grilled pizza, bomb ass pizza sauce recipe and s'mores

I'm a total lying liar about posting pictures. I thought I was going to be all super on top of shit and post beautiful edited photos in real time or something and you would all be jealous of our awesome pizza time. Instead....you will just be jealous three days later. Maybe.

So for weeks now I have been wanting to invite a coworker and his wife over for dinner because they are awesome and invited us to their beach house and we owe them. In my head I was going to make this crazy epic ravioli spread that consisted of five different times of mushroom ravioli. Because I'm crazy and think things that are totally unrealistic are straight up going to happen. Instead, my coworker who is rational and smart was like "hey, brilliant, why don't you just invite us over?" And I was like "oh yeah, you're a genius, let's make pizza."

So that's what happened. But it has been hotter than my damn armpits after doing 83930 chaturangas (that's some nerd yoga talk for all you yoga readers out there) and I'm like no way in hell are we turning on the oven to make pizza. But B is amazing and is like "I've made pizza on the grill and it's awesome let's do that." So we did.

Enter: a grill that somebody left outside our apartment for the using.

 

Also, the other day I discovered something amazing-most pizza places will sell you dough that you can take home and use to make your own pizza. We got two balls of dough that make 20" pizzas for $4. Then all we needed to do was supply the toppings. I rolled out all the dough into little individual pizzas, but then made the mistake of putting them in between ungreased wax paper and some of them stuck together. So if you don't do that, you will be in business. Pre-cook the rolled out pizza dough on the grill for a few minutes and then bring inside to add toppings.

 

I forgot to take pictures of the uncooked toppings because I was too busy eating at this point. But here is a picture of a cheese and green olive pizza. And when I say green olive, I mean the good kind of green olive, castelvetrano. The tomato sauce (recipe below) is delicious. America's Test Kitchen knows how to make a good pizza sauce (and crust, if you have the time).

 This one is an olive oil, truffle oil, roasted garlic and half arugula pizza. The dough for this one was a little bit thicker than the other ones. It was really good, but I like the thin crust better.

Our messy kitchen table and Gypsy trying to see if she can steal anything.

Bomb-Ass Pizza Sauce
adapted from America's Test Kitchen

• 1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, drained and liquid discarded
• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
• 2 medium garlic cloves
• 1 teaspoon table salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon fresh oregano

Put all of the ingredients into a food processor and blend until mixed but still semi chunky. The sauce seems kind of thin for a pizza sauce, but it ends up working. If you have any leftover sauce, it goes great over pasta or on pizza crust for dipping.

We ended up making 6 pizzas: three green olive and cheese with red sauce, one margheita with fresh basil, a plain cheese, and the truffle oil/arugula pizza.

After we digested the delicious pizza, we made s'mores over the leftover grill coals. I love s'mores. They are just so nostalgic and delicious. I always forget how much I like them until I make them. And while I am normally a dark chocolate lover, I have to say that milk chocolate is the only way to go with s'mores. Oh, and normal to gigantic sized marshmallows. Not the tiny ones that you put in hot chocolate (side eye to B).

So next time you're craving homemade pizza and it's too hot for your oven to be turned on, try grilling it. It tastes like a wood-fired pizza and is really easy and good. Plus, then you get to make individual sized pizzas and everybody gets their own topping.

this song is gorgeous and makes me want to get naked kind of

Well shit, I was actually busy at work today so I didn't have time to post. I'm totally obsessing over this song right now, it's gorgeous. And don't even tell me that some American Idol person covered it because she did not even come close to doing it justice, and I listened to her version first. She sucked. This one rocks. But p.s. don't bother trying to figure out the lyrics because they don't really make sense. It's just a gorgeous, swoon worthy song.

Have a good weekend! We're having a pizza part with friends and making s'mores! Pictures this weekend (probs).

xoxo
tara

that time i made homemade butter

I hate Paula Deen. Before you send me hate mail, hear me out. If my parents had told me that I could make a living eating butter, I would have. I might've had a heart attack by the time I was 40, but whatever. I love butter. I used to eat it plain when I was younger. Not, like, entire sticks at a time or anything, but just little bites. Anyway. This post was not supposed to turn into how much Paula Deen sucks for taking my dream job. What it was supposed to be about was butter. Glorious, glorious butter!! That I made! And it was the easiest thing ever. Seriously. Don't you roll your eyes at me, Robin. You just put it in a mixer and let it go for like 5 minutes. Plus, then you get to tell everyone you know that you just made butter. And you should probably be nominated to be on the cover of the Martha Stewart magazine because you are so crafty. Also, then you don't have to do the dishes because you just made butter and obviously that means someone else should be doing them for you.

Homemade Butter:

1 pint heavy whipping cream
2 tsp salt (optional)

Pour heavy whipping cream and salt into your mixer, food processor or blender. Also, B has claimed that he used to make butter by shaking a mason jar. That sounds like way too much work, but you can try it if you don't have any mixing appliances. Or make your kids do it for you if you're really mad at them.

Mix until it starts to solidify. It will look about the consistency of whipped cream. Scrape down the sides and keep going

 Starting to get chunkier. Keep going.

Eventually, you will start to see some liquid, which is buttermilk.

Side note: I just figured out the other day that buttermilk is the liquid you get from actual butter. I'm an idiot.

You can save the buttermilk to make ranch dressing or buttermilk pancakes. Or throw it away.

Anyway, once it gets to this point, stop mixing. Scoop the butter out of the mixer and squeeze. You will see some more buttermilk come out. Continue to squeeze the butter under running water, reshaping into a ball so it doesn't just squeeze out of your hands into your sink.

{I apologize I don't have a picture of me squeezing the butter. B was out of town, and my hands were covered in butter so I couldn't take pictures. Also, yes it is normal that the butter turns from a white liquid into a yellow ball. It's just the fat separating from the milk parts.}

Once the liquid running out of the butter is clear, you are done! Shape into a ball.
 

I had to do the squeezing step in two batches because I couldn't hold all of the butter. Which worked out fine, because I had decided beforehand that I really wanted to make chive butter. Have you ever had chive butter? It's delicious! You could also make garlic butter. Just sprinkle some chopped up chives into the butter and roll into a ball. Refrigerate, or spread on some freshly baked bread.

*The butter will keep for up to two weeks if it is refrigerated and wrapped in plastic wrap. Assuming you don't eat it all first.

You just made butter!

This was so much fun to make. It really did only take me about 10 minutes in total, and was so worth it. The butter is really creamy and delicious! I ate it on bread and my salmon that I had for dinner last night. I haven't tried melting it yet or putting it in cookies, but I bet it would be delicious.

my hair saga

I have this bad habit of dyeing my hair when I get super anxious. It's like I need to change something and be crazy or I'm going to freak out. Or sometimes I cut it. Once I let my friend cut my hair so short it was practically shaved. It was super easy to manage, but the growing out stage sucked. Hellooooo mullet. And then I dyed it hot pink. And later purple. Those were both *great* looks for me.

Anyway, a couple of months ago I dyed my hair kind of reddish. It was supposed to just be blonde highlights, but that didn't really work out. See Exhibit A:

exhibit A

Eventually it got toned down and became kind of blonde, but my hair is naturally brown so my roots were starting to show.

exhibit B

I liked it alright, but knew that I was going to need to either re-dye it blonde, dye it back to brown, or just suffer with ugly hair for awhile. I was kind of leaning towards ugly hair because I'm lazy, but my friend Simba begged me to let her dye my hair, so here's exhibit C:

exhibit C

I actually am loving it right now, even though I was alright with the blonde. I definitely can not pull off being a redhead. At least, I don't think so.

p.s. why do I always slightly close my right eye in every damn picture?!

thoughts on photo editing

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with photo editing. I hate that it is so overdone. That everything is so photoshopped, and most photos these days are not the one that came out of the camera. I think that to be a true photographer, you should be so talented that the photo editing is minimal, if at all. I even wrote a college paper once about how photography is ruining 'art' because it's allowing people to walk away from brushes and canvases and the pain and frustration of drawing something for hours and hours and having it still not be right. Don't get me wrong, I do love photography. I love looking back through photos of trips I've taken and food I've eaten and seeing people grow up right in front of your eyes. But I also took a (film) photography class in college and I loved it. It was black and white photography, and we got to develop our own photos and it was so much fun. It was so cool to watch a photo getting exposed and then getting to play around with the effects of over/under exposing a photo. And then getting to look through all the photos and pick which one you thought was the best of your own work to present was really awesome. I loved that I got to be critical, but for once in a constructive way. I could be proud of all my photos, but still use a critical eye to pick which one was the best. I think it was a really important lesson and I miss getting to do that. [After re-reading this paragraph, I'm realizing that there isn't much difference in editing a film photo and editing a digital photo. So now I'm not really sure what I'm complaining about. Hah.]

Anyway, I have terrible lighting in my apartment. As in, I have tried to drag lights from the living room into the kitchen when I'm cooking to try to take better photos. But the counter tops are not very deep, so it's hard to get good lighting on things. I take so many photos, but fail to post them because they are all just so blah and flat. Who wants to look at that? Not me. But I'm also cheap. I hate spending money on things, especially on something that I have been so adamantly against. Luckily, there is some great photo editing software out there-like PicMonkey. I finally decided I would try it out instead of being all judge-y. And I have to admit, I really like how the photos turned out. Also, you can upgrade and get touch up stuff that removes wrinkles and blemishes (if I could afford Photoshop, I would get it, because I watched a tutorial the other day and it can do some amazing things that would just be fun to play around with). But PicMonkey did the job. So check it out if you are slow to jump on the photo editing bandwagon like me.

I love seeing 'before and after' shots, so  here are some that I took of stir fry we made the other night. Except I just realized they are in the wrong order, as in 'after and before' instead. Oops.

after editing

before editing. uuuuugly

after editing

before editing

I actually kind of like both of these ginger photos, but it was fun playing around with the settings. The green bean one is my favorite. It makes such a difference! I can see why people would get addicted to editing their photos.

I'm definitely going to have to eat some humble pie, because writing this post made me realize the similarities between digital and film photo editing.  Damn, I hate being wron.

 Ed: I forgot that I had another point I wanted to make-I love that the photo editing makes good photos available to people who don't have the time to set up a mini studio in their house. I would love to be able to take straight out of the camera, untouched photos. But since I don't have professional lighting equipment and I'm assuming most people don't either, it's nice that PicMonkey will let me fix my photos to look halfway decent. Okay. End of my spazzy rant.

Let me know if you have any questions about PicMonkey. I'm not an expert or anything, but I would love to see photos you edited!

happy mother's day (a day early) and stuff

So yesterday I was reading Xae's post and it reminded me of an ecard that I made. In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I would adjust it a little bit. The first one is the original one.

Also, yesterday I was on The Twitter and saw a tweet from the Dose Girls that led me over to a beautiful post Ashley (and Lisa) had written about her mom passing away. It was so sweet, well written and sad. But she had this one part that she absolutely nailed. I couldn't have said it better, so I want to quote it here:

"There are the numbers of the days that slip into a count of the weeks, which amount to the passing of months – starting at a crawl but before you know it, fly by at a run. And pretty soon you arrive at a year. Before too long, not having a mother anymore is no longer your first thought upon waking. It becomes, perhaps, your second or third thought, until it hits you mid-morning or even mid-afternoon. Then, on some months, the 15th slides right on by and you realize later; oh my, it was ten months ago yesterday, wasn’t it?"

It's just so right on. At first, you carry your grief with you in front of your heart, like a shield. But a really shitty shield because it's not protecting you from anything, it's making you more vulnerable. And then years go by and the grief is no longer in front of your heart, it's inside it. The worst part for me is when I forget that she's gone. I've had it happen so many times that I hear a song on the radio and I think "oh, I should call mom and tell her." And then....and then I go through the process of remembering all over. The ironic part is that there isn't even a number I could call (she didn't have a cell phone). But the re-remembering is so awful. The grief and memories come at me in fast-forward and it happens in matter of seconds, and then my brain is caught back up again and goes "Oh. Yeah. I forgot. I can't call her." And that is the reason I have had times where I'm driving down the freeway, tears streaming down my face.

Part of me wants to hate Mother's Day. It's shoved down our throats with the commercials, snarky ecards (ha), flower displays, candy, restaurant specials, etc. It'd be like celebrating Independence Day in jail. The irony is just too much sometimes.

But then I try to remind myself that she's not the only person who would be celebrated today, if she were still alive. There are millions and millions of mothers out there who deserve to be celebrated. Not just for pushing a huge bowling ball out of their hoo-ha (although, honestly, that could be reason enough in and of itself), but for the mothering part.

For packing school lunches. For checking the cereal boxes to make sure it had 9g of sugar or less. For learning how to french braid. For reading to me and passing on a passion that is like life itself. For coloring with me almost every time I asked. For taking me to get my ears pierced. For playing piano and singing and being so great at it I swear I'm not from the same genes because I can't carry a tune to save my life. For all those countless road trips and vacations we went on as a family. For teaching me how to cook and do my own laundry. For deciding to learn how to rollerblade at the age of 40. For saving some of (if not all) the crappy artwork and homework we brought home. For coming to my soccer, basketball, baseball, gymnastics, dance etc. performances. For teaching me how to love others and be compassionate. For not yelling at me that time I dropped the meatloaf on the kitchen floor. For recycling stamps, because who does that? For raising me in a loving, crazy, fun, amazing, wonderful home. I know how lucky I am to be your daughter. Thank you for having me and sacrificing many sleepless nights, among many other things. I wish I could be pampering you today. You deserve it.

I love you and miss you every single day.

Happy Mother's day to all the wonderful moms.

I always try to figure out what she's saying here.

some badass words i learned

The other day I came across some awesome words via Shoko. This first one is my favorite, because it is such a relief to find out I am not secretly suicidal.

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Do you guys ever experience this? It's like if I get reeeeeealy close to the edge, I start to think how cool it would be to jump and try to convince myself I won't get hurt.

But I also get the urge when I am sitting in the Emergency Exit row next to the door on airplanes. Like you kiiiind of want to just open the door and see what happens. I mean, I know that it would be physically impossible (or at least very very very hard) to open the door while flying due to the differences in air pressure. Plus, I wouldn't actually open it, it's just this bizarre, unexplainable urge. Just me? Am I hearing crickets? Crap. Don't worry, I promise I won't sit next to the door anymore. I like sitting in the middle because then I can talk to people. And honestly, I don't even really like the E.E. row unless I can put my stuff under the seat (David Sedaris agrees with me, the bulkhead sucks). And B likes to lean up against the window to sleep. But I can't sleep on airplanes anyway, so the middle seat is fine. Except for when we flew back from Jazz Fest because I was in a really bad mood and didn't want to talk to anyone; I wanted to look out the window. I could stare out of an airplane window for hours.

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 This happens to me all the effing time. I'm convinced there is a nerve trapped under some bone in
each of my elbows because my hands fall asleep all the goddamn time. Also, my funny bone is ridiculously sensitive. About 6 months ago I barely hit my left arm funny bone on a chair and my pinkie and ring finger went numb and they're still numb.

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Uhhh yes. But mostly just because I want to eat their food.

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There is just something so fun about seeing peoples' lives through their windows. I feel like Peter Pan.

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How is this word not used more often? It's so cool!

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Hey, practically everybody in my office! If people are having a conversation and don't include you in it, it's probably for a reason!

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There's another phrase for that. It's called OCD.