What to do when you have a few fresh ingredients but not all the ones you need to make what you were planning…. Take the loaf of fresh Italian bread and cut it in half top and bottom and then in half again lengthwise. Spread a generous but not too thick layer of creamy caesar salad dressing on the bread sections. Sprinkle liberally with grated parmesan cheese. Grate whole milk mozzarella over each piece. Bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees (or so) on a cookie sheet. Whallah! Delicious white sauce garlic pizza!
[Tags: garlic, pizza]
Going Halfsies – Apple
A new addition to our Food Follies Shop… this is a sketch I drew of an apple cut in half, but you can only tell that the one on the left is in half if you look at the shadow. 😉 The design itself is done in a dark sepia-tone and also comes on other kinds of apparel, cards, mugs, and other stuff as well. (Click the image to see all of it!)
[Tags: apple, tshirt]
Baking Day, Apparently
Yesterday was baking day here, apparently. I had a hankering for some sugar cookies, but then remembered the Jello Cookies recipe which is very similar, just with the jello sugar instead. So I made the dough and whipped out my cookie press only to remember, after stuffing the barrel full of dough, that the plunger was broken and I needed a NEW press. Leaving me wondering why I had put the thing back in the cupboard to begin with. Oh well! So I got out a biscuit cutter and made cutouts. Since I used orange jello sugar, we had round orange cookies, with some green decorative sugars sprinkled on top for fall. I’m pretending that they’re pumpkins.
I also made a loaf of yeast bread with half white flour and half whole wheat; it turned out pretty good, if a bit dense! Tastes really good spread with butter and then strawberry jam.
Sorry I don’t have any photos at the moment – everything’s all sort of tucked away under plastic and foil and such and SO FAR AWAY in the kitchen, where I am not. Maybe I’ll get a few shots later if I can before everything’s gone. 🙂
[Tags: one, two, three, four, five]
Ice Cream University, Cupcake University
Less than a month ago we got an idea for another themed t-shirt store – spoof or funny ‘university’ designs – and in a spurt of unparalleled creative effort came up with the name Tshirt University.
I’m mentioning it here for two reasons: 1. We have a whole section for food designs and another for drink designs. (And we take custom orders, so if you want some weird food university design, just use the form on the site – we dare you!) And, 2. Today’s Tuesday’s Topic is ‘desserts’. So we thought we’d show off a few of our dessert-based university designs!
So, we’ve got Ice Cream University (which has already been a good seller – I credit the weather – LOL), and Cupcake University, popularized by Martha Stewart’s recent prison stay as well as the upsurge in popularity of the delicious little frosted cakes themselves. Each design comes on a variety of apparel and items, including these really nice baseball hats, which are a newish product. (Just cick on an image or one of the links to poke around the shop and see all the University swag and various products available.)
[Tags: tshirt, ice cream, cupcake, tuesdays topic]
Dark Chocolate M&Ms
We ambled into the local Kmart the other day only to run into a huge selection of HALLOWEEN candy! Is it always out this early or is time just running MUCH faster now? Anyway, although I couldn’t find any of my favorites (Milky Way Midnights – those tend to be rather rare in our area for some reason) we did find a bag of Dark Chocolate M&Ms!
I wonder when purple became the American chocolate industry standard for identifying chocolate as dark?
Anyway, they’re very VERY tasty. If you were getting somewhat bored with regular M&Ms, this will put a little more zing in your superband waistband. And as a side benefit, you may not eat as many at a time – just a few of them really satisfy the chocolate monster. *grin*
[Tags: chocolate, dark chocolate]
Baking Cookies on the Dashboard
I love this article – a woman decided to bake cookies on her car dashboard, and it worked! Some good CAN come from a heat wave – LOL! Click here for the full article.
[Tags: heat, weather, cookies]
What Would Cheeses Do?
This isn’t a t-shirt from our own food shop, but it was too funny not to post about. And it seems obvious to me in hindsight, but I swear I never thought about this when reading the original ‘what would so-and-so do’ type jokes! And that in itself is somewhat embarrassing – heh.
[Tags: cheese, humor, tshirt]
ConFusion
If you make Italian Chicken in a wok is that considered fusion cuisine?Stilton….. Perfume????
Apparently, the people who make Stilton blue cheese have launched their own perfume. No kidding! Really! “It claims to ‘recreate the earthy and fruity aroma’ of the cheese ‘in an eminently wearable perfume’.” Now, I’ve always said if they could make a scent like a food such as baked bread they’d hit paydirt. This isn’t even close to what I was imagining though.
[Tags: stilton, cheese, blue cheese, perfume]
Chicken Focaccia Pizza with Horseradish Sauce
Long before there were shows like Iron Chef, there was the true challenge of putting together whatever was on hand around the house to come up with new and interesting dinners.
Last week, I picked up a bottle of 1905 brand Horseradish sauce from the Dollar Store and wanted to do something really creative. I had chicken, potatoes, Colby Jack cheese and a few other ingredients on hand, so I thought I’d make them into a pizza.
I hadn’t made Potato Focaccia in a long time, but I knew it would make a good, hearty pizza crust. I started there, and began experimenting with sauce ingredients.
For the sauce, I used a combination of 4 parts sour cream, 2 parts Ranch Dressing, and 1 part Horseradish sauce. It came out tasting kind of sweet, and actually lost some of the horseradish bite in the cooking, so I would add a little more next time.
The focaccia baked up nicely, I baked it by itself for 45 minutes, and then added the sauce, shredded chicken, and Colby Jack. I really wish I had some fresh mushrooms to add or diced tomatoes, but that will be for next time around.
I baked the pizza for another 20 minutes, which thoroughly melted the Colby Jack. The final result was very tasty, I’m definitely going to try this recipe again with more ingredients.
Below is the recipe for Potato Focaccia, which comes from the New York Cook Book by Molly O Niell. I highly reccomend this book, it’s loaded with tasty unique recipes.
Potato Focaccia
2 potatoes
1 pkg dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water (105-110 degrees F)
4 Cups All purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons Olive Oil
Boil the potatoes, peel and mash.
Disolve the yeast into the warm water
Combine potatoes, flour, 2 teaspoons salt, dissolved yeast and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Mix ingredients and cover with a cloth until the dough has doubled in size. (1 hour)
Coat a baking pan or cookie sheet with the other tablespoon of olive oil. Flour your hands and place the dough on the pan, and turn to coat the dough with the oil.
(In the original focaccia recipe, you would then insert tomator wedges into the dough and sprinkle the top with oregano and salt. Then bake at 350 until golden brown.)
Back to the pizza:
Mold the dough into a pizza shape, you don’t have to stretch it or work it too much, just shape it the way you like. It does rise a bit though, so make the bottom fairly thin. If you have extra dough, break it off and roll it into breadsticks.
Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown, and then add the pizza toppings: sauce, meat, veggies (if any) and then cheese. Return to oven and bake for about 20 more minutes, until cheese is thoroughly melted.
[Tags: focaccia, pizza, cooking, recipe, horseradish]