Quick & Easy Dinners - Homemade Pizza

Remember the 947 million times I've mentioned on this blog that I'm not much of a cook?  Well, make it 948 million now.  I don't cook very often.  How then, you ask, does The Hungry Lady eat?  I'm really good with pasta and things that go in the microwave.  I even have some frozen fish fillets in my freezer that I haven't managed to screw up yet.  And I can do canned soups, salads, and sandwiches.  Needless to say, I get by.  Maybe not in the most healthful of fashions, but I do manage to get three meals a day.


But I digress.  I have never been one of those  people who derives any pleasure from cooking - standing over a hot stove/oven, plus doing prep work, is just not how I want to spend my time.  From this, you can correctly assume that I'm definitely not one of those people who eat something and then are inspired to recreate the flavor profile in a totally different dish (see also: Top Chef).  So when my  roommate and I were eating some leftover lasagna one night and she mentioned that the flavors would be really good on a pizza, I was a little shocked to find myself nodding my head in agreement.  We both flipped through our mental calendars and managed to find a rare evening when we would both be home for dinner and decided to make it pizza night.  We divided up the ingredients onto our respective shopping lists, and five days later, we were standing in the kitchen making pizza crust, chopping vegetables, and browning sausage.  I'd be lying if I said that I did any of the actual cooking, but I did chop up the veggies pretty well.


Once we got everything assembled, we put a rather gigantic pizza in the oven and waited for the kitchen timer to go off.  The aroma of fennel and tomato sauce was heavy in the air.  You could probably hear our stomachs rumbling from a block away.  Finally, after 15 agonizing minutes, the timer dinged, and we ran into the kitchen to pull our mouthwateringly good dinner out of the oven.

This thing was delicious.  And was really good as leftovers the next day.

So how did we make it?
Ingredients
1 jar of pizza sauce (we used Ragu, because it was on sale)
2 Betty Crocker Just-Add-Water pizza crust mixes
1 large package of mozzarella (the kind that comes in a ball, not the pre-shredded kind)
2 large green peppers
1 8 oz package of mushrooms
1 can large, pitted, black olives
2 links of hot Italian sausage (the kind you buy in the fresh meat aisle, not the pre-cooked section)


J worked on putting the pizza crust together.  I added some garlic and basil to the pizza sauce because it was really sweet and needed something to make it less so.  We browned the sausage (and still had 4 large links left over, one of which I added to some spaghetti sauce later that week), then cut it into circles. I would have maybe used a few more mushrooms (and that's only because they weren't evenly distributed - J said she got plenty of them), but otherwise, this was perfect.  We're definitely talking about doing pizza night again soon.  Maybe next time, I can convince her to try this cauliflower crust pizza from my friend (no really, we've known each other since high school) Eric over at Eric Dishes.  Plus....making your own pizza is way cheaper (and way less greasy) than ordering from your local pizza joint.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

No, I don't mean Christmas.  I mean that it's football season.  A time for tailgates, cookouts, too many beers, good friends, and the agony or ecstasy that accompanies each game.  I live in SEC country (for those of you who don't do college football, SEC = Southeastern Conference), where football Saturdays are a religion.  I'm lucky to have a group of friends who are champion tailgaters, whether they are tailgating in a parking lot or at someone's house.


For the first game of the season, my fabulous friends decided to get things started in style.  We all headed over to Z & H's house with assorted cases of beer and food products.  Z spent all day grilling chicken and ribs.  We had salads and potatoes and veggies and baked beans and dessert.  And, to start the day, we made pancakes and sausage.  Plus we had three TVs set up, cornhole, flip cup, and tents to keep the heat at bay.  Throw in the 14 hours we spent devouring the first Saturday of college football, and you had some very happy campers.


Since that first weekend, no one's schedules have really meshed well enough to recreate that scene. There's still been some pretty good food involved though, most notably the lovely dishes that G and L made for us this past weekend when we watched the game at their house.  Kickoff was at 12:21, so of course, we had to show  up early enough to watch ESPN College Gameday before our game.  G decided to make beignets for the occasion.  I woke up late, and so didn't get to their house in time to get one hot out of the fryer, but even slightly cold, they were amazing.  I'm putting in a request that we do beignets again soon.


Just in time for the game, we had this plate of deliciousness (please note the Gamecock plate):

What is that, you ask?  That would be a large portion of bacon wrapped, beer boiled brats.  Say that 5 times fast.  Clearly if you're not a pork eater, these aren't for you.  But for the rest of us, these were utterly amazing.  To be totally honest, bacon wrapped anything is pretty amazing, but I could eat these non-stop.  What made these so special?  Each tooth-picked goodness was rubbed down with a combination of brown sugar and cayenne pepper.  It was an outstanding combination of sweet and spicy and it was filling.  For a nice variation, we spread some jalapeno pimento cheese on a few of them, and wow.  The flavor of the cheese just melted away, leaving the sweet and spicy taste of the pork.  I'm pretty much going to insist that these are served at every group function from now until the end of time.  Well done, G & L.  Well done.