Monday, July 27, 2009

Homemade BBQ pizza is Fantastic!

This is one of our top 5 meals for sure at our house, I LOVE IT and it feels sort of healthy.

I found a great recipe for whole wheat pizza crust here. The only change I make is that I use all wheat flour, no white. My sister new pizza idea is buying the crust, that will definitely speed up the process!

We like thinner crusts at our house so I just sprinkle some flour on the counter, throw down the dough and roll it out until it's pretty thin . Then I put it over our pizza pan like this:

The dough definitely overlaps the pan so I get a pizza cutter and cut off the excess. Thus we have a perfectly thin, and round pizza crust. I let it raise for 15 or 20 minutes then put it in the oven for 5 minutes.
After it's been zapped in the oven we spread the bbq sauce and top it with yummy toppings like peppers, onions, chicken, cheese, tomatoes and any other veggies we have laying around. I put it in the oven for another 8 minutes or so and out comes a delightful pizza!

With the extra dough I made yummy breadsticks (you can see them below). Here's how I make them:
1. Roll out the extra dough, pretty thin
2. Use the pizza cutter to cut into strips.
3. Let raise for 20 minutes or so
4. Cook for 4 minutes
5. Brush with oil and sprinkle on parmesian cheese and garlic salt (those big salts like on preztels would be way good!)
6. Put in the oven for another 5 minutes.


And there you have a yummy, moderately simple recipe that is moderately healthy ( we could have cut back on the cheese :)

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Strawberry Jam Catastrophe

So I was strolling down the isles of my favorite Henry's Market and I was shocked at the price of strawberries. 77 cents!!!!! I have never seen a pound of strawberries so cheap. So naturally I bought 18 pounds. (This picture is only showing half of them, I have an impulse problem! I was determined to make strawberry Jam so I got the pectin, sugar and strawberries and headed home for the big project.First I took the leaves off of them, I borrowed a GIGANTIC bowl from my neighbor. I don't think you can understand how many strawberries I bought, it was ridiculous.
Here are all of them, they almost took up the whole top shelf of the fridge.
So, I decided to use the freezer jam recipe inside of the pectin package. It called for 8 cups of mashed up strawberries. I didn't have a potato masher so I decided to throw the strawberries into the blender. BAD BAD IDEA! Apparently when you do this the strawberries expand and get all foamy. I didn't realize the problem at this point so I continued following the recipe. 8 cups of strawberries and 16 cups of sugar...seemed like a lot of sugar, but I just went for it. Notice how liquidy the stuff is.
My lovely assistant, Mariela, made the pectin and we added it to the strawberry/sugar mixture. I tasted the final mixture and it was SOOOO SUGARY. I started blending more strawberries and adding them into the mixture. DISASTER! I finally gave up.
I had all these empty cans from my grandma's applesauce so I decided to fill them anyways. The jam is pretty sugary, but I still loved it. It never set up, so I have to use a spoon, but it is great as syrup on pancakes!

After the catastrophe I started asking around and I got some help from family and friends, here are some lessons learned on freezer jam.
1. Just buy a potato masher for $5 and don't use a blender
2. Never add as much sugar as they say. My mom said that she never felt right about adding more sugar than fruit. (I'd like some help in this area still to get a feel for exactly how much sugar to add).
3. NEVER try to reinvent the wheel. I don't know why I didn't ask one of the 15 immediate relatives I have that already know how to make freezer jam for help. Next time I will be smarter!
I still have 5 quart bags full of strawberries that were leftover so I will be trying this again in a while when we run out of jam (probably not any time soon). Hopefully take two will be better!