Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Pizza A$$ Annie

Last weekend my sister had some friends over for a relaxing weekend with some kayaking and good eats. I decided to crash the party, because that is what I do, and demolished their leftovers when I got home Friday night and commandeered Saturday activities :)

In my defense, at least my takeover was not hostile, and in fact, was rather delicious. Saturday day started with taking some of the leftover salad, tomatoes and baked potatoes and tossing them all together with some scrambled eggs. Sometimes it's great to just wing it with what you have on hand (especially if you actually have great ingredients to pick from).

Saturday day started with me picking up some drinks and snacks for kayaking because the swagger wagon was being used, and I was the only one home who could drive my car (manual, woot!). I originally went to pick up some Mike's Lemonade for them, but then this box of "Twisted Teas" caught my eye...and when I saw that they had it in a Lemonade Iced Tea flavor, well, how could I NOT get it?! And then the Skinny Popcorn was also on sale, so of course I had to get that too. My kryptonite - Arnold Palmers and Popcorn. So while they kayaked, this was what I did.
Twisted dude!
A hornet flew into my first drink...upsetting to say the least, but made for a cool shot
As "summer" as it gets
For lunch/dinner, I had extra pizza dough from making a mashed potato pizza a few weeks ago (no post on that one yet, just the original). I had also been talking to a coworker earlier that week about using beer in cooking - her example was that beer on roasted chicken evaporated all the fat, but still kept the chicken meat really tender. I didn't exactly have a chicken to work with here, but I found a bag of meatballs in the freezer and a Bud Light in the fridge and figured, hey, this could work. 

So I sauteed together the meat with garlic, chopped red onions leftover from the night before and diced tomatoes from our garden. Then tossed in the beer and let the whole thing simmer. After an afternoon of kayaking, there was quite a bit of stolen bites before the crust was ready. 

And now for the explanation for the blog title. One of the girls who came over, Annie, had been requesting a shout out in one of my posts, and I was like, sure, when I post about this I'll give you a shout out. THEN, after I had rolled out my crust and brushed it with olive oil, I had it on a stool because I was running out of counter top space. At some point. I turn around and see Little Miss Annie proceed to sit ON MY PIZZA CRUST!!! I let out a scream and yelled "YOU'RE SITTING ON THE PIZZA!!!!!" And she immediately jumps up, startled. Luckily, not much harm done, I had turned around and yelled in time. She just got a little bit of olive oil on her shorts, that's all. From that point on, I decided to refer to her as Pizza Ass Annie. And Annie, there you have it - a whole post dedicated to your butt.

She gained back a few extra points when she helped me put together the Spinach salad with slices of carrot, tomatoes and white wine vinegar with lemon. 

What was exciting for me was that this was one of the few times that I actually had enough people and not too much food that we finished everything! As much as I love leftovers reheated to scalding hot temperatures the day after, sometimes it's nice to not have to worry about packing food up after a meal and throwing everything in the dishwasher instead.

Meatballs & beer.
The crust going into the oven post butt-sitting and with red pepper flakes added
Slightly baked crust with toppings added
Spinach Salad - we can be healthy too!
Final product: baked & melty goodness = meatball pizza

Saturday, August 25, 2012

A Productive Saturday - Muffins & Pie Cookies

I've been looking up and printing many recipes lately, but I haven't actually had a chance to try them all! Turns out, it takes less time and effort to research them than it is to see them through...hrm...

As it turns out, I finally had a whole Saturday yesterday where I didn't have to work nor did I have any prior obligations. So what did that mean for me? A trip to Costco and Bed Bath & Beyond and some quality time in the kitchen!

A new mini muffin tin later, it was time to get this baking-fest started! First, I started with cappuccino muffins - I was drawn to the recipe because I happened to have all the ingredients and the topping showed promise for a delicious top of the muffin to give it some texture and help keep it from tasting too dry (I have been having this issue with muffins). 
Dry ingredients
Mixing in the chocolate chips
Crumble topping
All ready to go into the oven!
Overflow batter made it into regular sized muffin tins
Le petite muffins!
Next, I tried this apple w/ oatmeal topping recipe. I was really trying to do things right this time, so I was careful to measure everything out, and the only things I substituted were flour (I always used half white and half wheat), butter (half butter and half applesauce), and for the apple muffin recipe that called for 3 eggs, I substituted one for ground flax seed (who knew!).
Regular eggs pre-flax seed
Flax seed egg substitute
Whisking the Eggs w/ Flax Seed sub
Apples chopped & ready to go
Walnuts chopped & ready to go
Mixing the toppings
Batter ready for the mix-ins
Apple chunks mixed into batter
Toppings on and ready to go!
Sneak peek in the oven...I couldn't wait to see how they were doing...
Overflowing muffins are the best type of muffins =)
Overflow of batter ended up in regular muffin tins
And finally, last but not least, a recipe that I've been dying to try for months now, apple pie cookies from smitten kitchen! I made the dough for the crust after the first two muffins, and then took a break to cut up some watermelon (I needed space in the fridge) and get some quality time on a kayak - trying to take in the last few days of summer (it's been going by so quickly!). Then resumed assembly of the cookies when I got back. 

Clearing out space in the fridge, aka, cutting up watermelon
Prepping for the Apple Pie Cookies
Sliced & Diced
Cutting in the butter (can't find my food processor, so had to do it by hand)
Liking the green and yellow =)

For coating the apples
pre-seasoned apples (recipe calls to coat them one at a time...but that definitely didn't happen)

The rather laborious job of stamping out pie crusts - the larger


Before & After Baking
I am obviously biased toward the apple pie cookies...they got their own instagram compilation
Results: 
- The Cappuccino muffins were a little heavy for my taste. If I make them again, I will definitely be reducing the amount of sugar and need to figure out what else to do to make them lighter and more fluffy. Also will add more coffee flavor next time (can't really taste that much of it)

- Apple muffins - I loved! I think because there was a pretty even ratio of apple chunks to batter, kept it from being too dense. Plus the oatmeal/sugar topping gave it a nice texture.

- Apple Mini Pies - so worth the wait! I struggled a bit with the assembly, and I wonder if the whole wheat flour made it softer and less easy to work with? The dough didn't seem to be chilled enough though it had been sitting in the fridge for almost 2 hours (usually recipes call only for 1). I also didn't cut the apple pieces the same way that she called for, so I had to work around jagged edges instead of apple discs. Even for the dough I had to use makeshift cookie cutters! One ended up being tupperware...
Summary of the day
All in a day's work