Two Recipes: I was hungry.

So, unfortunately there are no pictures this time around. I was hungry, and in focusing on the food I was planning to eat, I forgot to take pictures for you. Bummer, right?
Technically, one of those food items isn't actually food. It's a drink, because I'm hormonal and was having cravings that couldn't be denied. (That's a lie, they could be, I just didn't feel like it.) I was craving a chocolate peanut butter milkshake. However, as usual, we lack ice cream. So, I made chocolate peanut butter MILK.
(I would like to take this moment to state that blenders are AWESOME.)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Milk (because people can't figure this out on their own)
Serves 1.5

a lot of peanut butter
a lot of chocolate syrup
a lot of milk

Directions:
1. Combine and blend!

Don't you love one-step beverages? Unfortunately, now that I've discovered this, we're going to go through peanut butter reeeeeeally fast and I will no longer be on a HFCS-free diet (Hershey's Chocolate Syrup has HFCS, unfortunately. This is among the many things I love to hate about it). Add a banana and swap out the milk for soy milk and you can KIND OF pretend that it's healthy. Kind of. Not really. But we can dream, right?
Okay, so, onto something healthier.
We all know that I am a devout lover of mozzarella, yes? Well, I am. I've been drooling over this recipe for months (minus the capers, not big on capers), and decided today that I was going to roast some leftover peppers that were about to go iffy. So, in an act of bad judgment, I decided I was going to roast them over a stove burner. Like a marshmallow. (I can hear family members laughing already.) Well, let me just say that is the wrong technique and we're not going to try that again. So instead I took a different approach and ended up with something completely different from what I was aiming for.

Mixed Pepper Saute, Without Capers
Serves 2

1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
1/2 yellow bell pepper, diced
1/4 yellow onion
2 cloves garlic, smashed and minced
black pepper
1/2 cup mozzarella, shredded
grapeseed oil

Directions:
1. Dice all peppers and toss into a lightly oiled pan on medium-high heat.
2. After about two minutes of occasional mixing, added diced onion, and sprinkle liberally with black pepper. Stir gently and then ignore it for a minute or two.
3. Smash two cloves of garlic, dicing as fine as possible. Add to the pan and stir, lowering heat to medium-low.
4. Continue moving veggies around until the garlic is aromatic and slightly cooked and golden yellow, but not brown. Brown means your garlic is burnt, and therefore terribly bitter.
5. Remove from heat, serve on two plates, and top with mozzarella as desired (you know I'm a little heavy-handed with the mozzarella), or eat plain.

Now, this is very different from Smitten Kitchen's dish in a lot of way. No vinegar, more garlic, different oil (no big deal there), no capers, and no parsley. If you don't like your food to be very garlicky, one clove of garlic is fine, but I'm a total garlic junkie. Parsley would have been a good idea, but I was winging it and didn't think of that. If I have fresh parsley to work with next time, I will definitely consider the addition. For now, I'm happy with it.
My audience (Carolyn) rated this as a "cook again" dish.
Considering that she isn't big on peppers or onions, that's a high compliment.

Stale Bread, Cupcakes, and an Explained Absence

To the few who may actually follow my little blog, you may have noticed that I've been absent for a while. Like, a month (unless that's just my imagination). A week of that absence was spent in utter tummy rebellion, resulting in my fourth stomach flu of the year thus far. Icky icky. This one takes the cake, however, for landing me in the hospital with cramps so bad that I thought my appendix burst.
Anyway, that's all you get for an explanation. I'm back now. Not dead yet.
On to fun stuff... This past weekend I played caterer for my niece's birthday party. By caterer, I mean maker of all things, decorator of cupcakes, and creative director. In other words, mom wants fancy lettering on the cupcakes, I have the right to say no. Yay me! Yay power! So, nothing terribly abnormal was served up (Alas, no experiments were done my family), but I wanted to share the cupcakes.They are, in no way remarkable or special. In fact, they're the scary Betty Crocker boxed stuff. However, I just wished to demonstrate the fact that they're PRETTY. This is not how cupcakes looked when I was given them in school and on my birthday. Parents liked to smear the frosting around to HIDE the cake. I, however, have discovered the great art of improvised piping bags (i.e. a Ziploc bag filled with frosting with one corner snipped off), and decided I wanted to make nice, neat little piles of frosting. It's prettier. It's also heavy enough that a layer of saran wrap won't pull off all the frosting. So, yay physics.
Now, with all the stressful party stuff behind me, and no real food left over (things disappeared more quickly than I thought they would), I'm back to making my own. What was left over, among various snack foods (like a bag and a half of potato chips [we had FOUR]), was about one third a loaf of French bread. Getting home this afternoon, I was STARVED. I craved that thing that I always crave. Pizza.
So, as the house is utterly devoid of other human beings, I decided to make myself a French bread pizza. Mmm. I've seen recipes for this online, and I wasn't sure that it would work with bread that had been sitting since Friday evening and was undoubtedly stale. In all honesty, the cuts in my mouth say that I should probably use fresher bread next time. I enjoyed how this tasted, despite not containing all the optimal ingredients (we're out of garlic!), and there will DEFINITELY be a next time.

French Bread Pizza Made From Leftovers
Serves 2-4.

1/3 loaf French bread, slightly stale
1 small can tomato paste
~1 cup tomato juice (yes, we have that now)
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp garlic (I was forced to use jarred, icky), diced
1/2 small yellow onion (or other onion. This could be really good with scallions...)
basil
2 cups mozzarella, grated
1/4 cup parmesan, grated

Directions:
1. Slice French bread in half and arrange on a cookie sheet.
2. Empty tomato paste into a small saucepan with tomato juice, garlic and olive oil. Stir together to thin out the tomato paste. I aimed for a thick sauce, but if you want it thinner you can add more tomato juice. DO NOT USE V8 FOR THIS. If you do, I will hunt you down and stab you with a can opener.
3. Heat tomato mixture over a low flame, adding as much basil as you like.
4. Dice the half onion, and stir into sauce, cooking for another two or three minutes.
5. Cut 1 tbsp butter into six relatively even pieces, arranging three on each half of the bread. Place in an oven heated at 400°F until butter is soft, then spread.
6. Remove tomato sauce from heat, spreading sauce over buttered bread.
7. Top liberally with mozzarella, and sprinkle with parmesan. Top with more basil.
8. Place prepared bread back in the oven (still at 400°F) for 10 to 15 minutes, or until cheese is melted and slightly bubbly.

Eating this with a fork and a knife is recommended until it cools slightly, in which case it's stable enough to pick up and eat like a very sturdy open-faced sandwich.
This recipe makes a very sweet tomato sauce, but it has great flavor and the thickness was entirely agreeable. The only downside to this was that the stale bread was not softened at all by the butter (which I had planned on) or the sauce, and left me with little cuts all inside my mouth. Furthermore, as I was hungry, I didn't really leave any for anyone else.