Blog Archives
The Snack Report: Marshmallow Crispy Oreos
I have a lot of respect for Oreos. Their original, chocolate cookie/vanilla cream flavor is beloved by millions; they could easily rest on their laurels and do nothing more than make those cookies (and maybe double stuff too) and still probably make a bajillion dollars. But they don’t let being America’s #1 cookie make them lazy. They’re always coming out with new flavors to tempt our taste buds. They currently have 8 flavors out (in addition to the regular one), with the two newest being Marshmallow Crispy and Cookie Dough. We recently bought the Marshmallow Crispy flavor to try and let you know what we think.
Pizza Lab #12: Pumpkin Pie Pizza
Pizza Lab is a fun theoretical column in which Meg A. and Erik S. explore their innermost passion for baking and eating pizzas. It exists purely for the sake of experimenting in the kitchen. It may not necessarily be cost-effective everytime, so don’t try this at home kids.
Poor, poor Thanksgiving. It gets the shaft compared to many of the big holidays. While once a celebration of being humble and grateful for what you have in your life, regardless of any lifestyle or belief or faction, it has instead devolved into a tradition of cramming as much food down your throat as physically possible and then complaining about it later. It’s a shame considering it’s one of my favorite holidays due to the rustic nature and themes going on in its season. But unfortunately consumerism and merchandising companies have decided to rename Thanksgiving Day to Get Great Black Friday Deals With Doorbusters Savings Starting 5PM Thursday Day. For the rest of us who still love the message of the holiday, there’s still much joy to be had in all the various traditional, yummy foods that we partake in. As mentioned from time to time, Meg and I already did a Thanksgiving pizza earlier this year (in May for some reason), so if we wanted to do a timely Pizza Lab, we had to be creative. The product was another dessert pizza that fit well into the Thanksgiving season.
Erik: Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays, and Thanksgiving Pizza was definitely one of my favorites that we made. But why on Earth did we have to go and make it in May? Haha.
Meg: Yeah, that was kind of a bad call on our part. But we were young and excited about fun pizza choices. We weren’t thinking ahead.
Erik: Ah well. In the very least, it led to our latest experiment, Pumpkin Pie Pizza.
Meg: Yup! While we never originally intended our pizza labs to correspond to the occasions surrounding their creation, it kind of just happened naturally. In the summer we were in the mood for grilled pizza, in November we wanted pumpkin pie.
Erik: That doesn’t sound unintentional to me… Heh.
Meg: Well you know what I mean. When we started pizza lab it wasn’t like, “We must make a pizza that corresponds to its proper month.” Though if we had the original Thanksgiving pizza probably wouldn’t have been in April.
Erik: What a sad thought! To have been deprived of it until just now…
Meg: True. It’s for the best we made it when we did.
Pizza Lab #10: Apple Crisp Pizza
Pizza Lab is a fun theoretical column in which Meg A. and Erik S. explore their innermost passion for baking and eating pizzas. It exists purely for the sake of experimenting in the kitchen. It may not necessarily be cost-effective everytime, so don’t try this at home kids.
It’s interesting to think there’s been ten Pizza Labs already. One a month, and we’ve got plenty more in the pipeline, trust me. That brings me to our first Fall-themed Pizza Lab! One of my favorite Fall foods/crops is apples. And actually not just Fall-wise, apples are some of my favorite food period, since they’re a delight to eat. A good apple is crisp, sweet, refreshing and juicy. Eating one is so frigging good that it’s basically like eating and drinking at the same time, considering how juicy and pleasant they are compared to some of your less juice-filled fruits (I’m looking at you, mangosteen). One perennial apple dish we all enjoy this time of year is none other than apple crisp, a delicious baked amalgamation of oats, sugar, spices, and apple slices. Which incidentally sounds way too much like some sort of stupid autumnal nursery rhyme adage, but I digress. This was the perfect opportunity to try and bring apples and pizza together in some holy-ass food matrimony.
Erik S. So we have been pretty much drowning in apples lately.
Meg A. That we have. Though I think “crushed by” is the more appropriate term since we didn’t make enough cider to drown in. But I’m pretty sure a sink full of apples would do some damage.
Erik S.This is true. And all being said, I’m not complaining either. Apples are my favorite fruit afterall.
Meg A. They are really yummy. Though actually, we had the idea for this pizza way before the onslaught of apples occurred.
Erik S. Yeah it’s going way back actually. This pizza was conceived in thought back when we were discussing our pretzel pizza.
Meg A. Yup! I’m really glad we saved it for its own pizza though.
Erik S. Yeah, it was a long time coming since apple season was months away at that point, but it was worth it. I am definitely spoiled, having an apple tree in the yard.
Meg A. You are very spoiled. Some of us actually have to leave our driveways to go get apples.
Erik S. Well I also don’t eat apples the rest of the year, so it balances out.
Meg A. I suppose.
Pizza Lab #8: Chinese Food Pizza
Pizza Lab is a fun theoretical column in which Meg A. and Erik S. explore their innermost passion for baking and eating pizzas. It exists purely for the sake of experimenting in the kitchen. It may not necessarily be cost-effective everytime, so don’t try this at home kids.
It’s one of the more unfortunate stereotypes in modern society that pizza is a fast food. The notion of fast food brings to mind images of maniacal corporations and mostly-plastic hamburgers which have about the same nutritional value on your body as a swift kick in the balls. Technically, fast food used to literally mean “fast” food; it was food prepared quickly, presented in a cheap, efficient fashion so as to be eaten on the run. While not all fast food is necessarily terrible and disgusting, the fast food everyone has come to know and love (and hate) is a bit of an anomaly in our civilization in how bad it is for you, and how gross it secretly is. Despite that, not all quickly-prepared food has to be awful. This brings me back to my original point, that pizza is often unfairly lumped into the same category as trashgarbage like the McRib or the Krispykreme Burger, just because it is technically a “fast food”. We all know pizza is serious business. There’s other foods that are considered fast foods, despite not really deserving the name. Our Americanized version of Chinese food is another perennial favorite of cheap slackers who don’t want to dine in, to have this dubious genre. But… what if… the two were combined into one thing?! Would time stop because of the deliciousness?! Would everyone stop eating every other source of food?!
Nah, it’s basically just a pizza crust with Sesame Chicken on it.
Chinese Food Pizza
Erik S. So looking back at our paperwork, here’s some of the comments: “Nothing special. Was too much work for just okay results. Gained nothing by being put on dough.” Those aren’t particularly positive…
Meg A. If i recall it started out okay, but then got meh as we went along.
Erik S. Yeah i think it began promising but didn’t pay off.
Meg A. Yeah…
Erik S. Hmm… what was the inspiration for this pizza anyway? Did we have anything more profound than just “pizza and chinese food are both delicious”?
Meg A. I think I originally thought of sweet and sour chicken pizza just because I’d been craving sweet and sour chicken, but we didn’t think that’d work. But we still wanted to try a chinese food pizza.
Erik S. Ah yeah, because of the flavor of sweet and sour. Though admittedly, the wannabe sesame chicken sauce I made wasn’t too compatible either. We should’ve just made sweet and sour. At least we could’ve satisfied your craving…
Pizza Lab #6: Pretzel Pizza
Pizza Lab is a fun theoretical column in which Meg A. and Erik S. explore their innermost passion for baking and eating pizzas. It exists purely for the sake of experimenting in the kitchen. It may not necessarily be cost-effective everytime, so don’t try this at home kids.
One of my favorite tags here is the crazy crossovers tag. It’s reserved for the delightful results of worlds colliding.. Unsurprisingly, Pizza Lab uses this tag everytime just because that’s really the basic gist of the column, pizza crossovers with other foods. This edition is no different, but to me feels like a true crossover because of the nature of the experiment. Some of the previous labs have been great, but weren’t particularly outlandish with regards to the foods involved. Our Pretzel Pizza in this Pizza Lab saw two classic snack foods combine in a way we didn’t think possible. We changed things up a bit, and it felt pretty special as far as pizza experiments go. The results were certainly worth it (after a ton of work).
Pretzel Pizza
Erik S. So this was our second dessert pizza that we’ve done. It was, what do they call it? A labor of love. Or no, an enormous pain in the asshole. That’s the term I was thinking of.
Meg A. Haha yeah…
Erik S. But my God was it worth it.
Meg A. Indeed. I wish it hadn’t been so much work so we might actually make it again. I was sad when I finished the last piece because I knew more than likely it wouldn’t be made again.
Erik S. Well, never say never… but yeah, let’s never make it again, haha.
Meg A. In fairness, if we always made our own dough this pizza wouldn’t have seemed like that much more work. But we’re lazy, so yeah.
Erik S. Well, if we made our own dough, we also wouldn’t have made it through six Pizza Labs.
Meg A. This is true.
Erik S. There’s a reason we buy our dough from pizzerias.
Meg A. Yes, because we’d rather spend $3 on pre-made dough than 3 hours on making our own.
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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