Pizza night!

It's been a while since our last pizza night, so we felt the need to make it. This time I decided to add on a bit of fake meat for shits and giggles. I made the 'Big Stick Pepperoni' recipe from Vegan on the Cheap. Man, this stuff is great. The secret ingredient is definately fennel seed, and the flavour is very strong in it. Next time I might cut it down just a tad, it's a little overpowering. Now, I never liked salami, it always grossed me out (always knew what it was , especially after working in a deli and slicing it every day ugh), but since I know this stuff isn't wrapped in fat netting, and is actually cooked and NOT moldy, then it tastes delicious. The texture is odd, as disgusting as this sounds, but it's kind of like a (real) salami that hasn't dried to a hard lump quite yet. So it kind of grossed me out, so before I put it on the pizza I fried it up a tad and it's much better. 

Unfried big stick pepperoni



So on the pizza in order was: tomato paste, caramelised onion, potato, olives, jalapeno pepper, pepperoni and a sprinkling of nutritional yeast. It was just greasy enough from the onions, without having the atery clogging greasiness of cheese on it. We had it with a much needed salad of baby spinach leaves, red capsicum, red onion, capers, radish and apricot kernels with a lemon juice-olive oil and black pepper dressing.

I got apricot kernels at the farmer's market this morning, and they taste like almonds (same species I think) except sweeter and they are about half the size. An excellent addition to a salad. I love adding crunch like nuts and seeds to my salad. I usually go for sunflower seeds but I had these :)

Yum. I look forward to lunch at work tomorrow.

Pizza night

We decided yesterday that it was about time for another pizza night.

This time the toppngs were: avocado, corn kernels, kidney beans, capers, kalamata olives, jarred jalapeno chillis, and the base sauce was made from cooked cherry tomatoes, onion, garlic and red wine. Mm it was very good haha. The bread was a little doughy because we got impatient while it was cooking, but it wasn't THAT doughy (like the first time I ever made pizza, in grade 8 in Home Ec class. MMMM raw flour.)

We also decided to splurge and put some vegan mozzarella on top. I had to buy Cheezly brand this time as my favourite little vegan store didn't have any teese mozzarella in :( we hadn't had the Cheezly mozz before (I think) and it was pretty much as nasty as we thought. It's ok cooked, but we could just eat the teese stuff! Oh well. It's also supposed to be 'super melting' but the pizza says otherwise. However, I had a toasted sandwich with copious amounts of Cheezly and some hash browns today and it melted all over the place. Maybe the pizza will need to be stuck under the grill for a little bit next time?

And holy crap it's so unbearably hot. Well obviously I'm bearing it because I'm still in the country and alive. But this morning I thought it a good idea to fix up my garden and plant more stuff, and it was a great idea until sweat starting pouring down my legs and into my eyes. I got most of what I wanted done, except sowing my mint seeds, but I can do that this afternoon when the sun goes away.

I bought two 40L bags of organic garden soil at Bunnings for $8.50 each because my soil is crap and so far I've dug one bag in. So as of this moment in my garden I have:

Herbs - basil, rosemary, thyme, parsley, lemongrass, garlic chives and regular chives, mint

Vegetables: hot chilli, sweet chilli, eggplant, tomatoes, purple carrots, purple climbing beans, butter beans, radishes, ginger.

I've put chicken wire over my beans to hopefully deter my cats from digging around in the nice new dirt they love. I am reaaallly looking forward to my carrots! I have put them in a nice deep window-box like planter box thing with potting mix with no lumps so in theory they should grow. Unless the cat digs it all up. Maybe I should chicken wire that too.

I'll take some pictures when it all starts sprouting. At the moment it's just a big black expanse of dirt with some wire and some stakes. :)



Look what you missed out on!

*dribble*

I love making my own pizza. Why don't I do it more often? I think it's because I get it in my head that the dough takes forever, but really it's ready in an hour and a half. That's not that bad. =D

I based it on a recipe from Vegan on the Cheap, and just went a bit nuts with the toppings. I really wanted mushrooms on it, but Brisbane has gone nuts and all the groceries were gone! So I had to make do with what I had. My dad and my sister were supposed to come to tea, but because of all this water dad got evacuated from work near the city and my sister was stuck further south. And damn they missed out.

The dough ingredients are: 2 3/4 cups wholemeal flour, 2 1/4 tsp instant dry yeast, 1 tsp salt and 1 cup warm water. It was a nice thick soft crust when cooked, the way I like it.

The toppings I chose in order from bottom to top:

Tomato paste

Caremelised onions (with maple syrup and balsamic vinegar)

Cooked kidney beans pureed with parsnip and garlic

Sliced tomato

Homemade basil pesto

Before cooking

When I worked at a continental delicatessen, we sold tiny little containers of caremelised onions for about $8.50. Dude. People actually BOUGHT it. It was one of our most popular condiment things. Jeez. I've never made them before but they are so easy.



So pretty

I thinly sliced a huge onion, poured a liberal amount of rice bran oil in my frying pan and cooked them for about 20 minutes on med-low. About half way through I put in a blob of maple syrup and a dash of balsamic. They are so delicious. I might make some tonight to have on a sandwich for work tomorrow.

Anyway, pizza = mmmm. Maybe we should have pizza night more often.