Mexican pizza, take two

It was better last time, sadly.  But, I did make my own crust this time, using an amazingly easy recipe out of this Sara Moulton cookbook.  She’s my hero.  Well, she was my hero before because I’d worship anyone who was or is or might be on the Food Network, but I like her even more now because the pizza crust recipe was really good and very easy to work with it.

Oh yeah, and I’m back on the cheese.  This was a celebration.

Anyway, I’d post the recipe, but it wasn’t that good (I used refried black beans this time, and we didn’t have any cilantro) so refer to the last one if you want good Mexican pizza and not just okay Mexican pizza.

The rest of my life has been rather hectic and I’m sorry but I just haven’t had time to post as much as I used to.  I have been doing things like working and eating Sun Chips.  But I did find some time to catch up on The Hills with Jack the other day:

I know our apartment is a mess in this picture, but check out how enthralled he is.  He hates that Spencer Pratt as much as the next guy.

And, let’s see, what else?  Chris and I are staying in New York for Thanksgiving because it’s too much trouble to do anything else.  We are going over to a friend’s house and I promised I would make an apple pie and crab dip.  For the crab dip I plan on incorporating lots of things like cheese and mayonnaise (Mom, can you send me that recipe with the cheese and the mayonnaise?) but I am supposed to make the apple pie vegan and I’m a little stumped because as far as I know, butter is what makes pie crust so good.  So if you have a good vegan apple pie recipe, and you’d like to send it my way, I would love to steal it.  I promise to show pictures of the final product.

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I’ll consider it a challenge

What a day!  For starters, I had cottage cheese for the first time ever:

It’s under the peaches, sorry.  I got the whipped 1% kind and I thought it was okay.  It’s not something I’d eat for pleasure, but I can suck it up for the protein.  However, if anyone has suggestions for ways to make it taste better, I’m open.  I kind of have a lot left.

Then I made this for dinner:

Recipe here.

And if that isn’t enough excitement, I also discovered that I am apparently unfit for travel to other countries. Remember a few weeks ago when I had my passport photo taken?

Well.  Today I get a letter that says that my application has been delayed because “the identification I provided is not sufficient for passport purposes.”  After calling and speaking with a nice man named Fred, I learned that there are “a thousand” reasons why they might consider a drivers’ license insufficient, and that I need to somehow find five things that either have my name, picture, and a date, or my name, signature and a date.

This is harder than it sounds.  Fred told me that I could submit five signed credit card receipts, and I couldn’t even find that.  Then I started thinking about how it was rather absurd that five credit card receipts were going to verify my identity, so I called back and learned that – yep – Fred was wrong.

So tomorrow, I have to go and make a photo copy of my yearbook, because apparently, that is acceptable.  I will also be photo copying my gym membership contract, a signed receipt from when I took my computer for repairs at the Apple store, an application I submitted to rent this apartment nearly four years ago, and a freelance contract I managed to scrounge up from the depths of my junk drawer.

All of this, according to Fred, will “probably” prove that I am, in fact me.  But it might not.  Because he didn’t know.  And neither did his supervisor.  It’s quite the operation they are running there.  I also have to send the addresses of all former residences, the names and addresses of every school I’ve ever attended, and my complete employment history, including the names and phone numbers of my supervisors.

So.  I am fairly certain that the man who may or may not be named Jason who I think was my boss at Dairy Queen back in 1999 no longer works there.  But I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?

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Pizza and ice cream make a good pair

We had leftover pizza dough in the freezer from the calzones, so I made us each a little mini pizza tonight.  Chris just had mozzarella, spinach and sauce on his, but I got a little carried away and added goat cheese, onions and mushrooms to mine instead of the sauce:

The flash on my camera really highlighted the goat cheese, huh.  Looks kind of weird.  Anyway, they were good.  I’m loving this Trader Joe’s pizza dough.  It’s so much easier than making it myself and it tastes the same.

We had salad, too:

Mine was kind of half eaten when I took the picture, sorry.

But by far, the best part of the night was this:

Snickers Ice Cream Bars! Yikes was I excited when I saw these.  I would like to blame them on Chris, much like the Reese’s incident, but this was all me.  Look at this amazing thing:

It was so worth it.

And now I must go because Chris needs to use the computer to make believe he’s a football coach and draft a fantasy team or some such nonsense.

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Pizza!

Mexican pizza.  Not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ve got a little thing for Mexican food.  Especially in the summer.  I could have burritos every night for dinner.  I don’t, because it would probably make Chris cry, but if I lived alone, I would be surviving solely on black beans, cheese, and salsa.  And margaritas.  Obviously.

So last week when Chris randomly suggested I make Mexican pizza, I was quite excited.  I’ve made little black bean pizzas on pitas and tortillas before, mostly in college, but I’ve never made a full-on version.  And it was really good.  I used the refrigerated whole wheat pizza dough from Trader Joe’s, just because I’m lazy and I don’t have time for all that rising nonsense.  Also, it’s all-natural and pretty much exactly what I’d make myself.  Probably better.

It says on the package that it makes one pizza, eight servings, but I only used 2/3 of the dough because the last thing the two of us need to do is eat four servings of pizza each, and we’re not really leftovers people.  Also, I like thin crust.

Here’s the rest of the recipe:

• 1/2 cup diced tomatoes with some juice (be careful not to use too much, it will get soggy)
• 1/3 cup salsa
• 1 can black beans
• 1/2 cup corn
• 2 – 3 T red onion
• 1 scallion
• 1 bunch cilantro
• I clove garlic
• 3/4 cup cheese – I used a mix of cheddar and Monterey Jack.  I wouldn’t use all cheddar because I think it would be kind of greasy.
• Chili powder, cayenne pepper, and cumin to taste

Obviously, this is not really a recipe at all.  It’s not exactly a genius idea and you can put anything and everything on this thing.  I took the clove of garlic, sliced it in half, and just kind of rubbed it over the crust to get the flavor without big chunks (like you’d do with garlic bread).  Then I mixed the tomatoes and the salsa, spread that on as the sauce, and then added the spices, the drained/rinsed black beans, the corn, the red onion and the cheese.  I sprinkled on the scallions and the cilantro after it was cooked.

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Musical afternoon

It’s warm outside, and I’ve got my apartment windows open. And let me tell you, the guy in the brownstone next door has been rocking out all day. He’s doing some kind of yard work, which is fitting because his garden is absolutely amazing, all landscaped with patio furniture, a fountain, and a grill. Sometimes he has barbecues and Chris and I stand at our window and glare at him and his dumb yard in anger.  I know it would make more sense to make friends with him and snag an invitation to the party, but that’s just not our style.

Anyway, just a few of the songs that he’s enjoyed over the course of the afternoon:

My Milkshake

ABC

This Land is Your Land. I am not kidding about this. I wish I was.

I mean, I know I just said that I know nothing about music, so I shouldn’t really be making fun, but is that an eclectic mix or what? No Jumper though. Now that’s a shame.

I had my BBQ pizza for lunch again today:

With a mango and a kiwi:

This lunch filled me up for like four hours, which is unheard of, especially since I went to spinning this morning and usually that leaves me starving all day long. Maybe it’s because I didn’t exactly over-exert myself this morning, what with the hangover and all. I was happy just to make it to the gym, quite honestly.

I just had some yogurt with flax and a few chocolate chips. Maybe a teaspoon or so. I didn’t measure.

Now I’m going to get outside with Jack. He’s gazing longingly out the window.

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Genius

When I have to go in to work, I am usually done right around noon, so I inevitably spend the entire train ride home thinking about what I’m going to eat for lunch. This means that by the time I walk in my apartment door, I’ve been thinking about food for a good 45 minutes, and as a result I’m starving, even if I had a bag of peanut M&Ms at 10am. Which, for the record, I didn’t. But things like this have been known to happen in the past. Before the blog, when I could rest assured that they would stay my little secret.

Anyway, today I remembered that I had a box of those Gardenburger riblets in the freezer, my new favorite thing. Then I remembered how much I used to like barbeque chicken pizza. And then I remembered the pizza I made out of that rectangular wrap on Sunday for lunch. Can you see where I’m going with this?

It was amazing. Seriously. I want to eat another one right now. I had some tomatoes and cucumbers with it, too, for some vegetables, and also some grapes that I didn’t photograph. Those grapes always seem to avoid the camera for some reason.

Oh, and this morning, a grande skim misto:

Tonight I’m going to this event with a friend of mine, so I’m meeting her for dinner first and I probably won’t get to post everything until tomorrow morning.

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On to today…

So needless to say I woke up with a headache this morning and had a ton of stuff to do like errands, grocery shopping, cleaning, etc. For breakfast I had the same thing as yesterday, minus the banana because we were all out:

Then we walked Jack to the other end of the neighborhood to buy some Scoopies, these environmentally-friendly plastic glove-shaped bags that we use to, you guessed it, scoop shit. After, I ate this last Z Bar because we had to go to Trader Joe’s and that takes about two hours on a good day:

It didn’t matter, though, because by the time we left the grocery store I felt like I might be starving to death, so I had to eat half of this Clif bar:

This kind is really good if you like toffee; we got a bunch of the peanut crunch chocolate chip too, which is really my favorite, but I’m a little bared out at the moment.

When I was in the deli line at that other grocery store we go to, because TJ’s doesn’t sell things like Sun Chips and American cheese and Morningstar Farms Grillers Prime, which are essentials in Chris’s life, I saw these square whole wheat wrap things and decided to impulse buy them. For lunch, I made one into a pizza:

Doesn’t it look good?? It was a little soggy. I think it needed to cook longer but I am impatient.

Then I cleaned like a champion, gave myself a little buzz from too much Tilex and not enough ventilation, went on another walk, and ate some grapes:

And then, I made the best thing for dinner: a Mexican tofu scramble!

I’m posting the recipe, which I made up so it’s really easy. It’s also really filling – I couldn’t eat all of this.

Okay, then after dinner we had about half a bottle of wine left from another night, so I had part of a glass, but wasn’t really feeling it after last night so I didn’t finish it.

But I am eating about a tablespoon of chocolate chips right now:

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