Sunday, January 29, 2012

Some Deep Dish Thoughts: Use #121 for Mac n Cheese

I decided it was time to write in the blog again. I came to the conclusion when a dear friend of mine approached me the other day and informed me that I had not logged on and said anything funny lately. I decided to write a blog entry on deep dish pizza. Why? That's what we had for supper last night, so it's fresh on my mind.

After I had decided what I wanted to write about, I had a brief moment of self doubt. Does anyone even pay attention to what I am writing? Not that it really matters. The thought that nobody is paying attention to me has not stopped me from speaking my mind in the past...except for when it is my wife ignoring me. Now that really chaps me. After all! Didn't the wedding vows say something about you will listen to your husband for better or worse, til death do you part? (I wonder how many times she has considered speeding up that death parting us part?) I think I should be listened to by my wife ALL the time. Not that I really deserve it. It should happen simply because I am the husband. Why shouldn't that philosophy work? It works for the kids! They certainly feel that you should be hanging on every word that comes out of their mouths. Just think back to the last time your eyes glazed over as your daughter told you about that lying, scheming, little shrew named Mary Alice; or that time when Bubba completely ignored Sandra Dee when getting off of the bus; or that time...

Yeah, that's right! You know exactly what I'm talking about. Your body goes into natural self preservation mode, and your eyes glaze over. Then...it happens! "Daddy! You're not listening to me! This is my senior year and should be the happiest time of my life. Instead it is the worst year since I've been born...AND YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!!! You hate me!"
"No I don't, Dear."
"Well! You practically said you hated me."
"What? I said no such thing."
"You're not listening to me, so you might as well have! I'm just going to go live with Memaw!" At which point Daddy lets out a thunderous laugh, taking an already explosive situation to the point of nuclear devastation. Do you listen to your daughter's endless chatter, or do you ignore her and listen to the screaming about how bad a parent you are. Do you get your fingernails ripped out, or your toenails? Either way, it's as painful as @#$#^$!

Not that talking to my son is any better. It is just a different kind of pain. "How was your day, son?"
"Fine."
"What did you do today?"
"Work."
"What kind of work?"
"Math."
"What did you do in math?"
"Dunno. Numbers."
"Thank you for stimulating my brain, son. I'm going to go over there and have a real conversation with that rock."

I digress.

The whole point of this, is if I have to live with this torture from my kids, shouldn't my wife have to live with my senseless banter? Therefore, if my wife should have to suffer through my senseless banter, shouldn't you as well?

I wonder though, how many of you are really reading my blog, and suffering like a good person should? Officially, I have three followers. However, I think they just did that out of the kindness of their hearts. I know one of them (my daughter) has to practically be forced to read this blog. So, since she is a follower by coercion, I will say I have two followers. Even then, nobody leaves me any comments? So...do those other two really follow me? Why don't any of you leave comments? I know the people officially following me ALWAYS have opinions. (I am not above goading you into commenting.) Perhaps, it is because you cower in the presence of such literary genius. You feel there is nothing you can say which compares to what I have already written...Or, perhaps it is like my daughter says. You just hate me! You're ignoring me, so you might as well be saying you hate me! (I might be forty two, but I can still throw a teen tantrum with the best of them.)

The whole point of this nonsense is simple. Leave me a comment on this blog or Facebook. I would love to know someone, other than the prisoner who is my daughter, is reading my blog...and hopefully, enjoying it.

Once again, I digress.

So, yesterday I was lying on the couch doing what I do best. Nothing. I happened to turn to my favorite educational channel (Food Network), and saw a guy pulling a deep dish pizza out of the oven. A light bulb suddenly flashed in my head. I've never made deep dish pizza before. Let's have that for supper. I pulled out my handy iPhone and looked up a recipe for deep dish pizza, and decided, yeah. I can screw that up real easily. So, Christina and I go to the store. As we are going up and down aisles, getting a few things, she asks me, "Are we gonna have mac n cheese?"
"No, Dear. We're having deep dish pizzas."
"I know. I'm talking about a mac n cheese pizza."
"I'm not going to cook a deep dish mac n cheese pizza. We might as well just sit down with a huge pot of the stuff."
"But, Daddy! We haven't had Mac n Cheese pizza in a long time. You know how much Joseph loves it."
"No."

Anyway, below is the recipe for the Mac n Cheese deep dish pizza we had last night.


Mac n Cheese Deep Dish Pizza

Ingredients:
2 boxes of your favorite mac n cheese dinner mix
1 Stick butter
1/2-2/3 cups milk
1 small jar alfredo sauce
1 canned pizza dough
pepperoni
2-3 cups cheddar cheese
Large spring form pan, deep dish pizza pan, or deep foil pan

Use the mac n cheese dinners, butter, and milk to create mac n cheese. (Do I really need to tell you how to do it?) Roll out the pizza dough so you will have enough to cover the bottom of the pan, come up the sides, and overlap a little. Spray your pan and place the dough in it. Layer 1/3 of the cheese in the crust. Follow that with half of the mac n cheese. Then one layer of pepperoni, followed by half the alfredo sauce. Repeat with an additional layer each of cheese, mac n cheese, and alfredo. Finally, layer on the last 1/3 of the cheese. Fold the overlapping crust over on top of the pizza. Don't worry about covering the entire top. I just think the folded crust gives a nice rustic look. You might want to lightly brush the crust with olive oil to keep it from burning too much. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Drop the temperature to 350 and bake an additonal 30 to 45 minutes. The crust should be golden brown. The picture below shows what mine looked like. I used a cheap foil pan. I have a spring form, but I made two pizza's and wanted them both the same.





The final step is to serve this sucker. It can easily make 6-8 servings...or it can make four scrumptious monstrous heart attack inducing servings! Guess which route we took!

As I mentioned above, I made two pizza's. The second was more traditional, and equally delicious. I took a bag of three pepper and onion blend, and sauteed it with a pound of mild Italian sausage. I then made the pizza by layering in the following order: Mozzarella, sausage pepper blend, pepperoni, pizza sauce. I repeated those layers again, and finished with another layer of cheese. Just for kicks, I places a few leaves of fresh basil on top of the cheese. Below is the scrumptious results.


I would say that even if my deep dish experiment did not result in truly authentic Chicago style deep dish pizzas, it was still a resounding success! Give one of these pizzas a try and tell me what you think. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeze! Tell me!

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Friday Night Mystery Double Feature!

Have you ever had one of those nights when you looked in the pantry and discovered that Old Mother Hubbard had a wider selection to choose from? On top of that, your children remind you of  a whole pack of man eating plants crying, "Feed me, Seymour!" Sound familiar? That's what I was facing last night. Of course, our pantry wasn't completely bare, but what was in it were the types of items that don't exactly scream, "We will go well together to make a healthy, tasty, meal for you and your family."

It all pretty much started like this:

Scene: I'm in my car driving home. I call home (using my hands free bluetooth. I promise.)
Neva - Hello?
Me - Howdy doody tutti frutti!
Neva - Hello.
Me - Watcha cooking for dinner?
Neva - I don't know? What are YOU cooking?
Me - I don't know. What do we have?
Neva - I brought home some leftover cheese, tortilla chips, and ground beef from our taco salad day at work.
Me - Tell Sissy(Our daughter, Christina) to brown the beef. I'll be home soon and figure out the rest.

I know! I know! Not exactly the makings of a hit movie, but pretty close to the truth. Anyway, I get home and walk in the kitchen. Sissy is just about done frying some ground beef and diced onion. Obviously we are having Mexican (actually, a very loose interpretation of Mexican). What else would you have with beef, cheese, and tortilla chips? I open up the spice cabinet and hand Sissy some chili powder, beef bouillon, and creole seasoning. What!?! Doesn't every Mexican dish get seasoned with Tony Chachere's? I did say this was a very loose interpretation of Mexican. Why did I add beef bouillon to my ground beef? Call me crazy. I think it just adds a certain richness to the flavor of the beef. I sure wish I had some cumin. Oh well. Chili powder and creole seasoning. Just call me Pancho Thibodeaux.

I opened up the pantry to see what else I could use. I pulled out a can of spaghetti sauce (Now I'm Pancho Gino Thibodeaux). Ah! There's some instant brown rice. Crap! It's only half a box. What to do? (This blog is getting very hard to write. It could have something to do with all the fart noises coming out of Sissy's Kindle Fire. I'm sure Santa is so happy she is putting that thing to such good use.) Hmmmmm. Well...there is some quinoa. I wonder how that will go with a Mexican, Italian, Creole dish? Only one way to find out. Without further adieu, I pulled out my gorgeous heavy duty baking dish that Santa Neva gave me for Christmas. I mix the beef, spaghetti sauce, rice, quinoa, two cups of water and more chili powder and Tony Chachere's. I then place a layer of tortilla chips in the dish, followed by half the beef mixture and a healthy layer of shredded cheese. Next, I repeated the whole process. I topped it off with crumbled up tortillas and more cheese. Then I covered with foil, and set to bake at 350 for about 45 minutes. The first part of the mystery double feature was in the oven.

Now we just had to figure out the second mystery. My wonderful wife decided we would watch something on Netflix. The movie of choice is Shutter Island. Now my wife is an absolutely wonderful person, able to do many wonderful things. However, operating a remote is not necessarily one of those talents. We watch Netflix through our Nintendo Wii. The story played out last night like it usually does.

Neva - How do I get it to play
Christina - Just hit the A button.
Neva - I can't get the arrow to move
Christina - Momma. Just hit the A button.
Neva - The arrow won't move. I must be too far away.
Christina - Momma! Just hit the A button!
Neva - But I'm too far away.
Christina - You don't have to move the arrow! Play is already highlighted on the TV. Just hit the A button!
Neva - But, I'm too far...
Christina and Dad - Just hit the freakin' A button!!
Neva - Fine!
Insert long pause
Neva - You didn't have to yell at me.
At this point Christina and Dad roll their eyes in complete exasperation.

Thus began the second part of our mystery double feature...finally!

A little into the movie, the oven timer goes off. I pull off the foil and stick this concoction back in the oven for another 10 minutes. Another ding resonates through the house. Our mystery dinner is ready. As Christina and I are eyeballing the thing I took out of the oven, I  look at my daughter and say, "If it turns out nasty, this was all your mother's idea. If it turns out real good, It was all me!" Dinner was served up and the appropriate blessing was said.

"Dear Lord,
Thank you for this supper, for the hands that helped prepare it, and for everything you have done for us and given us. Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies....And PLEEEEEEZE let this food taste good. In Jesus' name, Amen."

 On that Friday night, the Lord said, "This is good."

...and, it was.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Happy New Year, 2012!

Can you believe we are already twelve years into the new century? It seems like only yesterday we were wondering if the world's computer systems would survive the turn of the century. They did. We did. And, we are all just a little grayer now. Ha!

So, how did you celebrate your new year? We started out by baking a fresh loaf of banana nut bread to take to some friends house. We all ate, drank (non-alcoholicly) and were merry...until about 2am.

Fresh Banana Nut Bread


The bread seemed to be a huge hit. I let everyone know it was an old family recipe. I'm sure it is...just not from my family. A big thanks to 57grace71, at BigOven.com. Your old family recipe has now become mine.

Banana Nut Bread
Wet Ingredients
3/4 cup softened butter
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1.5 cups sugar
1.5 cups mashed ripened bananas (about 4 bananas)
1/2 cup buttermilk or sour cream (I used the buttermilk)

Dry Ingredients
2 tsp. Baking Powder
2 cups flour
3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 cups chopped pecans or walnuts

Mix wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and mix well. Grease two loaf pans and divide batter between both. Bake in oven preheated to 325 degrees Fahrenheit, for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Bread is done when inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Thankfully, we had a full loaf of bread to ourselves. I was able to start 2012 off with a nice cup of coffee in my Pooh mug (Yeah, I'm a big softy), with a slice of banana nut bread, slathered with butter. Yum!


Buttered Banana Bread and Winnie the Pooh. What could be better in the morning?


Meanwhile, the rest of the family slept. I had started a slow cooker full of black eyed peas the night before. I gave them a stir, and a little extra seasoning. Then I started a pot of turnip greens and mixed up a batch of buttermilk cornbread (This really is an old family recipe.)

Meanwhile, the rest of the family slept. I am beginning to notice a pattern here. My family sleeps the day away, and I spend the day eating and preparing more food. No wonder we are the picture of such stellar health.

Anyway, it was time to eat, and I had my black eyed peas (with huge chunks of ham), turnip greens, and cornbread, along with a nice glass of wine. Down south, we all believe that eating black eyed peas, pork, and turnip greens are supposed to bring one financial good luck. Considering we are one of the poorest regions of the country, I can't attest to how much truth lies in that superstition, but it sure is fun trying.

Good luck...or, just plain good eating!?!


I don't normally drink wine, much less red wine. If I drink wine, I have a tendency to to go with a sweeter white wine. However, my boss gave me a bottle of Blue Rock Baby Blue wine from the Blue Rock Vineyards, in Geyserville, CA. Baby Blue is a blend of four different red wines. It is not sweet, but goes down very smoothly. If you are just introducing yourself to red wine, this is an excellent bottle to start with.

Anyway, I digress. I had everything for a great start to 2012...with one exception. Friends and family! That was quickly fixed with a shout upstairs. "Lunch is ready!"

All the peas and greens in the world won't really bring you good luck (Just a lot of gas). The one ingredient that has proven reliable, year after year, is friends and family. If you aren't close to your family, perhaps you should resolve to mend some fences this year. At one time or another, we all need family to lean on. If you feel you don't have any friends, resolve to make some new ones...or find some old ones. I find great comfort in thinking I may have touched someone's life, and they just might be sitting somewhere, sipping a hot cup of joe, and wondering "Whatever happened to Jim? He was one swell guy."

So, Happy New Year to all of my friends and family. You have all made me a truly blessed ...and lucky... man.
I lift a glass and salute all those wonderful people who have gone to the great banquet beyond. People like my Dad, Uncle Bill, Mr. & Mrs. Temple, Nodya Hair, and many others. In more ways than you could ever know, you have made me the person I am.

I salute all those people who have passed thru my life at one time or another over the many years, like Paul Eastman, Kirk Chandler, Ernie Fargo, and the Olivers. I hope I have blessed your life as much as you blessed mine.

Finally, I ask for blessings for those of my friends and family who found 2011 to be a particularly hard and painful year. May God bless you with the celebrations in 2012 that eluded you in the past year. You are always in my thoughts and prayers.

Now, I think I've mixed together all of the really important ingredients for a wonderful new year. Happy New Year, everyone. May God bless you in all that you do in 2012.