Blog Archives
Cheese Review: Goat’s Milk Ricotta
Last week I told of our adventures in Limburger cheese – a cheese that we ordered special from the internet. This cheese was a much more spur of the moment purchase. A few weekends ago on our way to the Garlic Festival we visited a local dairy farm. I mostly just wanted to hang out with the goats, but we also wanted to buy some super fresh cheese.
The cheese is that way guys!
It was really nice there because they had a large selection of fresh cheeses made from cow, sheep, and goat milk. They also had fresh milk, butter, and eggs. We spent a really long time in front of the refrigerator case trying to decide which cheese to try. We probably would have bought more if we’d remembered to bring an insulated bag. But we didn’t want to risk buying a lot of cheese and having it all go bad sitting in the car all day. Anyway, after a lot of debate we finally decided to buy the goat’s milk ricotta.
Pizza Lab #9: Three-Cheese Pesto Grilled 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.
I’m a big fan of Autumn, most of my friends know this. I recently went on about this in my pumpkin spice article. Despite this, September always was a bittersweet month, since Summer is still my favorite time of year no matter what. Halloween and pumpkins are nice, but IMO it’s not quite worth the loss of wearing nothing but t-shirts and driving with the windows down. So before the end of Summer, Meg and I wanted to do one last grilled pizza before temperatures dropped back into the 50s and 60s, making grilling your foods inappropriate and silly (unless of course you live in the south where it’s probably state-law to never go more than a month without igniting your barbecue). We grow lots of basil every summer, and thus make a lot of pesto each year. This combined with the fact that our last grilled pizza almost resembled a panino sandwich in texture made us realize we absolutely needed to make some sort of Tuscan pesto chicken panini inspired pizza. And while this was one of the more tame ideas for a Pizza Lab, it ended up being delicious to the point of borderline sexy.
Three-Cheese Pesto Grilled Pizza
Erik S. So this pizza was pretty okay I guess.
Meg A. Just okay?
Erik S. Sorry, that was a typo… So this pizza was OH MY GOD IT WAS SO OH MY GOD.
Meg A. Haha, that’s better. This pizza was indeed pretty magical. But we knew it was gonna be awesome from the beginning.
Erik S. Magical is a good way to describe it. Only pure magic could have produced such euphoria.
Meg A. Yeah, in our heads (and our noses) we had a pretty good inkling it was gonna be a sheer delight. It’s also probably the most decadent pizza we’ve made yet
Erik S. It’s interesting too considering it’s one of the least outlandish ones we’ve made too.
Meg A. True. It’s the most traditional-ish.
Erik S. Hm. Looking back at the photos is taking me back. Oh man… We need to relive that pizza some day. I’m feeling feelings.
Meg A. Do you need a minute? Don’t forget to lock your door…
Cheat Codes: Growing Your Own Herbs (the legal kind)
I think it’s safe to say that as a general rule, people like it when their food tastes good. One easy way to achieve this is by using herbs and spices when you cook. Unfortunately, going to buy dried herbs and spices is often a traumatic experience because of how expensive so many of them are. Though I suppose it’s not all that shocking considering that it was the spice trade that ruled the world for awhile, and even led to the discovery of our country (that would be America). For the most part you’re stuck turning to others for your spice supply needs, but luckily herbs are nice and easy to grow at home.
This yummy chicken dish was made using homegrown herbs.
Guys, Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies Really Aren’t That Difficult
Let me take you back in time a bit. It’s the year 1950. Truman is President, your only fear is Communism, and everyone has a bar in their living room. It was a simpler time. Maybe not necessarily a better time, since my main segue here involves the classic stereotype of the kitchen housewife. Obviously women’s rights weren’t exactly at the forefront of society at the time, but one thing they did right back then were the old standby dessert favorite, chocolate chip cookies. You could always count on mom, apron and oven mitts in hand, to bake you a batch of these on any given day, on a whim, whenever the hell. They’re easy to make and the closest thing to pure comfort existing in a physical state.
Fast forward, and it’s the ’90s. Everybody skateboards and wears sunglasses, and Princess Diana died or something. Everyone is too radical and busy to make chocolate chip cookies anymore. By now, Pillsbury, Toll House, and other baked goods companies have had pre-made cookie dough batches on shelves for some time now. While certainly convenient at first, the taste and texture lacks any freshness, and overall just feels rather generic.
Annnd now it’s the ’10s. Most people are fat, and Toll House recently invented one of the laziest cooking products in history: pre-made, pre-portioned, pre-cut chocolate chip cookie dough. Everything is done. You literally drop them on a tray and bake them. They go from package to your stupid fat mouth in 10 minutes. Slackers everywhere rejoice, for some reason!
Yup, this all looks totally legit homestyle.
Pizza Lab #7: Grilled Summer 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.
So plants are blooming, the sun is shining, and old people are complaining about the weather. Ah, Summer in New York. With our entry into the month of July, we start that march onward into the hot part of season. Personally I’m a fan of seasons, so even when it’s hot during the Summer, I don’t have too much of a problem, as long as I have air conditioning to retreat to. With the beautiful weather comes an array of awesome outdoorsy activities that can only be enjoyed at this time of year, such as going in the pool, playing tennis, barbecuing, and many others. So to usher in the Fourth of July, and the official, unofficial-official start of Summer, we wanted to be timely for once, and go barbecue a pizza outside. We did not want to stay inside and go quietly into the night. We’re going to survive. We’re going to live on. Today, we celebrate our Independence Day.
(Incidentally, Erik once delivered that speech verbatim to a crowd of drunken party guests as his whiskey toast to the end of the world.)
Grilled Summer Pizza
Meg A. So it seems like we just did a Pizza Lab…
Erik S. You say it like it’s a problem.
Meg A. Well, no, I’m not complaining about eating delicious pizza obviously, haha.
Erik S. Good. That would be just plain silly.
Meg A. Well we decided to try and do them a bit more frequently during the summer when I don’t have soul crushing school work taking up all my time.
Erik S. Yeah, it’s for the best. And this pizza fits that theme perfectly since it’s a Summer pizza.
Meg A. That’s true, we did set out this time to make an obligatory Summer-themed pizza. This was another pizza that involved some brainstorming, since we started with just the broad concept of “a grilled pizza.”
Erik S. Fortunately that discussion went a little shorter than the Pretzel Pizza.
Meg A. Yeah. Since it’s us we knew there’d probably be chicken on it. And I wanted to put watermelon on it since watermelon is one of the classic summer foods. Oh and grilled watermelon is also a thing.
Erik S. It is indeed a thing haha.
Meg A. A thing we will probably never try again. Haha.
Erik S. Yeahhh… but hey, Pizza Lab is all about learning and science, and at the end of the day we learned that grilled watermelon tastes a lot like grilled zucchini. Which was pretty fuckin’ weird…
The Poor Couple's Food Guide 
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