Better Than Delivery Pizza

This past weekend we were craving good pizza, so I decided to try my hand at making it.



I found a great pizza dough recipe online and made my very first homemade pizza crust. I will admit to having some difficulty when it came to rolling it out and I ended up spraying pam on my countertop and dusting it with flour so that I could pull the nicely rolled dough right off and move it to the pan without ripping. It took me a couple of tries, but the dough didn't seem too tough, despite being re-rolled 3 times.

I decided I wanted a sauce with more flavor, so I mixed a can of diced tomatoes with a can of tomato sauce and added onion powder, garlic, salt, brown sugar, and oregano. I let it sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours to let the flavors mix together and it was perfect.

We bought pre-shredded cheese and were careful to find the bags labeled "right off the block" rather than the imitation cheese (as you will find it doesn't melt). We also topped the pizza with green, yellow and red peppers & onions (we used frozen ones that we happened to have on hand and we just defrosted them before putting them on the pizza), pepperoni, ground beef seasoned to taste like sausage (using fennel and sage), olives and pineapple.

I can honestly say that it was the best pizza I have eaten in a long time (though, I haven't had much pizza lately so my judgment may be off). The next day Alexander was asking if we could make it again. :) That's what I call a successful dinner!

Spicy Carbonara

I threw together this dish after going through the fridge and pulling out everything we needed to use before it went bad. I call it a Spicy Carbonara. It features linguine, red peppers, chicken, chili oil, red onions, garlic and half and half.



I chopped up the chicken and cooked it for about 5-7 minutes in a small bit of olive oil, sprinkling it with hot chili oil and chipotle bouillon. I then put in half of a red onion, half a red pepper and some minced garlic. After about 3 minutes, I stirred in half and half and chicken bouillon. I thickened it with a bit of cornstarch and let it boil until the consistency was just right. I then dumped it over my cooked linguine. Before serving I sprinkled cracked black pepper and bits of bacon over the top.

This was a successful experiment with a good kick! We are definitely going to make this again. :)