More Pizza - For Breakfast!

This little beauty is covered in bits of fresh grilled corn and eggplant, soysage, Zingerman's Creamery smoked mozzarella, and a few eggs - and then baked until the eggs are just set. Breakfast is served!

Roasted Veggie Salad

Inspired by a great lunch over at the Real Time Farms world headquarters, I decided to do something similar for an equally great dinner.

I started with Ree Drummond's Crash Hot Potatoes, and topped them off a a roasted vegetable medley of broccoli, beets, and red pepper, added a can of black beans (drained and rinsed), and tossed all of that with a dollop of Zingerman's Creamery Pimento Cheese, which melted and formed a zesty cheesy sauce.

Proper Pizza

In Japan, we had "pizza night" once a week for a little taste of home. It certainly satisfied, and was something for us to look forward too, but baking personal sized pizzas topped with mediocre mozzarella in the teeny convection oven was a far cry from what we are able to do now in a regular oven with proper cheese! Hurray for being home!

This one has a base of cilantro and olive oil, topped with tomatoes and Zingerman's Creamery smoked mozzarella.

Cilantro and olive oil base again, topped with green olives, grilled eggplant, and more smoked mozzarella.

Tomato and Corn Pie

After receiving a plethora of delectable tomatoes from a friend's garden, I was searching all of my favorite food blogs for tomato inspiration, and Smitten Kitchen's Tomato and Corn Pie rose to the top.

A savory biscuit-crusted pie hiding layers of fresh corn, tomatoes, and cheddar cheese - how could I resist?

I didn't! Although our pie had a puddle at the bottom of it (seeding the tomatoes didn't seem to make a difference), I just poured off the liquid, and it still tasted fine.

More than fine actually as I went back for seconds!

Fun With Paint: Part II

With Mike busy this evening, I decided to be productive and start prepping for the next painting project that we'd planned to tackle this weekend. After all, that's what long holiday weekends are for, right?!........  I was happily listening to a podcast, unscrewing items from the wall and patching holes, when I removed one outlet cover and a chunk of paint came with it.

And by chunk I mean a huge sheet of paint. This paint thinks it is wallpaper.

So now we have a couple of taupe walls and a vibrant peach wall in a bathroom unsuccessfully prepped for painting. I think I need sandpaper. And reinforcements. So, I've decided that productivity is overrated and that a beer and some bad television sounds like a better plan for the night.

Walnut Fruit Butter Cake

My grandmother is a big fan of putting nuts in cookies and all other types of baked goods. I on the other hand, am not. It's not that I don't like nuts (I do!), and there certainly are exceptions to the rule, but for the most part I think they just throw off the texture of most goodies.

But when I saw Smitten Kitchen's Walnut Jam Cake recipe, I was pretty sure that I'd found a happy compromise. The toasted walnuts are finely chopped, lending a delicious nutty flavor to the cake, without disrupting the cake's soft texture. I made the recipe exactly as printed, except I substituted my homemade blueberry butter for the suggested jam topping. I think it was a hit, as my grandmother went back for seconds!