Vegtable Pizza

If read my last post and thought 'he lost the love.' Well the love is back for this recipe. The vegetable pizza uses some crescent rolls for the crust, a cream cheese spread for the sauce, and whatever grated cheese and vegetables you want for the topping. It was good.

The only real cooking was the crust. The recipe called for 2 cans of crescent rolls (aka croissants rolls) and 5 minutes of cook time. But with our oven practicality being an Easy Bake, it was more like about 10 minutes. I could have have taken the crust out at 5 minutes since it had started to get a light brown crust. But the crust still felt really soft and soggy. The roll mix/batter/crust thingee had to still be really doughy.

One thing on the crescent rolls: two cans was really too much for our old faithful pan. Its at least a 9 x 12 pan, Julie can correct me. I had to tare pieces off and stuff it into think spots to make it fit.

While the oven was preheating I made the spread mixture. The cream cream needed softened so I stuck it in the microwave for 20 seconds. Just enough to loosen the cream cheese up. The spread mix also required Miracle Wh... err mayo like salad dressing and mayo (get the book, you'll understand). The salad dressing made the pizza really tangy. I think thats what offended Julie's palette the most.

The spread also called for dill weeds. We were out so I used some dried oregano instead. I figured 'hey, it based on an Italian dish, why not a spice you associate with Italian pizza?' By the way, in my head the thought sounded like Mario. It was a strong taste; but in my opinion it wasn't over powering. Lastly it called for onion. Our last three onions went bad so I used some green onion for our family's garden.

The vegetables and cheese toppings were some veggie sprouts, left over mushrooms from the Fresh Pasta Salad, and Mexican style cheese that was on sale at Meijers a couple of weeks ago. Word of advise: don't put the sauce mix two close to the edge and don't put the topping on too thick either. To many topping and it will just fall off if you move the pan any. If you put a generous coat down of toppings down you can press them and the sauce min closer to the edge of the crust without getting it on the pan. Then you can come back and add more topping afterwards if you want.

The pizza cutter worked perfectly to cut it. You will have a cheesy/messy cutter or knife because that spread sticks to everything. Also since it does have mayo in it, get refrigerated as long as you can: great for parties, but no the Forth of July picnic in the park.

All in all I really liked. The recipe says you'll get 24 serving out of it and thats about right. I can't give it a 'love it' but definitely something I will do again. Maybe broccoli and cauliflower with cheddar, or bean sprouts with feta, or... gosh who knows. I'm sure I can come up with something.

Update:

On 8/11/2009 I edited the article to flow a lot better and added a couple of comments.

The Plan

I love to bake, always have. I love to eat, and sweets are by far my favorite. Therefore instead of cooking my way through a book, I will be baking my way through it. If you read the introduction you probably saw the marked difference in the tow cookbooks Ervin and I decided to use for this project. His has over 300 recipes, mine has 16. I gave myself eight weeks, a supposedly easy amount of time for 16 recipes. I am already behind.

I, like Julie of the movie, have a problem finishing things. I considered starting small and if I thought I could do a “real cookbook” then I would pick one of those next. I then proceeded to talk myself into the idea by telling myself that A) We were thinking about getting rid of this book as we had never used it, and B) We would never be able to finish eating a ton of desserts each week, so two a week was a good number.

This past weekend came and went as I have not made anything yet. We did buy the ingredients though so tomorrow night I am going to crank out a batch of cookies, or bars. I haven’t decided which yet. I do have it narrowed down to two recipes, Chocolate Almond Macaroon Bars, or Double Peanut Butter and Milk Chocolate Chip Cookies.

After considering what I will do once I finish this book, I have picked one that has many recipes, to be revealed at a later time. If I only make two a week at that point I will be going through it for at least three years. That will not do. Hence, I have thought of some food relocation options, other than eating them ourselves that is.

We can take them to work. Which is brilliant for Ervin, but everyone at my job is always trying to eat healthy. I will become a pariah if I do that more than once a month.

We can give them to family. Again, this is a good option for Erv’s family, but not for mine due to health reasons.

We can donate them to the local homeless shelter. This works on Saturdays only.

We can mail them to people in the military. I am a member of http://www.soldiersangels.org/. You should check it out.

I can freeze items that are freezable. I am a big fan of freezer cooking. I won’t be doing much of that for the next year though as Erv works his way through his cookbook. Freezing some things should still be doable.

So there is my plan. Now I just need a kick in the behind to get myself started.

Movie Review: Julie and Julia

When I saw the first trailer for Julie & Julia, I wanted to see it. I wanted to do it! Of course, that is the point of a trailer, to make you want to see the movie. So this past weekend, we went out and saw it. I have to admit I started having some doubts when elderly person after elderly person started entering the theater in front of us. We weren't the youngest people there though as I saw a mom take two girls in the 7-10 age range in.

I don't want to give you any spoilers, but here is my review. The movie started off a bit slow I thought, but was definitely worth seeing. It made me smile and laugh through most of it. There were a couple of sad moments, but nothing that brought me to tears. It did inspire me to want to cook even more. It was very interesting to see how Julia Child became the fantastic cook that she was and how her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking came to be. As for Julie's story, I didn't find it quite as interesting, but it was still fun to watch her cooking "experiences" as she worked her way through Julia's cookbook.

As to family friendliness, it is "Rated PG-13 for brief strong language and some sensuality." That is pretty much spot on. No violence, no death (besides lobster), and no nudity was seen, though Julie was shown in her underwear. There were references to sex and both couples had scenes (with kissing, etc) leading up to more intimate moments, but those moments were not shown. The language was strong at some points, I recall one F-word and one B-word for sure, but as the rating said it was brief at each encounter.

A great thing about the movie is it inspires all ages to cook. I wouldn't have thought it reaches all ages but it does. As I said the theater was full of an older crowd, then there was Erv and I, and the Mom with two young girls. I overheard the two girls talking to their mom after their movie. They were asking her if they could get Julia's cookbook and cook their way through it. She told them they could probably find the book online, but they were going to be skipping the chapter on gelatins!

Fresh Pasta Salad

I love this book. I've made dozens of recipes from this book before this personal challenge. Now I'm trying to go front to back cover of this cook book to taste the recipes I've missed. I have to say this recipe has some very misleading information.

1. The recipe calls for a 16 oz (by weight) package of rotini noodles to be cooked. That doesn't sounds so bad right? When you say package that means 16 oz. before its cooked. When noodles are cooked they double or triple they're size. If I was still running my little soup and sandwich stand that would be enough pasta for 2-3 days of orders. The recipe said it only made 8 servings or a small lunch for us.
   
2. The recipe called for 1 cup (8 fluid oz.) of Italian dressing. That half a bottle of the average table dressing you get at your local mega-mart. If you used 8 oz. of dressing to cover that much pasta you would be lucky if you got a enough dressing to thinly coat the noodle.
   
3. Finally the olives. the recipe called for 2 - 1/4 oz can of slicked olives. Note the dash. With the dash its reads as 2 separate 1/4 oz. can cans. You can't get cans that small of sliced olives.

So here are my suggested revisions if you want about 8 servings:

• Change the noodles to 8 oz. (by weight) uncooked pasta (about 2 cups)
• Eyeball the dressing to about 6-8 oz (just under a cup). Don't drown your pasta or it will become slimy by the end of the day. You can always add more later or have it setting to side your guests.
• Use 1 - 2 1/4 oz. can of black olives. I love black olives and I could just make a pasta sa
  
• Cut the tomatoes back by about half. Keep some extra ones around in case you need them.

I don't want you think that was a totally bad experience. I really enjoyed making the recipe. Its just that I have WAY to much pasta to eat before. Also, my wife doesn't like most of the ingredients in the salad so that leaves just little old me.

By now you're asking: how didn't he notice that the pasta was to much? Simply: I was exhausted when I made this recipes. You see that was the last recipe I made after:

• making breakfast
• running errands
• working in the garden and picking herbs and vegetables
• oven drying a couple of pounds of basil
• making stock with vegetable left-overs
• doing some clean up in the kitchen
• and making a corn casserole in about 5 hours.
  

I was zombie and didn't notice until I started cooking the rotini how much stuff I was making.

The taste is unique. The tomato sauce added quite a bit of zest to the salad. The spices weren't as strong as I had expected. The other vegetables are married quite well into the salad.

I wish I could post the whole recipe but US copyright laws prevent me from doing so. I really enjoyed the taste of the salad. This is one I plan on coming back to the future with my personal revisions.

8/10/2009 - Revisions were made make the article read better.

A little update

Hey everyone,

We're having a mini heat wave here in Ohio. We don't want the oven to fight a against the air conditioning so for the day we're suspending major cooking. This shouldn't put us behind because I still have a recipe experience to publish and Julie wasn't sure if you would get a chance to put her first two together.

On that note, since my recipe book, Meals in Minutes by Gooseberry Patch Publishing, doesn't have have a standard index I've started typing out the recipes and the page # they're on. You can see the list as it stands by clicking here. Also, I'm working on proofing my earlier posts and either tonight or tomorrow have my post up about Fresh Pasta Salad.

Hope you're having a enjoyable evening.

Addendum: By 9:00 pm EST we will be going live on Twitter and Identi.ca. We hope to hear more from you soon!

White Corn Casserole

White Corn Casserole (page 6) is the first recipe I completed from the Gooseberry book for this personal. If you read my last post I talked to you about how I needed fresh corn for recipes. I'm sure by now you've figured out this its for this one.

The casserole is loaded with honey and a stick of real butter (you can't have enough butter). FYI: I was expecting to use corn meal but you just use a little all purpose flour to help bind everything. I did one substitution, season salt. Since this salt mixture has select spices it actually amplify the salt taste while lowering the sodium content. Also a little extra spice is almost always a good thing.

No corn meal and little flour means this isn't a bready casserole like you would expect from most norther cuisine. This has sort of a creamy casserole, almost a souffle. The slicing of the corn was expected but really threw me was that you had to separate the egg whites from the yokes.

I don't know about anyone else but I REALLY suck at whipping egg whites. Maybe I didn't whip them fast enough or long enough. So I guess the casserole could have risen some more if I had whipped them better. It did come out kinda flat.

When I pulled out the casserole the butter was bubbling out the sides. Also I was worried that the casserole wasn't set so I put it back in for five minutes. I did brown a little more on top but the casserole was still a bit loose and the edged were starting burn. So stick to the recommended until you've made it a couple of times and know what texture is suppose to be.

To bring everything together the casserole was so sweet. This was more of a desert or breakfast item then what I would call a dinner casserole. You always get a mouth full of corn in every bite.

Next time I make it, I would do a better job of whipping the egg whites. Because it was it so sweet I may want to offset the sweetness with something like a diced jalapeno pepper. Jalapeno would also add some fruitiness that would compliment the honey.

Alternative flavors

Hello to the world at large. As I'm writing this post I have my first recipe out of my cookbook going in the oven. It needed fresh corn so I cut it off the cob. Another recipe I will be working later calls for fresh basil. Over at my parent-in-laws we have garden going so I picked a pound or two basil to dry and some vegetable for my lunch and cooking.

So where are the alternative flavors? Well I have corn cobs, carrot tops basil stems, extra vegetables from today's recipes, and old vegetables in the fridge. So I figured this would be a great time to make some vegetable stock. Here's what I put in it and why:

• The carrot tops and little nubs from the carrots. The carrot is a cousin to parsley and makes a great aromatic. Also the perfectly shaped carrot in your local grocery store is not how they grow in your garden. The roots will branch out into little nubs. Those nubs eventually grow in more carrot roots.
• Basil stems are great. That have different and stronger taste then basil leaves. Are your best pestos use the stems.
• Tomato - I had an extra one so it got cut up an tossed into the stock pot.
• Garlic - We have some diced garlic in olive oil in the fridge that is getting kinda close to the expiration date.
• Fresh corn was required by the one recipe spice it sliced off the cob. The cob has so much the flavor and smell we associate with roasting corn that its a natural for the stock.
• We have a zucchini from the garden that was getting a little old so I sliced and then quartered it with the skin still.
• Another recipes for today requires mushrooms. So an extra one was sliced and tossed in.
• A pinch of salt and some aging Italian herd mix was added when the stock tasted like it need a little something. The were abouts of the herd mix is unknown at this time. Probably a good thing since it older then any of other pets.
• A small sampler sized bottle of pinot grigio wine was added. It was so string that I could barely stand to drink, but it made a great flavoring for food
• Finally a bit red win vinegar was added to round out the flavor.

Once the stock cools I'll be placing two cup bags of the stock in the freezer for latter. Bags are nice in that they'll lay flat and will be perfect storage. Two cups is a great size for most recipe applications.

My corn thing just beeped so I have to check. More latter on how it came out.