Halloween Treats - Pinwheels and Pizza

One of my favorite holidays is officially over. It makes me sad because I absolutely love Halloween, but I'm also excited because it means the holiday season has officially started. When I was little my parents would let me go all out for Halloween, sometimes having multiple costumes for school and trick or treating. As I got older I looked forward to the month long airing of scary movies. Now I would never say that I'm too old for trick or treating because you can never be too old for a costume and candy, but since my life has been getting increasingly more hectic, the thought of walking in the cold, dressed as a sailor, knocking on strangers doors in an area I'm still new to didn't sound like my kind of thing, besides I had already gone out on Saturday night and had a fabulous time.

 

It didn't help that Halloween was on a Monday this year either, so I was ready to kick back and veg out. I did buy two bags of candy for any trick or treaters that might stop by (but what kid wants to climb stairs just to get candy... ok probably a lot) but our plans consisted of a scary movie marathon, margarita style pizza, and spinach and tomato pinwheels. I don't know if the whole bowl of candy was intended to be on the menu, but Mike and I ate it as an appetizer, main course, and dessert. Ooops...

Right before the good parts of Signs started we made our pizza. In 20 minutes dinner was done. As most of my go-to meals, these are semi-homemade to - you know how I roll.

Pinwheels

I'm not sure what these are really called but this name works for me. I got this idea from a Pillsbury commercial shown during the holidays last year, but I added a little extra oomph - tomatoes!! This is the perfect appetizer. I'm thinking about making these for Christmas Eve when I visit my family because they're so easy.

What You'll Need:

1 can (roll?) of refrigerated biscuits

chopped frozen spinach

1/2 a tomato

1/2 C of mozzarella cheese

Start by taking out all of the biscuits and rolling them into one piece of dough. Make sure the dough is rolled about 1/2 an inch thick. Sprinkle the cheese, spinach and tomatoes and lightly press down into the dough. Then roll the dough as tightly as possible and cut the roll about a 1/4-1/2 inch thick and place them on a greased cookie sheet. Bake them for as long as the container says to - about 10 minutes.

Eat them while they're hot. We ate ours with the pizza and it was the perfect meat-free (guilt-free) meal for a night in. 

Margarita Style Pizza

Once again this is an ode to a semi-homemade meals. I didn't feel like making a homemade crust so I bough one from the store. The crust was a little more spongy than I'm use to but the taste worked because of all the flavors on top. I made my own pizza sauce too.

What You'll Need:

Pizza Sauce

Pizza Crust

Mozzarella cheese slices

Basil

Tomato slices 

How could a pizza this simple be bad? For my sauce I just used one small can of tomato sauce and added some salt, garlic powder, Parmesan cheese, pepper, and oregano. I spread the sauce over my store bought crust, then put a layer of basil, cheese and then tomato.

Bake the pizza for 14 minutes at 450 degrees. This is just long enough to put the dishes in the sink (to wash later) and perhaps make a drink...hmmm...

This pizza is the perfect light pizza to eat while your sitting in sweats watching scary movies on the couch. I put a little fresh basil (which is currently my new obsession) on top and curled up - mainly because I was too scared to keep my feet on the floor... The tomatoes are so juicy and the cheese is so creamy that you should probably make two pizzas because they're so good.

We ended up having the best Halloween. It was perfectly relaxing and I couldn't have asked for anything better. I hope you all had a good Halloween too. I look forward to starting the fall off with you guys. Cheers!

Spreads & Other Snacks for "Grown Ups"

I dedicate this post to World Market and my fellow foodies who go shopping when they're hungry. There's no denying it, and I applaud you for it because this is when I find some of my favorite snacks. Mike and I went to World Market today to look around and came out with some great stuff - including a much needed lamp shade. But food-wise we scored some new snacks too. We ended up with some Scottish strawberry champagne preserve, Cafe Du Monde beignet mix, two plates, and a little dipping dish - all for just over $26! We decided to wait on the beignets (as hard as it was) and picked up a baguette to try the preserves instead.

I was really excited to try this because the cashier lady said it was one of her favorites. Really, at that point I was so hungry I would have tried it regardless. 

My new little dish :)

I washed some grapes I had in the fridge and decided to see what else we could snack on. I had some dried cranberries leftover from my Cranberry Orange Scones so I took them out too. All we had to buy was a "rustic sweet baguette" loaf. It must have been destiny (or at least luck) because we got the last fresh loaf.

We sat down on the couch (turned on the television) and got ready to try our little snack feast. The preserves were so delicious but they were definitely on the sweet side. We needed something to cut down on the sweetness so I brought out some brie (the Laughing Cow brand) that I had in my fridge. I put some cheese on a piece of bread then some preserves - foodie heaven, let me tell you!! The brie made it really creamy. I absolutely love strawberry jam and this one is definitely a keeper. It had a slightly stronger taste and a more intense flavor. I loved it!

     

                                                                                                                                                                                    

Oh, here's a little extra info about the difference between jelly, jam, and preserves - for anyone, like me, who didn't know until today. According to TLC Cooking,

• In jelly the fruit comes in the form of fruit juice
• In jam the fruit comes in the form of fruit pulp or crushed fruit
• In preserves the fruit comes in the form of chunks

After snacking on this for a while we decided we wanted a more savory spread - but that's one thing I didn't have laying around in my fridge.... so we made a pesto butter. It was so simple to make. 

What You'll Need:

1/2 a stick of butter

3 tsp of pesto

salt and garlic powder to taste

Make sure the butter is room temp and mix your pesto in. Add your seasonings to taste. When it's how you want it, put in in the fridge for 10 minutes. We use this pesto for everything. I've mixed it into pastas and put it on chicken. I always have a jar of this in my fridge.

When the butter was chilled, we cut some more bread and sat back down. I have to say the mix between the savory pesto and the sweet preserves was unbelievable! All together it was an awesome snack that's so much better than your average bowl of chips. You could definitely serve these as snacks for guests or as a date night snack for a night in. Either way I love you enough to share this simple snack with you! Enjoy!

Triple-Stacked Breakfast Sammies

 I'm the kind of person that likes things mashed, mixed, and eaten all together. Not to toot my own horn but I'm the queen of crazy concoctions. Like most of the things I make, this was completely spontaneous. The second best part of this sandwich (the first being taste) is that there aren't any rules - you can add whatever you want, or whatever you have.

What You'll Need:

(makes 2 sandwiches)

4 Breakfast sausage patties (maple flavored)

2 Slices of American cheese

2 Frozen hash brown patties

4 Eggs

 4 Slices of bread

Mayonnaise

The first step is to get a large pan and spray it with non-stick cooking spray. Put the sausage patties and hash browns in the pan on medium heat. I used patties because when I bought them, that was all the store had. Had they been links I would have probably cut them up and mixed them in with my eggs. And I always have these hash browns on hand. My mom use to buy them and they're so delicious and easy to make. You can bake them, or fry them like I did. Just make sure you flip them every few minutes until they're no longer cold in the middle. When they're done, put them aside.

As those are cooking, get your eggs ready. I always add a tablespoon of water and a tablespoon of milk to my eggs. Of course, this is totally optional. 

Cook the eggs on low heat. You'll want to keep the eggs together as much as possible, so go more for "omelet" than "scramble." 

While the eggs are cooking, toast the bread and put mayo on both sides. Like the rest of my family, I have a small addiction to mayo and love it on whatever I can get it on. When the eggs are done separate them into sections in the pan so it makes it easier to put on one slice of bread. Assemble the rest of it by putting one hash brown and two sausage patties on the other slice of bread. Put cheese on the egg and close the sandwich up.

These are really good and filling. We both enjoyed them, even though Mike gets skeptical when I don't tell him what I'm doing beforehand. I'll definitely be making these again. 

Double-Feature Pizza

One of the things Mike and I like to do in the summer is go to the drive-in. We always take our own snacks and dinner and veg out in our pajamas. They do the usual two movies, or three on the weekends, and every Tuesday they have a discounted price. We usually order a pizza and take it to go, but last summer we decided to make our own pizza and take it. We did the same thing last night. It's surprising how easy it is to make your own pizza, and you can make it however you want without the extra charge for toppings.

You'll want to make your dough ahead of time. I leave any dough-making for Michael because I'm not much of a baker and dough tends to get me frustrated. Instead, I'm in charge of toppings and sauce (fine by me).

What You'll Need - Dough:

4 1/2 C Bread Flour

2 t Salt

1 t Yeast

1/4 C Olive oil

1 3/4 C Ice water

Bread mixer

Mix all of the ingredients together in the bread mixer. Switch the machine to the "dough" setting and press start. Let it mix for and hour and a half. 

 When it's done, take it out and separate it into two (yes you get two pizzas), roll them into two separate balls, and put them in ziplock bags and place them in the fridge. It's best to leave them overnight but you can do a couple of hours too.

Test Pizza

Since we had two sets of dough, we decided to make a cheese test pizza for lunch.

What You'll Need:

1 dough roll

Favorite pizza sauce

8 oz of shredded Mozzarella cheese

While the dough was in the fridge Mike shredded the cheese.

Meanwhile I was getting the sauce ready. Warning - the sauce isn't very technical. It's more about the taste you prefer but mine is a good base to start with. 

This will be more than enough sauce for two pizzas.

2 8 oz. Cans of tomato sauce

1 1/2 t Chopped garlic

1/3 t Honey

1/4 t Salt

1/4 t Pepper

3 T of Parmesan cheese

1 1/2 t Oregano

1 t Basil

1 t Garlic powder 

*side note* If you use tomato paste instead of sauce, do 8 oz. of paste and 8 oz. of water.

Before you get your hands dirty, preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Now it's time to stretch out the dough. Like I said before, this is Mike's job. Start by putting some flour on the counter. The dough doesn't stretch out too big so don't worry if you have an apartment-sized kitchen like we do. Mike stretched the dough until it was around a 1/4 of an inch thick.

When it's stretched, put it on a big cookie sheet and put the sauce on. Put as much as you'd like (remember you made enough for more than two pizzas) and leave a 1 inch space around for the crust.

Put the cheese on, try not to munch off the plate... Place it in the oven and bake for about 10-15 minutes. You can sit on your kitchen floor, like we did, looking at it bake if you'd like.

Okay.... problem. Despite my best efforts to persuade him not to, Mike used a baking stone. I know lot's of people use them for even baking, blah, blah, blah, but I don't care for the things. I like things, especially my pizza, with some crunch. This didn't happen using the stone. Hey, I never said everything on my blog would be perfect... despite my best efforts. The pizza was delicious, don't get me wrong, but I could compare it to a frozen pizza. Everything was very one-note. Do you know what this means? We made another one *smiles.*

Of course we still ate it - even okay pizza is good pizza!

The Real Deal- Pizza Number 2

So after lunch, and a new game plan, we stepped it up. We made our favorite combo pizza - DELISH!! It's the same basic concept as the first pizza, with a few small adjustments.

What You'll Need:

1 Dough roll

My pizza sauce

1 Carton of mushrooms

1 sm Green bell pepper

1/2 package of Canadian Bacon (or sliced deli ham)

1 Red onion

8 oz. Mozzarella cheese

Olive oil

The first thing you want to do is cut your mushrooms into slices. I really advise doing this the night before so they dry out as much as possible. Whatever you do DO NOT WASH THEM UNDER WATER! If you do this then you'll have a big puddle of water in the middle of your pizza, it'll get soggy, and it's just bad - don't do it. Since we didn't do any prep the night before like we usually do, we cut the mushrooms, put them on a cookie sheet, and put them in the fridge, uncovered. 

If your watching a Giants game like we were, you won't be getting much done in terms of prep so we rushed our process a bit - luckily for us this is really easy. Not to mention we planned to leave to the drive-in at 8, and it was 7:00. Oops.

When you're ready, slice the veggies. You don't have to add ham or any meat if you want a vegetarian pizza, we've added some tomato and it's just as delicious. I don't eat a lot of meat so we used some Canadian Bacon for flavor (and breakfast the next day). It added just enough flavor.

He's going to chop off his fingers!!

I adore the color of these.

 Shred the cheese next...

 Take out the mushrooms...

 Here you go. Like I said, I usually like tomatoes on the pizza but this was still awesome.

Our next step was the dough (still Mike's job). Our new game plan was to make the middle of the pizza thinner so it would crisp up and the crust would be soft because it would be thicker. The best way to get this done is to spin the dough. 

We still used the baking stone (despite a disapproving girlfriend) but it was a lot better because the way we laid out the dough.

*****
How to tell if your pizza is the right size for your box:

We got a box from Mike's work so we could transport it to the drive-in. He showed me this is how you tell if it'll fit. It worked.

*****

Put the dough onto a floured cookie sheet. Add the (my) sauce, once again leaving a space around the edge for the crust...

Add the cheese and lay a thin layer of bacon. 

Add the rest of your veggies or other desired toppings. Then rub some olive oil around the crust.

Slide the pizza from the cookie sheet onto the baking stone (or not, in my opinion) but that's what we did. Once again bake for 10-15 minutes. I hope what you get is as awesome as what we got!

 Our new method worked! In fact this is exactly what we did last summer and it worked again. Maybe we shouldn't go as long without making pizza anymore. *smiles again.* The pizza was saucy and crispy. The vegetables were awesome together, too. Mike said it was almost as if the bell peppers and onions got sauteed because they game out really juicy and I agree. Letting the mushrooms air out for as long as we did helped too. We didn't have a gross puddle in the middle of our pizza. Success!

We were able to box up the pizza by 8:10 and get out the door. Mike got some pizza boxes from his work but I'm sure if you went to your local pizza place they could give you a box for a small fee or even for free. Now, go out and make your own pizzas!

Major foodie love!