Homemade Chicago Style Movie Night

I like a good deal. Especially when a good deal can be had at Williams-Sonoma, one of my favorite stores. When Holly & I visited Chicago, we had world famous deep dish pizza. In my book, you pretty much can not go wrong with pizza. I like thin crust style, New York style, traditional Italian style and deep dish. When I saw these custom mini deep dish pizza pans on sale, I knew I needed a set.



I started out actually with the Williams-Sonoma test kitchen basic deep dish pizza dough recipe. I adjusted it some, replacing the refined sugar with some honey, and adding some garlic salt to the dough to give it some additional flavor. This dough turned our perfectly, and it was light and chewy, yet with a crust after the necessary proofing in the oven and placement in the well oiled pans.



I like combination, so I picked up some good organic turkey italian style sausage. I also cooked down and caramelized a bunch of onion, more garlic, red peppers and mushrooms. Holly is a straight up cheese girl, so she got some homemade "Quatro Formaggio." A healthy dose of dried herbs when in both kinds of pizza.



Homemade deep dish meat lovers.



Homemade deep dish cheese lovers. This made a nice Friday night evening in, making these with Holly, having a nice salad with it, and watching movies in our PJ's. The slightly adjusted dough recipe follows.

Deep Dish Pizza Dough:

1 T active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm water (105° to 110°F)
2 T honey
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. garlic salt

Directions:

To prepare the dough, in the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the yeast, water and sugar and whisk by hand until dissolved. Let stand for 5 minutes, then add the vegetable oil, flour and salt. Place the bowl on the mixer, attach the dough hook and knead on low speed until smooth and pliable, about 5 minutes.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface and divide into 4 equal pieces. Knead each piece by hand for 30 seconds, shaping the dough into a ball and dusting with a little flour if needed. Dust a baking sheet with flour and place the dough on the sheet. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let the dough rise at room temperature for 2 hours.

Position a rack in the lower third of an oven and preheat to 450°F.

Divide the remaining olive oil among 4 mini deep-dish pizza pans (about 2 tsp. per pan), thoroughly greasing each pan. Place a dough ball in each pan and, using your fingers, press the dough in an even layer across the bottom and up the sides of the pans.

Place favorite cheese directly on each pressed dough round. Top with the mozzarella, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and favorite toppings, dividing evenly. Using the back of a spoon, spread 1/2 cup of the tomato pizza sauce on top of each pizza. If desired, place more toppings on the sauce.

Bake the pizzas until the crusts are golden, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove the pizzas from the oven and let stand for 5 minutes before serving. Makes 4 mini deep-dish pizzas.

Lavender!

Last weekend Dan and I went to Sequim with our friend Yvonne to go see the lavender fields all in bloom. It is a long drive and ferry commute to get there only to be very disappointed if the fields have already been harvested...so we specifically chose this weekend because it is the week before their annual festival guaranteeing fewer people but with the full effect of the beauty. Unfortunately mother nature wasn't in on our plan and the fields weren't quite all in full bloom since we've had such a cold spring/early summer. But none the less, it was beautiful and so fun to be "in the country" for a day.

Here we are trying to cut some lavender and avoid getting stung by bees...






There were flowers everywhere, and quaint little houses.








I love the pattern the mounds make.



Nana is what we called my maternal grandma, and what the grandkids call my mom. This lavender is almost as lovely as my mom aka Nana :)



We ultimately saw two farms the second one had a little pond with frogs! These little guys were awfully loud for how small they were.




And finally a picture of a bee!



It was a beautiful day with great company!

Surprise Weekend Getaway!

Two Friday's ago I got a cryptic email from Dan that said: "Be sure to pack your bags, we are going away somewhere fun Saturday afternoon, night and Sunday" I jumped in my seat for joy, I may have even given a little squeal! Of course I quickly replied wondering where we were going, only with a little prodding did he finally tell me we were headed to La Conner.

Of course we'd been there before for the tulip festival and other occasions, but never had we spent the night. We stayed in a fun little Bed & Breakfast with a quaint garden and views of farm fields. We spent the afternoon roaming around the town in and out of shops, eating ice cream, discovering little hidden nooks and soaking up the beautiful day.










Next time we thought we'd stay here... :)



Dan made me take a picture of this.



We went back to our room with our purchases (Dan and his cookbooks!!) and hung out for a bit until dinner time.



We ate at a great place called Nell Thorn. I had an amazing steak and homemade fries with a WONDERFULLY fresh green salad with pumpkin seed oil dressing. So yummy. Dan had crab cakes (he raved and raved over them) and a steak salad. For dessert we had a small hazelnut brownie with homemade vanilla ice cream. We were pleasantly full and ready to turn in after a fun day.

Thank you so much honey for the thoughtful getaway! Life is so much fun spending it together.

Seattle Rock N' Roll Half Marathon

I'll have to admit, I approached this half marathon with some trepidation. I've been dealing with a sustained running injury since 4/14/11, and it made an impact on my first half marathon up in Vancouver BC on 5/1/11. I've been juggling strength training, physical therapy, sports medicine appointments and the gamut to finally diagnose a stress fracture and a labral tear in my right hip. Time will let it all heal over.

I decided to run this half marathon in intervals, and ease up on the impact on my hip. At the end of this race, I shaved 27:01 off the time of my last run, and improved in excess of shaving 2 minutes off each mile. I approached this entire run out the gate with running for 4 miles, then walking for 1 mile. Did that the entire time. At the end of the race. I had no leg, hip, knee, foot, shin, or calf fatigue. I was more than ecstatic with my results, and it's nice to be back running again.



New personal best time. I'll admit, I was proud of my personal accomplishment.



At the race start line, down in Tukwila / Southcenter WA. The run was gorgeous all along Lake Washington, Seward Park, 1-5 Freeway in the tunnel, and ended just south of downtown at Qwest Field.



Patrick, Noelle and I, getting ready to run.



My running and pace buddy Molly. A good friend, and former colleague of mine from when I worked at First Heritage Bank. We did the whole race together in intervals. This was her first half marathon in a very long time. Great company and conversation the entire morning.



All of us meeting up, post our individual times for a team shot. It was a fantastic morning. Looking forward to my next half marathon in a few weeks in Morgan UT with Holly, siblings, and my cousin to name a few.

Major Accomplishments!

This weekend we celebrated 2 major accomplishments, 1- Dan ran his fastest half marathon 2- I finished my quilt!!! Okay, so my accomplishment isn't quite as grand as Dan's but I'm still super proud of myself for FINALLY finishing it. I don't even want to tell you when I started this, honestly I can't even remember it's so embarrassing. I want to thank Kelly and Rebecca for helping me with lessons, advice and supplies I couldn't have done it without them! Here are some photos.

Home Cooked Good Eats!

Having served an LDS mission for two years myself, YEARS AGO, I find that feeding the local LDS missionaries in our home from time to time is the least I can do. I'm not at all interested in going on out missionary teaching lessons these days. But, I know how tight the purse strings are on a mission for these full time volunteers. When someone invites you over for dinner, especially when you have been working hard, biking all day, and wanting a good meal, cooking some good, from scratch food to be inhaled by six 19-21 year olds is often well received.



These days it's all about cooking healthy. No exception with these oven roasted tomatoes I served as a side.



Dan's Oven Roasted Tomatoes:

18 Roma tomatoes
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Sea salt
Fresh cracked pepper
1 tsp Thyme

Cut tomatoes in half length wise, and scoop out all the flesh. Arrange on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle liberally with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Sprinkle with thyme and roast at 275 degrees for 2-3 hours. Serve with chopped basil and parmesan shreds.



I caramelized a bunch of onions, garlic, leek and fennel and made a ground sirloin and chorizo meatloaf with roasted potatoes as well.



Salad and homemade green goddess, creamy italian style dressing.



Also, what's not to like about a from scratch espresso infused chocolate cake, covered in bittersweet chocolate-espresso butter cream. This got inhaled! I certainly appreciated good meals as an LDS missionary. I know these six volunteers appreciated what we were able to provide as well. I enjoy doing this for them.

Spicy Roasted Potato Salad

Did some more playing around with Latin themed food this past weekend for Memorial Day. We decided to make a potato salad for our BBQ with friends. I wanted to make something that had more zip to it, and not the traditional egg and mayonnaise based potato salad. I made a roasted potato salad with some tomatillo-cilantro dressing. The warm roasted potatoes, soaked up the spicy buttermilk based dressing. This is definitely something I'll make again.



Roasted Potato Salad with Tomatillo Dressing

8 cups of cubed / diced baby red (or other) potatoes
Olive oil
Sea salt
Fresh pepper

Liberally coat uniformly diced potatoes in olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast in a 450 degree oven for 30-40 minutes, until roasted and crunchy on the outside and tender on the inside. Allow to slightly cool. Meanwhile prepare the tomatillo dressing

Cilantro-Tomatillo Dressing

1 buttermilk ranch dressing packet
½ C buttermilk
½ C sour cream
3 large tomatillos
1/2 bunch cilantro
2 cloves garlic
1 poblano / anaheim pepper
1 lime juiced & zested
1 jalapeno seeded
Sea salt to taste
Fresh pepper to taste

Place all ingredients in a food processor and thoroughly combine. If dressing is too spicy, add some more sour cream. Start with ½ cup of the tomatillo dressing, and dress potato salad to your desired creaminess, add more as needed. This dressing recipe will make more than what you need for the potatoes. The remaining dressing can be used on green salad.

A New Take On PicNic Bean Salad

So this past Memorial Day weekend, we had a few parties we went to. A friend of mine from High School & Utah, shared some recipes with me. I decided to take them as base, and adjust them to my liking. I had fun coming up with this new Latin inspired bean salad for our picnic with friends.



Dan's Latin Inspired Bean Salad

1 can organic black beans drained
1 can organic garbanzo beans drained
1 can organic kidney beans drained
1 can organic white or shopeg corn
1 bunch of green onions, diced
1 small red onion, diced
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/2 bunch cilantro, diced
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
Zest from 1 lemon
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tsp cumin
salt & pepper to taste

Drain canned vegetables. Place in a large bowl with onions, cilantro and tomatoes. The tomatoes can be raw. I typically roast them off for an hour or so, once halved, as I like the concentrated & caramelized flavor of oven roasted tomatoes. Juice lemon. If not enough juice to make 1/3 cup, add red wine vinegar. Add olive oil, zest, salt, pepper and cumin and whisk to make a vinaigrette. Pour over vegetables and let marinate for an hour at room temperature. Serve at room temperature.