Red Red Wine

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Andrea

This week was birthday week here at the HQ for Mr. Scott. For the next couple of weeks (until my birthday) I am referring to him as “my old man” because both of us are in a new age bracket this year.

Exciting (please note the sarcasm.).

With birthday week comes a special pizza! I decided to play around with the crust a little bit and see what would happen if I mixed in some butter, garlic, and red wine.

I did orginally think that the wine would turn the pizza more of a pinkish color but maybe that’s because I didn’t use a bunch of it, only a little splash. I added the wine in place of adding in water when I added more flour to the bloomed yeast. I also used melted butter and about 3 cloves of chopped garlic that got added in place of the olive oil.

Earlier in the week (For Zombie Appreciation Day) we had pasta with a homemade meat sauce. I had leftovers of the sauce that I purposely saved for pizza.

Simple

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Andrea

My only thoughts for pizza this week were to keep things simple.

Since we had kicked up pizza last week and both of us had to work late last night, I wanted something that wasn’t going to take too much thought.

I also wanted something familiar and comfortable, which led me to a very simple veggie pizza.

Simple but oh so tasty and totally hit the spot as we munched and finally finished up Tuesday’s Pens game.

It was crazy. Let’s not discuss it.

But we can discuss the pizza!

Basic Dough Recipe
Tomato Sauce
Shredded Mozzarella
Green Peppers
Banana Peppers
Red Onion
Shredded Carrot

YUM!

I really like adding shredded carrot to pizza. It cooks up nicely and you can’t even tell it’s there. It’s a nice way to add in some veggies without anyone being put out about it. Plus they brown up nicely and just look like golden cheese on top.

We had a new to us wine last night that turned out to be fantastic. It was a Cabernet Sauvignon called Raconteur (FYI that link plays music so turn your sound down). Delish! Very dry but very juicy at the same time. Perfect sipping wine!

Kale and BBQ

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Andrea

I had a Super Bowl snacks post all ready to be published and then the server hosting my blog crashed.

It apparently crashed hard because it was down for a couple of days. My website and my email was out of commission. If you emailed me and it bounced, I apologize. Please resend it!

Clearly my blog is back up at this point and by now I don’t want to talk Super Bowl snacks because pizza is more important.

Scott fixed my oven this week and replaced the heating coil. Looking at the old coil, the coating just didn’t burn off, the coil burnt right in half.

Yikes! Check it out.

It seemed fitting that since this coil gave up the ghost as I was reheating pizza, that the new coil got broken in heating up pizza.

I have to say that this new coil is amazing. It heated up my oven with the pizza stone to 425 in about 15 minutes. Possibly shorter time frame as I was working on our half bath at the time. It’s super hot and works so well!

Burnt Out

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Andrea

Last Friday, as I was heating up some leftover pizza, I noticed some sizzling and then a bright spot in my oven.

Um.

I opened the door to find smoke and a small fire taking place in the left front corner. Crap! I gave it a sec to see if it would burn out (In case it was food related) but it kept getting worse so I shut the oven off and pulled out the pizza (Save the food!).

After the heating coil cooled for a bit I realized what had happened and not only was I flummoxed but also annoyed. It seems that the coating on the heating coil decided to just melt off leaving a section of the coil exposed. The exposed coil reacted with the remaining coating causing it to spark and then catch fire.

Ugh.

So my oven is out of commission. Thankfully I have a double oven, the bottom half being a smaller oven drawer. It’s not large enough to roast a chicken or anything, but I can roast veggies in it just fine. Or, you know, heat up pizza.

Beer ‘N Eggs

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Andrea

This week has seen a lot of progress! Most importantly we have completed one of two of the wallpaper rooms. Hooray! Our laundry room is now finished and my washer and dryer no longer reside in my entryway.

For someone who likes organization, that’s the one part of home renos that drive me bonkers. The disarray!

The half bath will get completed this weekend, oh yes, yes it will. Because I am over wallpaper.

I decided to experiment a little with pizza this week. Remember last week when I used a bit of beer in the dough? This week I used all beer in the dough and I’m pretty pleased with the results.

Unfortunately the beer I used was cold and I had to warm it up so that I could add yeast to it. I think this most definitely effected the rise action and stunted it a little bit. The dough still rose and acted beautifully, it just didn’t rise as much as I would have liked.

Let It Rip

Posted on January 13, 2012 by Andrea

This week has been a busy one here at the HQ, more cleanup projects! Mostly still dealing with wallpaper removal. Yesterday I got started on the half-bath and that removal went s.l.o.w. Oh man! I think because the laundry room probably got warm from doing years of laundry, that helped loosen up the paper a bit. The half-bath, not so much.

I had to start with just removing the top layer first and will then have to remove the glue at another time. I worked on that bathroom for just over five hours. After his work day ended, Scott helped me and we were able to knock out three of four walls.

To give you an idea of how tight this paper was on, we had to use razors to help loosen it. OY!

This weekend you know it will be all about more removal and painting!

So by the end of the day, this lady was ready for some pizza. And beer.

Tucking Away

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Andrea

It was nice to see pizza on the menu again this week as it’s been a while since I’ve made some. The week before Christmas we had pizza out and then the week between Christmas and New Years we did not have pizza because we were munching on other stuff.

I was looking forward to pizza all week! Our pizzas aren’t ever anything super special but they’re tasty to us. Plus it provides comfort. It’s a nice thing to have to look forward to during a week.

Especially a week back to work coming off a two week vacation.

Another thing I’m looking forward to this week is putting away the Christmas decorations. They’ll be tucked away for another year.

Normally I keep them up for a while because I love having twinkle lights up all over my house. Turning them on in the evening makes the house feel cozy and inviting. This year I’m ready for everything to be put away and for things to be cleaned up.

Flecks of Green

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Andrea

Yesterday was a doozy of a day that left me drained and sacked out on the couch by 4pm. All related to the fact my sleep schedule got gorked.

For multiple reasons I was up at 4:30am yesterday morning. That’s early and way too early for my body to comfortably handle. Regardless I had to plow on with my day.

One stop was out to the salon for a trim. The best part about going to a salon is that it is completely acceptable to go walking in looking like a hobo. I appreciate this more than you can imagine. A place where I can wear fuzzy socks and elastic-waist pants?

I am all over it.

But by 4pm that early morning rise was catching up to me and my brain was so fogged that thinking and creating sentences that actually made sense was challenging. The couch and Law and Order was needed. I snugged with the boxer while the pizza stone heated up and got super hot.

Minimalist

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Andrea

Pizza Thursday is still going strong over here at the HQ. It’s become a nice little weekly tradtion for us. It signals that we’re getting close to the end of the week and that the weekend is within viewing range.

For pizza this week, I wanted to keep things simple. I think this is the least amount of ingredients I’ve put on a pizza. Usually I like to load it up with all kinds of stuff but this week it was all about minimal ingredients but great flavor.

I kind of feel like that’s how I’m approaching the holidays this year. Simple and minimalist with the focus being more on the celebration and the moment instead of all the “stuff”.

Yes I still decorated and got out all my trees but I didn’t put out all of my decorations. In fact a good many of them got packed back up and stored away until after Christmas. When Scott was returning everything to the basement he kept asking me, “And this too? And these over here?” ”Yes, all of that stuff can go back.”

Go Green

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Andrea

Lately I cannot get enough of greens. To be more specific, I don’t mean salads though I’ve been eating those as well. By greens, I mean kale, collards, and whatever else you decide to throw at me.

Okay maybe not dandelion.

Leafy greens and I have been best friends this fall and I see a long future for us this winter.

Earlier in the week Scott and I went out to dinner for restaurant week, and the place we picked happened to serve collard greens. Guess who got a huge side of it as part of her meal?

I brought home the leftovers and when I was thinking about pizza for this week, I knew that I wanted to utilize the greens on my pizza. I’ve used spinach on pizza plenty of times and I’ve also used kale, so why not collards?

I also wanted a very crispy thin crust as well. Not my norm at all! Greens and thin crust it was!