Food & Drink

The kitchen has been my friend lately

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I’m not quite sure how my psyche decides when it’s OK with things and when it’s not. There are some days when coming up with a meal just seems like so much effort. And others when it seems to flow perfectly.

These past few weeks my psyche has been good to me. I’ve come across recipes in magazines or on Pinterest and just gone and tackled them. (It helps if you go with options where you have all of the ingredients already on hand.)

The holiday baking was easy and fun. The holiday meals were too – can you say turkey chili and cornbread for Christmas dinner? And tasty sloppy joes for NYE? (Slow cooking counts as cooking as far as I’m concerned.)

The last two days put my resolve to the test, though. We’ve been snowed in. Polar Vortex. -30 below windchills. 9+ inches of the white stuff. No way in h-e-double toothpicks was I going to attempt a trip to the grocery store. And yet I managed to feed my family pretty well.

The first “trapped in our home” evening I mixed up the fixin’s for turkey burgers and Scott grilled them up. Yesterday I made honey garlic chicken, which Devin insisted tasted just like sloppy joes and then requested a bun to go with it, and pineapple rice. And today it was pizza.

Made with the same crust from a previous post.

This is my third time using this recipe. And with good reason. It’s super tasty – and easy! I wasn’t feeling rushed today so I went ahead and documented tonight’s pizza, beginning with the caramelized onions.

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A few minutes after I got the onions browning, the smoke detector went off. The one my husband installed IN THE KITCHEN. (This is an on-going argument in our home and I’ll leave it at that.) Since the smoke wasn’t going to dissipate quickly, I had to cut the process short so they didn’t do quite what I wanted them to do. But they worked.

I love the proofing part of baking. You don’t get that a whole lot with gluten-free breads. It’s nice to smell that yeasty smell. And watch it bubbling. DSC_4582

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The dough isn’t super sticky with this crust so I just use a bit of brown rice flour on my fingers to press it into the pan.DSC_4597

Here’s the split-personality pizza baking in the oven. Which side do you think belongs to the 9-year-old? (Although he does share with dad, who always nabs a piece of each.)DSC_4599

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With pretty much every holiday, I whip up a fruit salad. And this year we made sure to grab a pomegranate to join the cast. We’ve been gorging on the seeds since Christmas so I topped tonight’s pile o’ fruit with some more. They’re amazingly addictive!DSC_4609

My plate. Filled to the brim! I went with what we had available in the refrigerator, of course. The onions from above, mini bell peppers, spinach, kalamata olives, feta cheese and pine nuts.DSC_4613

Dev got bacon and pineapple – and was pretty geeked about it. He’s a huge bacon fan so these donuts are next up on my list. Hopefully this weekend!DSC_4612