauce that the recipe called for. We made our own sauce of tomatoes and basil, olive oil, pepper and a few other herbs. We fried the patties in grapeseed oil (a higher specific heat; ask the pros) and set them to dry in a mildly hot oven. The mix of tuna and potato and tomato was succulent.





We enjoyed this particular meal with a prefix of spring salad mix and honey mustard, and ate the whole shebang while watching Back To The Future 3. Great Scott!

polenta is an actuary's best friend

Boy have we been loving polenta. What took us so long?! Polenta is corny and grainy - like cream of wheat, say - and really easy to make. Tiffany discovered a miraculous recipe for Pumpkin Polenta with Chicken Sausage. She clung to the page in Rachel Ray's book - Tiffany has an unquenchable love for all things pumpkin.

This meal took close to no time to make and was magically delicious. The polenta was made as usual, but with an addition of pumpkin filling and - here was the abracadabra - a dollop of honey. Combined with the chicken sausage browned in a pan of shallow olive oil, this meal hit so many sides of my tongue.

The combination reminded me a little of bangers & mash!

making dad's pancakes

The first thing that I learned how to cook was my dad's pancakes. He would make them for the family most Sunday mornings and even once or twice we ate them as a late dinner following the Christmas Eve service at church. I love making them for Tiffany. We don't eat them very often (once every few months) as they're quite filling and make enough for 4 - 6. The pancakes don't taste quite as great the following day ...

I made this most recent batch on the Sunday before Me and T's winter vacation trip(s) to New Albany and Tallahassee to see our families. The original recipe was found in a real old edition of the Southern Homemaker's Cookbook (or something to the effect) that we have lying around the house in Killearn. It calls for the typical cake-like ingredients: flour, sugar, butter, egg, shortening, salt, eye of newt, etc. (haha - just kidding about the salt).

On spicier days of my life I've been known to add orange zest or replace the shortening with yogurt, but this day was Southern Cooking to the nines and I was more interested in the right consistency and perfect color. To this end I was aided by the awesome and seasonal snowflake-spatula.

Probably my favorite part of the cooking here is re-reading the instructions from dad. Note the description!

"It will want to congeal into lumps, so stir it constantly and quickly pour it into the bowl of dry ingredients. Keep the lumps as small as rice. With a fork, now mix up the wet and dry ingredients ONLY until the dry ingredients are wet. It may be a little lumpy. That is alright. Just don’t beat it until it is smoothe."

This batch turned our particularly fluffy and toothsome, served with syrup, butter, milk, coffee, and juice. Bon Apetite before 9 am!

mustardy winter chicken

We've been pretty good about planning meals lately. I attribute this to a little common sense, a shared enjoyment of 'the big weekly grocery run', and the positive example of my friends Andrew and Alexandria. Typically we pore over a few cookbooks on Sunday before grabbing a zipcar and heading to Traders Joe's, Shaws, and / or Whole Foods.

This particular recipe - unfortunately we've only taken pictures of the Final Answer - called for the serious influence of grainy mustard in the coating of the chicken as well as panko bread crumbs. These are a little more granular and provide for a crispier bite than the usual.

The chicken chartered the broiler on its maiden voyage, emerging mostly unscathed and quite tender. The dish proved crunchy, tender, and tangy.

going green (and white and red ...)

The Wednesday following our Thanksgiving trip, Tiffany and took another shot at our old standby, Veggie Lasagna. This was the first meal that we cooked together, so to us it smells extra special coming out of the oven. Once we made it for a double dinner date with Erin and Todd. Todd even ate it, which could either be a testament ("if Todd likes it, it must be good ...") or an indictment ("... so you're saying it tastes like ketchup or hot dogs or macaroni & cheese?"), depending on how you look at it.

But any way you look at it, it does at least look great.

As it turns out it tastes pretty great, too. Tiffany and I take our sweet time cutting up all of our favorite veggies. Occasionally we divide the dish into halves, hers maybe having more carrots and mine favoring mushrooms. We've decided that the top layer (there are three) needs to have spinach 'neath the mozzarella for aesthetics. In the under layers we discuss where we should put softer versus harder cheeses, and how exactly to arrange the veggies; each time we end up assembling a new variation on the theme.

The cat, though, is never impressed.