Pizza Galore

I made a lot of food for H. this weekend because, clearly, I am the best girlfriend ever.
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.

I Like Food, Food Tastes Good

If you ever met my friend Dan, you would love him. If you're reading this, you probably have met him, so you know what I'm talking about. It's very clichéd to say this, but you know how some people just "light up a room," as the saying goes? Dan's that type of person, the type of person everyone likes. I can think of exactly one girl that didn't like him, but she was a crazy bitch who more than likely stole Dan's Talking Heads album (never proven, but Dan remains convinced). Over the years, Dan's become a part of my family in the way that close friends often do, and I think that my mom actually likes him more than she likes me. We first met at Kenyon college, where we were attending a two-week writing workshop for pretentious 17-year-old writers. Then, in what was either fate, divine intervention, or just an extremely likely coincidence since we had similar majors, Dan showed up in my very first class at Miami University. We walked from that class to Miami's Shriver Center to buy notebooks or something, and the rest is a purple haze of Prince-filled history.
One of Dan's favorite foods (and mine, too, I'll admit) was mini corndogs, referred as Mini Corn D's and served ONLY with honey mustard, which he would mix himself if necessary. I don't eat Mini Corn D's anymore, and I have a feeling Dan doesn't either, since he's become quite the chef as of late. While in college, neither of us were the gourmands we are today (ha), but Dan once bought me a wonderful cookbook that I still use.

This is one of the most fun cookbooks I own. It's all recipes from indie bands! Some of them are like, "Here's a sandwich I eat a lot," and then some of them are pretty complex. So far I've made two: Sweet Potato Biscuits by a band called Roots of Orchis and Rock 'n' Roll Rangoon (Crab Rangoon, der) by Headlights. Even though the latter is supposed to be eaten as an "appetizer," I am guilty of making a lot and eating them all for dinner on Friday. Major yums to both recipes! And the Sweet Potato Biscuits snuck some veggies into Chase and Dad's diets. Chase unwittingly ate, like, a fourth of a sweet potato.