Grilled Pizza

Grilled pizza is kind of amazing.  The crust gets nice and crispy on the outside, but soft and chewy on the inside.  The grill gives it this delicious charred flavor that you just can't get out of an oven.  Plus, nothing beats not having to turn out the oven and heat up the house when it's already 104* outside.  I like making "specialty" pizzas when we grill pizza, but this would be just as good with pepperoni, or whatever other kind of toppings you want.  

Grilled Pizza

What You Need:

1/2 cup warm water

1 1/4 tsp active dry yeast

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

Olive oil

Sun-dried tomato pesto (or other pizza sauce of your choice)

Caramelized onions, artichoke hearts and goat cheese (or pizza toppings of your choice)

What You Do:

Turn your oven on to warm (200*) for about 5 minutes, then turn it off.  Sprinkle yeast over warm water and let sit for about 5 minutes.  Mix together with flour and salt until a rough, craggy mess forms.  Turn the dough and any loose bites out onto a lightly floured counter and knead until the dough becomes smooth and elastic.  Coat a bowl with olive oil, place the dough in the bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  Put the dough in the oven and let sit for 30 minutes, or until the dough has doubled.  

Once the dough has risen, roll out into a circle about 1/2 inch thick on a lightly floured counter.  At this point you also want to turn on the grill to medium high.  Brush olive oil on one side of the dough and put it olive oil side down onto the grill.  Brush some olive oil on the top side of the dough.  Once the dough bubbles on the surface and there are dark grill marks on the bottom of the crust pull off the grill.  Put it cooked side up on a pizza stone or baking sheet and put the toppings on the crust.  Gently slide the pizza back onto the grill and cook for a few more minutes until the bottom has dark grill marks.   

And there you have it, grilled pizza.  It really could not be easier.  If you don't feel like grilling you can always make this in the oven.  Bake the pizza at 450* for 17 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and crispy.  But I highly, highly suggest you try grilling pizza at least once.  It will change your life.  Seriously.

Cheesy Broccoli Orzo

I'm usually not very creative when it comes to side dishes.  Typically I'll throw a quick salad together or heat up some green beans and call it good.  That gets boring day after day, let me tell you.  This cheesy broccoli orzo was a nice change of pace from my typical side dishes, and one that I will definitely be making more often.

Cheesy Broccoli Orzo

What you need:

1 cup orzo

1 head broccoli, chopped

1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

1/2 cup milk

Salt and pepper to taste

What you do:

Add orzo to large pot of boiling water.  After a few minutes add the chopped broccoli in with the orzo. Cook until the broccoli and orzo is tender.  Drain well and return the broccoli/orzo to the pot.  Mix in the cheese and milk and stir to combine.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  I didn't add any salt because the cheese made it plenty salty, but I added a bit of pepper.  At this point you could also add 1-2 tablespoons of butter to make it taste a little more rich but it's definitely not necessary.

This was so good, and even easier than throwing together a salad!  This will be making an appearance in my regular side dish rotation.  Next time I might add in some toasted pine nuts for some added texture.  You could also make this with rice, or any other shape pasta that you have on hand and it would be just as delicious.  If you make it with rice I would cook the broccoli separately and mix it together after they are both cooked.

I served this for dinner with salmon and brussels sprouts, and then I ate the leftovers for lunch for the next few days.  Delicious!

Easy Breakfast Burritos

There is something about fall and winter that makes me crave breakfast.  For most of the year I'm not a huge breakfast fan.  I'll have some fruit or a quick smoothie, but I rarely wake up in the middle of July and say "Mmm... I really want a big breakfast this morning."  In the fall and winter though, when it's colder, I start craving a big traditional breakfast.  Eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, waffles.  It's all good to me.

Several weeks ago was the first day of the college football season.  And in case you didn't know, Cole probably loves college football even more than he loves me.  And if not, it's a very close second.  Don't believe me?  Go check out his college blog here and then come back.  Don't worry, I'll wait.

Okay welcome back.  Anyway, since we were up early to watch all 3 hours of College Gameday I thought I might as well make us breakfast.  I knew I needed to make something that Cole could eat with one hand so he could still write down all the picks, and I knew it needed to be delicious because, well, who wants to eat something that tastes like crap?  Not me.  So I decided on breakfast burritos.  The best part about this recipe?  It is delicious.  The second best part about this recipe?  It makes A TON and you can freeze them individually so you can grab one running out the door to work during the week.  Also, this recipe is more of a method.  You can put whatever you want in there.  For mine, I like to go heavy on the "extras" but that's because I don't like eggs too much.  Yes, I know that I'm weird.  I've accepted that.

Breakfast Burritos

What you need:

Eggs

Potatoes

Bacon

Sausage

What you do:

Cook the sausage, and set it aside in a large bowl.  Cook the bacon and cut it up into small/medium sized pieces and put in the bowl with the sausage.  Drain off most of the bacon grease, but leave just a little bit in there for the potatoes.  Cube up several potatoes, season with salt, pepper and garlic powder.  Cook the potatoes in the bacon grease until they are nice and soft and slightly crispy on the outside.  Add the potatoes to the bowl with the bacon and sausage and mix everything together.  Scramble the eggs.     

Then you just put some eggs in a big burrito style tortilla, add some of the filling, top with a little bit of salsa if you want, roll up the burrito and enjoy.   

Just as an example; for my burritos I used 9 eggs, 5 medium sized potatoes, 2/3 lb sausage and 2/3 package bacon and I made 10 burritos.  It should have made 12 but I made two really, really big ones at first on accident.

And like I said before, you can freeze the leftover burritos.  Just wrap them individually in saran wrap and put them all in a ziploc freezer bag.  You can pull them out and microwave them individually. 

 

Spicy Shrimp Tacos

This recipe is so simple to put together.  I make it for weekend lunches or a quick weeknight dinner all the time.  The best part is that it's as easy to make for 1 to 2 people as it is for a big group.  I like to add guacamole, cilantro and red onions to my taco but sometimes I get fancy and make a quick mango salsa.  Sometimes I also get crazy and fry up some bacon and crumble it over the top of the shrimp.  However, I was making these at 1:30ish and it was our first meal of the day so Cole was about to faint from starvation (or so he said) so I just made these quick and dirty.

Side Note: We like our food spicy so if you don't you may not want to add the full amount of spices I have listed (particularly the cayenne pepper).

Spicy Shrimp Tacos

What you need:

Shrimp, peeled and deveined (you'll need 3-4 per taco)

1/2 small red onion

Cilantro

2 small limes

3 cloves garlic finely chopped (for 20 shrimp, use more or less depending on how many shrimp you are using)

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp salt

2 tsp cayenne pepper

Olive oil

 What you do:

Season shrimp with garlic powder, black pepper, salt, cayenne pepper and the juice of one whole lime. Heat olive oil in a medium pan.  Sautee garlic in the pan for a couple minutes, then add the shrimp.  Cook until done (approx. 5-7 minutes).  Serve in warm tortilla (corn or flour).  Like I said, I like to serve mine with guacamole and top with red onion and cilantro.