Pizza and a Movie!

Friday night the boys and I tackled pizza for the second time for our Pizza and a Movie night. Once again, my lovely wife took care of the dough for us, and the boys and I took care of rolling everything out, and all the toppings. Her dough recipe gave us enough to make 12 personal pizzas. The boys helped me out with four, and I made the other eight. They probably would've been willing to help with more than that, but we started the movie after the first four went into the oven, and that was the last I saw of them.

Anyhow, the toppings we used this time were tomato sauce (obviously), red bell peppers, mushrooms, shredded mozzarella, spinach, olives, basil, and sausage. The goal was for me to "brown" the sausage, but we probably should've done some more research on what that entails before we started. By definition, browning is: the process of partially cooking the surface of meat to help remove excessive fat and to give the meat a brown color crust. The key phrase there being "PARTIALLY COOKING THE SURFACE." So instead of having browned sausage, we had fully cooked and slightly blackened sausage. Whoops.

We made progress with my oldest this time in his pizza making as we moved up from his red pepper, tomato sauce, no cheese "pizza" to using four slivers of mozzarella in creating "pizza-owls." Pepper ears, mushroom eyes, sausage nose and mouth, and cheese whiskers. Now you might be one to say that owls don't have whiskers, well pizza-owls apparently do. And now you know.

Our three-year old took a simpler approach declaring "I want cheese pizza!" And so cheese pizza he had.

For the remaining eight pizzas, I only took on one edgier pizza. So when I was in Germany like a decade ago, they had this pizza you could order with an egg in the middle of it. And they were fantastic. Obviously it hasn't really caught on here in the states, but I figured I'd give it a whirl. Other than the challenges of fitting a whole egg on a mini-pizza, it actually turned out all right. It was definitely messy, and absolutely an eat-it-with-a-fork kind of dish, but it was good.

As for our movie, the boys picked the Lego Movie of course because after all, everything is awesome.

The Same Old Song and Dance

They say if something's not broke, don't fix it. Well, we're on a roll with our popcorn chicken, and last night's Kitchen Dadventure was our third time cooking the same dinner in like the last four weeks. But you know what? It's easy, and the kids will eat it.

We only did a couple things different this time around. We doubled the recipe and made two pounds of chicken instead of one, since last time when we made one pound we had no leftovers. We also ran out of mustard when trying to make a big batch of honey mustard dipping sauce, so we settled for a small batch of homemade honey mustard and I ended up using ranch dressing for my chicken.

I had planned on spicing up our "Waldorf" salad with some grapes this time, but my "helpers" ate the rest of the grapes during my chicken preps. Thanks, team. So once again, we made the salad with feta cheese, red apple, and walnuts. I still think it's really good, and again, really easy to make.

Overall another successful dinner, but I think it's time for the boys and I to branch out and try something new.

I Feel Like Chicken Tonight!

Back by popular demand, the boys and I attempted to make our popcorn chicken for the second time in three weeks. The only real difference was that we weren't doubling the recipe, and I didn't prematurely add the olive oil this time (huzzah for reading the directions!)

To go with our chicken, we made our not-quite-a-Waldorf salad, some homemade guacamole to go with some store-bought chips, and the same two dipping sauces we made last time, honey mustard and curry mayo.

With nothing "new" on the menu, we weren't really challenging ourselves, but sometimes it's nice to make something familiar and continue to build some confidence in the kitchen.

Originally we intended to add grapes to our "Waldorf" salad that already included a fuji apple, chopped walnuts and feta cheese, but the red grapes we had hoped to use had gone soft so we had to stick with what we've done before.

With the salad made, we moved onto the guacamole. While the recipe we have does offer some options to add some additional flavors (salsa, garlic, jack cheese, onion, and cilantro are all listed as possible additions), we've continued to keep our recipe simple: avocados, lime juice, salt. No surprises. And the best part is that we had enough left over for more chips and dip the next day!

Next, we moved onto our dipping sauces. We prepared the same two we made a couple weeks ago because 1) they were easy to make, and 2) they got eaten the last time we made them. What I didn't realize was that apparently I'm the only member of the household that cared for the curry mayo, so I think next time we might make a double-batch of the honey mustard instead.

Last came the chicken. As I mentioned earlier, I learned my lesson about the olive oil from a couple weeks ago. The other lesson that we learned was to double-bag our bread crumbs when it came time to shake everything up. Last time we had a blowout, this time, we made it through unscathed.

The end result: another pretty edible dinner. Of all the main courses we've made so far, I think the popcorn chicken has been our most successful, so I'm sure you all will see it on here again.

Homemade Guac vs Store Bought Guac - Cost Breakdown

So according to the USDA's Weekly Advertised Fruit & Vegetable Retail Prices, the weighted average for a lime over the week of 1/26-2/1 was 37 cents for an inorganic lime and 85 cents for an organic lime. Over the same range, an avocado costs an average of 83 cents for inorganic or $1.48 for organic.

Our local Safeway carries large Hass Avocados for $2.89 apiece (small ones cost $1.79) and large limes cost 60 cents ($1.55 for organic).

Meanwhile, 8 ounces of Wholly Guacamole can cost $4.99 and it looks like the 16 oz jar next to it looks like it costs $6.99. While I didn't measure it, I'm thinking we could probably fill a 16 oz jar with  what we got out of two avocados, so I'm going to say - for now - that our homemade guac is the more economical of the two.

Holy Guacamole!

I never really ever realized how easy it is to make guacamole. It's literally three ingredients in a bowl. Avocados, lime juice, salt. Done. Now that I know this, and that I've mastered how to slice and pit an avocado (maybe "mastered" is a stretch), this might be something I have to do more often. I mean, who doesn't love chips and guac as an appetizer or snack? I suppose the real question is, what's more expensive, making your own guacamole or buying the stuff at the store? We'll have to look into this. Anyhow...

Last night the boys and I made chicken, bean & cheese quesadillas to go with our guac, and a Waldorf salad. As a I said above, the guac is really easy to throw together. Two avocados, the juice from half a lime, and a 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Mix it all up, and bam. Guacamole.

Once we had that done, we moved on to the Waldorf salad. So I looked it up and I guess technically what we made isn't quite a Waldorf salad. According to wikipedia, a Waldorf salad is:

"a fruit and nut salad generally made of fresh apples, celery, grapes and walnuts, dressed in mayonnaise, and served on a bed of lettuce."

Now we checked the apple box, the walnut box and the lettuce box, but our salad didn't have celery, grapes, or mayo (we used a store-bought balsamic vinaigrette) and we sprinkled some feta cheese on there as well (the cookbook recommended bleu cheese). Honestly I don't know that I'd like the traditional Waldorf, and I know that my non-mayonnaise-loving wife would prefer the vinaigrette dressing. Waldorf or not, I thought the salad turned out pretty good.

So when we cut up the apples for our salad, I tried our apple corer/slicer. The results were somewhat mixed. I feel like it shouldn't take my full bodyweight to force a slicer through an apple, but there we were. I was able to get through it eventually, but I don't know that it really saved me any time. Fun to try new things though.

So with our guac and our Waldorf salad done, we moved onto the quesadillas. The recipe was just for a bean & cheese quesadilla (which we'd actually made before), but this time we decided to add in some chicken. So we bought a rotisserie chicken from Safeway and I shredded some chicken breast to throw on there. Two key things we learned in our quesadilla making this week:

1) Make sure the tortillas you use aren't too big as it makes them really difficult to flip

2) The more things you put in a quesadilla, the heavier it becomes, and the harder it is to flip

So the flipping wasn't especially pretty, but we got them made, and they tasted decent with the guac. If we do the recipe again, I think the main thing we'd do different is using smaller shells. Overall though, not a bad dinner.