Daily Dish - Chicken, asparagus pizza

Well, now that the kitchen is done, we're back to being able to cook in it regularly.  It's a joy!  I'm making a conscious effort to keep the excessive number of appliances we have off the counters as much as possible.  I'm also making an effort to use them more! 

My little brother is general manager of a very high end restaurant, so qualifies as a mega-foodie.  As it turns out, he has been known to sneak around our kitchen, when visiting, to evaluate what appliances we might be missing, and then fills in the blanks for holiday gifts.  That is how we ended up with our bread machine.  We weren't particularly happy with the pizza dough recipe that came in the instructions booklet, so gave this one a shot, which turned out nicely.  I made a double batch so that we could freeze half for later.  I definitely enjoyed the convenience of being able to attend to the little one while the machine worked it's dough magic - hands free!  Of course, you could make your own pizza using a store bought dough or base as well.

Chicken asparagus pizza

- 1 cooked chicken breast, cut into cubes
- 4oz skinny asparagus (cut into 2" pieces)
- 1/2 medium onion (thinly sliced)
- 1/2 red bell pepper (sliced)
- 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup grated mozarella cheese
- 4 tsp olive tepenade

Pre-heat the oven to 425.  If using raw dough, roll out the dough and put onto the pizza pan.  Once the oven is at temp, put the prepared dough in the oven for about 5 minutes to crisp the top.  This prevents it from becoming soggy once the toppings are added.  Remove from oven and add toppings - use the olive tepenade as your base, then top with mozarella cheese, chicken, veggies, and sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top.  Bake for an additional 15 minutes.  Enjoy! 

Daily Travels - Chicago! (Part 1)

In an effort to get in a short trip while I'm still able to travel comfortably (i.e. not hauling around an extra 30lb of baby, water and blood volume), husband and I decided to take a long weekend in Chicago.  Neither of us had been before and I do love a good adventure in a new town.

I will say that TSA was surprisingly helpful.  Both LAX and O'Hare have the new back-spatter x-ray machines, which I was electing to avoid so as not to subject Peanut to any weird radiation.  At both airports, I told the TSA agents that I was pregnant and would like to bypass the machine, and they nicely obliged both times letting me go through the regular x-ray machines with not so much as a pat down.

First stop was actually doctors orders - get some deep dish pizza!

 Then we went straight on to Wrigley Field.  I'm only familiar with Dodgers Stadium, which is massive in comparison.  The game was relatively uneventful, but a nice experience to check out the stadium.

 
Day 2, we hopped over to the Skydeck at Willis (formerly Sears) Tower.  I'm not afraid of heights, but when you're suspended in a glass box, 1,300 feet in the air, it is vertigo inducing.  In fact, you almost have to question the sanity of whomever thought it was a good idea to build said box and, no matter how big the rivets that are holding it together, it's unnerving!  There is another picture of me standing and kinda freaking out (which husband found highly entertaining), but I discovered that sitting and then scooting backward on my butt was better.  Looking down was absolutely not an option. The views were truly amazing though, despite it being a little hazy.

After grabbing a Chicago staple - an Italian Beef Sandwich - for lunch, we headed on over to Lincoln Park.  Walking through that area really reminded me of some of the neighborhoods in London, and definitely seemed like somewhere I could live (months with several feet of snow, and other months with hot, humid weather notwithstanding).  We decided to check out the zoo - one of the oldest zoos in the country, with the added bonus of being free to visit!

We'll leave that as the end of part 1 for now.  We saw a lot in the 72 hours we were in the city, and I have 350-ish photos to process, so another installment to follow...  :)

Daily Dish - A bread maker and some pizza

I was just searching through my posts and I'm perplexed as to how on earth I have not posted about my bread maker.  You may remember the "great Santa Barbara pizza experiment" from last year.  My brother loves his bread maker and decided he needed to get me one for my birthday.  I'm not sure if it's a sign of age or a sign of loving food that makes kitchen appliances such an appealing gift for me.  Next though, I might be needing new kitchen counters as a gift so I can store all my awesome appliances - will have to put that on my wish list.

Since getting the bread maker, one of our favorite things has become home-made pizza.  I've heard that pizza can be a somewhat healthy and balanced thing to eat - especially if you're using all fresh ingredients instead of the oily, salty, instant-bloat version that you might order from Dominoes.  I was never the biggest fan of pizza, although I do believe I'm being converted.

This version was chicken with portobello mushroom, onion and olives, on a home made pizza sauce, then topped with spinach and mozzarella.  2 slices and I'm full!  That's better than ordering a large pizza with a girlfriend and realizing there's only 2 slices left to finish off the entire pie, so daring each other to do it, and then having to live with the regret.....ask me how I know.

We've also been making some pretty tasty loaves of bread.  The only thing we haven't figured out is how to store them so that they don't go bad quite as quickly.  It's also nice to know that as a rather sucky baker, I can totally cheat make delicious sweets using this machine - banana bread from scratch?  Sure!  It's not cheating if I put all the ingredients in the machine myself... 

Daily Dish - The great Santa Barbara pizza experiment

As I mentioned, husband and I drove up to Santa Barbara yesterday to visit my younger brother.  After the last week at work, this was a welcome break and I'm now feeling 10x more relaxed than I did when I left.  Santa Barbara is possibly one of the most quiet and relaxing places I've been.  Everything up there is so pretty - after all, it's not often that I'm sitting in the car waiting for somebody to grab cash at an ATM and inspired to take a picture of the bank (no, I wasn't casing the joint)!

My brother is the head food and beverages guy at the Harbor View Inn, which is a great location right across from the water.  Last night we had a chance to chow down and try some of his new cocktails at the restaurant there, plus an excellent meal finished off with a delicious Creme Brulee that had berries both on top and underneath!  If anything is going to send you over the edge and into a food coma, that might do it.

This morning, my brother popped some pizza dough in his bread maker, and then we headed out to the local Farmer's Market and the grocery store to get toppings.

For toppings, we had decided on the following:
- Onion (sauteed)
- Red and yellow bell pepper (sauteed)
- Jalapeno
- Mushroom
- Fresh tomato
- Sausage
- LOTS of cheese

First we rolled out the dough, into rather "unconventional" shapes that I called deformed, but my brother called "rustic".  We brushed each with olive oil then popped them into the oven for 3 or 4 minutes to crisp up a little bit.

Next step was to brush on marinara sauce that he made using tomato sauce, tomato paste, basil and oregano.  I figured the cheese would go on next, but he told me that without a pizza oven or pizza stone, the pizza can often get soggy in the middle.  So, we threw on all the toppings (except the cheese and tomato) and baked the pizzas for about 10 minutes.  The final step was to pull out the pizzas one last time, throw on the cheese, fresh tomato, and a little chopped garlic, then pop it back in the oven for 10 minutes more to finish them off.  They were delicious!  I'm not always a huge pizza person and often won't eat the crusts, but I can tell you that we pigged out on the three pizzas we made and there was nothing left on my plate when I was done!