Lobster Pizza

It's Monday night, and there's a container of lobster meat in the fridge. A shelf below that, there's some Fairway pre-made pizza dough. What to do what to do...MAKE LOBSTER PIZZA!!! Duh.

But wait, what is lobster pizza? I didn't know, but was eager to find out/make it up. Thanks to the magic of Google, I found that I was not the first to make lobster pizza, and took bits and pieces from a few of the recipes that I found based on the ingredients that I had.

Oil the pizza pan with some salt & pepper

Attempt to roll out the dough on the pan (not the best idea) - spread butter all around and sprinkle with garlic powder

Top with Parmesan & mozzarella cheese, diced tomatoes, shallots, lobster pieces & black pepper

Then add MOAR CHEESE!!! Cheddar cheese and green scallions

After about 20 min of baking at 400 degrees - looking good!

After an additional 10 minutes...

ZOMG

Perfection on a Monday night

What better way to spend a Monday night but with some surprisingly awesome pizza and a glass (or maybe all the glasses) of wine?

Lazy Sunday

While I was out and about today, last Sunday was a perfect lazy Sunday, where I did nothing but lounge around the apartment, watch Netflix and make some easy brunch and dinner.

When I finally rolled out of bed and made my way to the kitchen, I decided to finally use up the egg whites leftover from making ice cream at my last dinner party (post to follow...eventually). I feel like I'm always looking for easy recipes that use up leftover egg whites since egg yolks always seem to be the more favored child.

So I felt like I found the perfect use for it with this mini egg white frittatas recipe - where I don't need to keep track of exactly how many eggs whites I actually have, and the other ingredients can be manipulated to anything I want them to be! This time I used spinach, red onions and cheddar cheese.

The various stages of frittata (counter clockwise from top left): pre-baked, baking, post-bake

Brunch is served!

Maybe the most productive thing that I did all day after eating was start posting on this blog again - with the stuffed baguette post, which I also ate the rest of along with the frittatas.

Then all of a sudden, my stomach was telling me that it was dinner time!

Seriously one of the best things that I have discovered this year other than the fact that Fairway Markets opened up another store closer to home, was that said Fairway Market also sells pizza dough! So I threw together some of the things we had in the fridge for Sunday pizza night - spinach, red onion, button mushrooms, tomato & mozzarella cheese on top of garlic & herb pizza dough.

The ingredients

Layers

Final Product

All in all, one of the best Sundays that I have had - I think this is me finally learning how to relax properly! And it is AWESOME.

Potato Pesto Pizza & Tzatziki Sauce

Last night, in celebration of some cousins visiting and just because I selfishly wanted to try some new recipes, as below. The driving recipe being the Potato Pesto Pizza for which I saw in an email from Tablespoon a  week or so ago. And since I was making the main course for dinner, I might as well plan the whole thing - 'tis the only logical thing to do.

A few weeks ago, I had finally started compiling a Google Document of sites and recipes that I wanted to try. This was definitely something I should have done a long time ago but for some reason never bothered to start...oh well, better late than never! Looking through what I had already added to the list, I figured a Tzatziki Sauce from FoodRepublic would be easy enough to throw together with some raw veggies as I already had enough carbs with the pizza. Then I really wanted to try making Lasagna cupcakes, but had to accept the fact that it just wouldn't be time efficient nor did I have access to wonton wrappers for the shells and didn't have time to experiment with using lasagna noodles instead...but since I had said lasagna noodles and ground beef and tomatoes, I figured I'd make some skillet lasagna instead. Sadly, this was actually the thought process that I had going back and forth in my head for hours during work and even as I was running around the supermarket on my way home.

Was a bit panicked when I first got home, thinking everyone else was surely as hungry as I was and rushing around the kitchen like a chicken without its head. Finally I settled down a bit and figured I would calm down a bit after finishing at least one thing - Tzatziki Sauce it was!

Dicing Cucumbers

Beautiful Peppers

Greek Yogurt mixed w/ the cucumbers, chopped dill, olive oil & lemon juice

Plated Veggies

Next I rolled out the dough (the last of the dough pre-made from my last pizza adventures), and baked it in the oven while I prepared the toppings. Sad to say, I had used a pesto mix b/c I didn't have time to try to chip up fresh basil and pine nuts, but for the purposes of this pizza, I think there was enough going on to let that one slide...During this time I also started on cooking the lasagna noodles. For once, probably because I was in such a rush and I've made it before, I didn't document any of the lasagna process! Tres sad, I know. Hopefully the potato pesto pizza will make up for it in all its glory - 

Slicing Red Potatoes

Peeled Onions

Sliced Onions - some for pizza, some for the lasagna

Crust w/ Layer of Pesto

Layer of Mozzarella 

All toppings added

Out of the oven =)

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

Smashed Potato Pizza

As one of my favorite pizzas, it's only natural that this get more than one mention on my blog. 

I came home early enough on Monday to make the dough while my sister went running, then started prepping the potatoes that she brought back and cutting up all the salad components. This dough turned out a lot better than the one I made with the pizza. I used a different recipe that didn't call for kosher salt...and somehow, I think that made a difference. The recipe also called to split the dough in 3 parts, so now I've got two more pizza pies that I can make, just waiting in the freezer to be rolled out. Will definitely save a lot of time!

So by 8 pm, aka, when NBC's The Voice was on, I had the mashed potatoes done, and the dough was just about done rising. Then for the next hour, I was running back and forth between the kitchen and the living room between commercials to put everything together.

it's steaming up...yeast working its magic!

Potatoes w/ clothes --> NEKKED POTATOES!!!

Potatoes: CHOPPED!

Potatoes: MASHED!

With all my potato captions, I'm starting to feel like I'm a character on Super Smash Brothers...instead of Falcon - PUNCH! I'm Captain Potato! Whoa, wait, lightbulb moment! If I were ever to be a super hero, I am totally claiming CAPTAIN POTATO!

Cheese & Tomatoes

Summary of all things complete before 8 pm

And here begins the semi-hectic process where I had my sister scream for me every time the show started up again (she probably lost some of her voice after watching The Voice...[insert *hearty guffaw* here])

separated dough

Rolled out pizza dough

Mashed potatoes on pizza with red pepper flakes! (the best, I love love love red pepper flakes!)

Entering the oven...

Finally topped with the salad, cheese & bacon ranch dressing

Slice 1

Making it "artsy" for social media

With a pizza pie for only 2 people, we actually had some leftovers, which I brought in to my coworkers the next day to try to convert more people to the magical deliciousness that is mashed potato pizza. They were skeptical at first, but I won them over! And it begins...first step pizza, next...THE WORLD.