Tag Archives: Tomato

Pizza Night!

KitchenSinkPizza

A savory tomato sauce based pizza

There’s a certain sense of accomplishment that comes with pulling a freshly baked homemade pizza out of the oven. Even though it may have taken much longer to put together and bake than it would to simply order a pizza from down the street, the satisfaction of creating yourself what you might pay twenty dollars (or more) for a pizza place to make for you is worth it. It’s just as much about the experience as it is about the pizza. And what better way to capture the homemade pizza feeling than with good friends. This is what’s known by some as the “pizza night”.

PestoPizza

Pesto – it’s green and awesome

To pull off a pizza night well, you need to have four foundational key ingredients: Good friends, an accommodating oven, beer, and – of course – pizza. If you feel like you’re up for the task of the advanced pizza night, you can add a playlist of your favorite music to augment the environment in whatever direction you choose – we chose to bring in a little bit of the 80’s. something about hair bands and pizza just feels right. If you want to go all the way and dial up your pizza night to eleven, you can do all the above while sporting an apron and toque.

BuffaloChickenPizza

Spicy Buffalo Chicken Pizza

But, as the point of a pizza night is ultimately the pie, let’s talk za. A good pizza starts with a good pizza dough. We made enough dough to create five pizzas (and by we, I mean my friend the baker). You can find all kinds of simple recipes online – like this one – but I’ve been told that the best pizza crust is made with a sourdough base, which is a bit more involved, from what I understand. After the crust, the rest is really open for interpretation. You could use all kinds of different sauces, such as pesto, Alfredo, garlic, sweet tomato, savory marinara, anything you can spread really. You could even use ketchup & mustard if you wanted, though I would urge you in the name foodies everywhere – please don’t. From this point forward, anything is fair game.  If you can eat it, you can put it on a pizza!

I’ll include ingredient lists for the five pizzas we created.  As always, if you’d like to join me and recreate the wonderment for yourself, you can find a recipe in the recipes section of the blog.

“Wise man say forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza.”

Advertisement
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Spaghetti Sauce Right Off The Vine

Here in Kansas, it is apparently tomato season. Let me be more specific. It is apparently freakishly high-yield tomato season. We’ve had about a month of arid, relatively hot weather, with almost no rain or precipitation of any kind. Everything was really dry. Those with gardens were having to fight with every hose they had to keep the things alive.

Fresh Tomatoes

Courtesy of The Corner of Awesome & Bombdiggity

That dry spell finally came to a close, and with a welcome deluge it rained for 3 days straight and since has rained on average one out of every three days. The result of this has been all the tomato plants that were fighting just to stay green have now starting producing tomatoes like they’re going out of style. It’s wonderful!! My friend’s garden, which only has three tomato plants, has produced enough tomatoes to feed 4 different families and me!

Here’s a little secret about tomatoes – well, it’s not really a secret, just something some of you might not be aware of. Tomatoes that you get in the store are not actually ripe. It’s true. Most of the tomatoes that you find in the grocery store are picked while they’re still green by illegal and often times enslaved immigrants and then shipped to their destinations. In route, the tomato container is saturated with a gas called ethylene, which causes the tomatoes to turn red. It doesn’t make them ripe, just red. That’s why most of the tomatoes you buy at the store taste like they’re not ripe. Because they’re not!

Garden-Fresh-SpaghettiAnyway, with home grown, delicious, ripe garden fresh tomatoes, recipe’s take on a whole new character and explode with flavor and color! With the tomatoes I received from Tomato Lady, I made up a batch of simple spaghetti sauce. Only 4 ingredients plus spices, but oh the flavor! Combine that with a plate of angel hair pasta, top with an avocado, and you’ve got a wonderful meal! If you’d like to try this for yourself, you can find the recipe in the recipes section of the blog.

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,