I know I said I’d try one new recipe a week, but last week was a doozy! I actually used four new recipes, to varying degrees of success. It makes up for the fact that I pretty much only used tried and trues the week before.
Photo from Kraftfoods.com
First up was the Beefy One-Pot Dinner. There was a brief moment of panic when The Hippy told me he didn’t like baked beans. Who on earth doesn’t like baked beans? He said he’d eat anything except seafood, though, and after trying it he decided that the baked beans blended in just fine. I would absolutely make this again. It was easy, tasty, and everyone commented on how great it smelled at work.
Photo from Kraftfoods.com
Next up was the Spinach and Bacon Pasta Toss. I don’t know what to say about this recipe. I would probably feel so much better about it if my day had gone better. I made this the day I got the paper cut under my fingernail. I then proceeded to get spinach stuck under the very same nail. I burned half the bacon, spilled a nearly entirely full box of spaghetti onto our not-so-clean floor, and forgot to save the pasta water. I think it tasted fine, and The Hippy said he liked it, but my memory of that day has soured the thought of the recipe for me.
Moving on…
Photo from Fabulousfoods.com
The Hippy got it into his head that we need to make homemade pizza “from scratch.” I was a bit nervous since I’ve never been fond of handmade pizza and I’ve never made pizza dough before. I’m happy to report that thanks to Mitch’s Basic Pizza Dough and Easy Peesy Pizza Sauce, we made an amazing pizza. It was huge. It could easily make two small to medium pizzas or four personal pizzas. We opted to make four, so to speak, invisibly dividing the dough on our cookie sheet into quarters. The whole thing had pepperoni on it, but we also had olives (green and black), chopped garlic, and mushrooms in their own quarters (the fourth being plain pepperoni). I really thought this pizza was nearly perfect, but The Hippy wants to try to make something more Uno-like, since that’s what this pizza reminded us of (and our Uno, which was the location of many of our first dates, closed awhile ago). So I found this Pizzeria Uno Chicago Deep Dish Pizza recipe that we’re going to make next.
Coming Soon: Slow Cooker Swiss Steak and Spinach Orzo. At least.
