Pizzas!

Confession: I spent approximately the first 23 years of my life avoiding and pretty intensely disliking pizza. Now that I've realized how much I've missed, one of my go-to meals is homemade pizza. It also combines two of my favorite things: bread making and cooking.

Last night my friend and I had dinner to "celebrate" the end of her employment at her current job (hurray economy!) and I made two kinds of pizza: Spicy Spinach and Herbed Goat Cheese on flatbread, and White Pizza with Broccoli.

For the spinach pizza, I wilted the spinach for a couple minutes in a pan with olive oil at medium heat. As the spinach began to wilt, I added about a teaspoon and a half of fresh rosemary and some red pepper flakes (#1 spice of the New City Murrays). After a couple minutes I added this to the top of the flatbread, and added about 4 oz of garlic and herb goat cheese.

For the white pizza, I used regular pizza dough, picked up at my local bakery. I rolled this out and put it on a pan that had been sprinkled with cornmeal. I chopped some garlic and added it to about a cup of fat free ricotta. I also added some basil, onion powder, salt, pepper and (here it is again) red pepper flakes, and then spread the ricotta mixture on the dough. I sauteed some broccoli with garlic salt, put that on top, and then added some part-skim mozzarella and a little parmesan.

I put both of these pizzas in a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes, until the cheese had slightly browned. Serve with Bud Light, or free Miller Draft from your landlords (true story)!

Peanut/Cashew Soup

Liisa was looking through my Bittman vegetarian cookbook last night and suggested I make peanut soup.  So, today, I figured I would.  But I'm a high roller, so I used cashews instead.

Not sure if I've figured out the portions just right, but it involves cashews, tomatoes, yams, a red onion, garlic, ginger, cayenne, salt, pepper, vegetable stock, coconut milk, and peanut butter (I would use cashew butter, but I'm only hood rich, not the real kind).  Cook the onion, garlic, and ginger, then throw in the cashews, add some salt, pepper, and a bit of cayenne, and throw in the stock and yams.  Cook it for ten minutes, add the coconut milk, tomatoes, and peanut butter. Cook for like five more minutes, and then add some more cashews for garnish, and you're set.

Turned out pretty awesome, though, like I said, I need to adjust the amount of which ingredients I use... Bittman is crazy about how much stock to use, so it felt light on certain items.  But it turned out awesome.

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Bran Muffins

I like muffins, but plain old white flour? Not so good for me. So I try to make something tasty but good for you, too. Who says you can't have it all?

Ingredients:

1.25 cup whole wheat flour
1.25 cup steel cut oats
0.5 cup bran
0.5 cup Splenda sweetener (the yellow stuff)
3t baking powder
1 rounded t cinnamon
3 eggs
0.5 cup canola oil
1.5 cup skim milk

Bake at 375 degrees for 25 minutes.

These were wonderful with butter plain fresh out of the oven. And they were good later plain ( I was on the bus and had no butter--would have been too messy.)

Next time I may cut the sweetener a bit and add raisins. With whole wheat and bran, you need more oil and liquids than with white or corn flour, and those amounts could be experimented with.