It'za Piz'za - kind of

We're still working on drywall and making quick progress now that we found out my dearest, Sunshine will hopefully be visiting us in early July.  A few more pieces in the ceiling and then 'mudding' holes, cracks, seams, etc.  Coats and coats and paint and we're done.  I'm seriously so excited I can't stand it.  We've been using the back bedroom as a living room since the beginning of April and people, I'm over it.

Since Jesse usually cooks dinner and he needed to work on the drywall last night, I took over dinner duties.  Here is what I came up with.  Oh, before we get started, I used naan* for the crust and these are pre-bake pics.  Post-bake towards the end.

Smoked salmon, green olives, tomatoes, capers, goat cheese, rosemary.

We usually also do a creamed spinach on the pizza above but I only realized after I was halfway into it that I didn't have any.  It was definitely lacking with that ingredient missing, but not bad.

Bocconicina mozzarella, baby portabellas, black olives, yellow bell pepper, pesto, small tomato wedges, parmesan.

I think this was the favorite.  It wasn't missing anything and it wasn't a complete experiment.  However, my BLT pizza below actually did turn out pretty rad.

Pre-cooked bacon, Bocconicina mozzarella, tomato, parmesan.

We used mozzarella but decided we thought something sharp like cheddar should be added also since the mozzarella dulled out the flavor of the bacon a little.

I should have taken individual shots like Jesse did for the before shots, but oh well.  In the veggie pizza I added some fresh basil after baking and to the BLT pizza I added a little lettuce, avocado and a combination of olive oil mayo, sour cream and a little bit of light ranch cut with a tiny bit of milk to make it 'drizzle-able'.

*If you're going to use naan or really any pre-baked bread for pizza, a la flatbread style, remember to brush a little olive oil on the exposed parts of the crust before putting it into the oven to keep them from burning.  Especially if you plan on broiling it towards to end to brown the cheese.

"You're pretty sick Chubbs."

We went to IKEA and Jungle Jim's today.  (More about Jingle Jim's here.)  Not only did we find lots of fun things at Ikea, as usual, during our adventure to Jungle Jim's, we also found this...

I'm aware people are totally turned on by the idea of chewing on pig snout and ear cartilage, but I am not one of them.  Ew.

As for the things we found at Ikea, we didn't purchase this trip, but when we do, we'll be sure to post our finds.

Sausage Fest

Jesse has been curing sausage. We'll see how that goes, since it's his first attempt we're both a little skeptical. We originally just bought the Kitchenaid grinder and filler attachment and from what I understand (which isn't much) he needed this archaic looking thing to fill the sausages property.

medieval stuffer

Whatever you say.

He's also been using a wine cooler to cure the sausages, which is better than it used to be; hanging in the downstairs shower.

the cure