Saturday night I made a pizza. This was my first attempt at pizza dough and I was pretty nervous, probably more nervous than I should have been, seeing as pizza-dough-making is a relatively small stakes game. But I'm almost as afraid of yeast as I am of drifters, and I spend a LOT of time thinking about drifters. I've never been able to make yeast "work," no matter how many "no-fail" recipes I've tried. I ended up using the recipe from How to Cook Everything, also known as one of my favorite cookbooks ever. It turned out pretty well! This was the pizza before it went in the oven.
H's half is covered in pepperoni, olives, and a cheese substitute called Veggie Shreds, which is made mostly of soy and lots of other things. I was a good sport and ate this on my pizza about a week ago, but in general I don't like to eat anything that isn't made of real ingredients. So, basically anything that's called a "food product" instead of, y'know, food. I can definitely see the benefit of this for people like my boyfriend, though! My half is green peppers, olives, and sliced mozzarella. When I pulled this puppy out of the oven, H said, "It looks like a real pizza!" I'm not sure what he thought I'd been working on; fake pizza? I went ahead and took it as the compliment it might've been intended as. We both really enjoyed this, especially the crust! Mark Bittman was right. He always is.
This morning, I got up early to put together breakfast. You should probably just hire me to come to your house and make breakfast while you sleep, because I am an early riser; I usually wake up a good two hours before H. Today I made pancakes that were unintentionally vegan; I mean, neither of us are vegans, but H doesn't stock dairy products and he didn't have any eggs since he's trying to clear out his fridge before his move. I used this recipe for vegan oatmeal pancakes, and honestly, I didn't expect them to be very good. But, surprise, they basically tasted like regular pancakes! To go along with them, I made some "homefries" that weren't actually fried. I used the "crispy potato" technique discussed in one of my favorite podcasts, Spilled Milk. Basically, you boil the potato chunks awhile, rough 'em up a bit, then put them in the oven with lots of oil (or goose/duck fat, if you happen to have any of that lying around, but H doesn't seem to stock that, either).
Ta-da, breakfast!
I also sautéed some kale to go with mine, but H didn't have any. That boy doesn't eat greens with breakfast. Get outta town.
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