Avocado Pizza: Hodge Podge Goodness

I think I used a frozen vegetable mix called "Hodge Podge" for this, so the title is completely justified. Also, its moving season so my life and apartment are both 100% a hodge podge mess. Though maybe not as delicious as mixed frozen vegetables can be. And looking at this picture below, its pretty clear that the majority of this pizza is not frozen vegetables? Like hello avocados and mushrooms?

I thought about what I would talk about for this post, because I spend the majority of time on this blog talking about either my hate for finding natural lighting or some other random topic. Definitely not food, never! Have I ever actually described the taste or texture of an ice cream or pizza (wow my diet is so American) in a way that makes you go yum I want to eat? Probably not.

But I'll do what I do best, and make random comments and generalizations to the world of home cooking and dessert making. If its not obvious already, I started my kitchen adventures from the oven. From boxed cake mixes in high school to be specific. Baking has always been my favorite in part due to its lovely methodological ways. Which is funny since as a scientist, I follow a lot of protocols in lab, and then when I come home to relax, I follow more protocols essentially.

Cooking on the other hand initially terrified me (and kinda still does) for 2 simple facts 1) the ingredients lists seem way longer and detailed (like I have to buy A WHOLE JAR of oyster sauce for a "dash?") and 2) "to taste." Being a kitchen newbie and having to improvise ratios brought back awful memories of creative art projects in elementary school that looked akin to really sad clay volcanos. I've heard the other argument from people who started their adult lives cooking real food (unlike me) that cooking is easier in the sense that you can be messy and improvise ingredients without much backlash (like not including a dash of oyster sauce). It kinda speaks poorly to my ability to be creative that going off the grid makes me so nervous, so I'll have to work on that whole taking risks in life thing, starting first with pizza toppings.



Avocados are delicious in all forms, though I have to admit that warm is usually not my preferred route, but would still make it again.
Whole wheat honey pizza dough from Budget Bytes.

BBQ Chicken Pizza: California Pi

Ok, pi day was obviously a while ago now, but math is mathematically awesome any time of the year, so we're sticking to pi references for now. And while yes, tau is definitely the superior circle constant, apple tau or a tomato tau with cheese just sounds ridiculous. Though, in my opinion, calling pizza "pie" to begin with is a pretty large stretch. Pizza as "pie" must be an east coaster, Italian American thing because over on the western, better coast, no one in their right mind would call a pizza a pie. Then again, I will concede, the west coast isn't exactly known for pizza.

Before my little education stint over here, my idea of great pizza was California Pizza Kitchen and Costco. I still maintain that combo pizza at Costco is one of the best pizzas out there, but California Pizza Kitchen? As a teen, I thought California Pizza Kitchen (or CPK if you're really hip) was the premier pizza eatery. It was like the coolest, bestest, most mathematical place to go out for a birthday dinner, or to hang out with friends. It was like fancy, but affordable for a teenager borrowing money from the parents. And, as evidenced by this post, my favorite pizza from there was by far the BBQ Chicken Pizza on a honey-wheat crust.

Since college and east-coast pizza revelations, CPK just doesn't hold the same appeal anymore (Costco pizza still does). Maybe it was a post-I thought-I-failed-the-MCAT thing, or a this-service-sucks thing, but the last time I was there, everything was such a letdown. From the crust, to the off-tasting plastic cups of water, to the meh toppings, it was like tasting the sawdust remains of teenage righteousness.

While CPK may have departed from my heart, I do have to give California credit for inventing BBQ Chicken Pizza, which is still delicious and super easy to make at home. Especially if you use ~fancy~ Sriracha BBQ sauce from Trader Joe's (oh look, more California things). The thing I love about "California" cuisine, is that for the most part, its basically normal food, except with like, 20 more varieties of vegetables and lots of locally sourced items year round because of that whole lack of winter thing. Though this current drought might become a problem. :( Anyways, luckily for us who do get to experience winter and spring snowstorms, the basic ingredients of a BBQ Chicken Pizza stand up to winter pretty well. You can probably add more vegetables if you wish, as I normally do, but sometimes the simplicity of just chicken, red onions, and BBQ sauce is perfection that doesn't need more nutrition.

Recipe via Budget Bytes.

Spinach Pizza: Easy Peasy Hello Again

Hello again! Things have been rather quiet around here since 2014. Its been a solid 2 months of 2015 with no new blog posts. Meanwhile its March, the start of springtime birthday seasons, and yet its still snowing here. I'm having a particularly bitter relationship with the snow this year. I still maintain that it is quite beautiful when its fresh and in abundant quantities, but it makes doing life things really difficult. I've been trying to go to Trader Joe's literally since New Year's. Trader Joe's is sadly not within walking distance so I have to zipcar, but every trip I have reserved has had to be canceled due to snow/winter storm weather. Granted, I think that I could probably learn how to drive in light snow, but its really not something I'd like to do while wasting time on a zipcar, you know? Anyways, the gist is that snow is making me starve (not really because I can walk through the icy tundra of unsalted sidewalks to get to Stop and Shop, but I'm just exaggerating for dramatic effect).

Despite being limited to walking distance grocery stores that stock items in a confusing way, cooking, baking, and eating have been occurring to a relative degree. January was my last month of traveling for interviews, so I'm just finally getting back into the swing of having a kitchen I can restock on a regular schedule. And regularly restocked kitchens generally mean better food for Helen, and fewer sad American cheese quesadillas (truly my low point of this past year of real adulthood).

While this spinach pizza is only marginally more difficult to make than an American cheese quesadilla, it tastes significantly more amazing. Unless I just got really lucky this time around, I think I've finally found a whole wheat pizza crust recipe that I really like! Its soft, with maybe not as much crunch as you may like for a crust, but definitely not as chewy and dense as my last batch. Spinach is still my favorite leafy green (sorry kale), and its kinda hard to go wrong when you have both goat and mozzarella cheese. And that's basically it-spinach and cheese. No giant can of sauce for one tiny pizza! The cheese itself mixes and melts with the spinach to create a pseudo-white sauce.

I added some caramelized onions and mushrooms I had in my fridge to make the pizza even more delicious. See- adding in random ingredients I have in my fridge was totally something I couldn't do a few months back, so kitchen stocking success!
Pizza recipe from BudgetBytes.
Whole Wheat Pizza Dough also from BudgetBytes.

As a generally blogging note, I think I'm going to start posting over weekends, ie Friday-Sunday rather than keeping myself to a strict 9AM Friday deadline. Thursday evenings can be kinda hard.

Bonus side note- Something I definitely don't need, but would totally want.