Tag Archives: food

A stocked freezer

I’ve been so thrilled about freezing meals in preparation for lil’ Alice and the first few weeks of her life, during which (I’m told) I won’t want to cook. At all. And I believe it! I think I’ll be too busy figuring out how to feed my brand-spanking new baby to think much about how to feed myself, so I wanted options in stock, ready to go, that just needed to be defrosted and reheated.

Plus, as I’ve mentioned before, there’s that whole childhood fantasy I’ve always had (based on the “Little House” books) of stocking the home with food in preparation for the winter. So even though I didn’t slaughter a pig or string onions along the rafters like Laura Ingalls Wilder did, over the past weeks I’ve built up a reserve of Split Pea Soup, Chicken Marsala, Italian Beef and Peppers, Indian Curry and French lentils, all stacked in freezer bags, labeled and dated.

And then on Saturday (glory of glories) I pretty much doubled what was in there thanks to . . .

. . . Julie and Annie!

They came over around 3pm with large bags of groceries. The idea was that each of us would choose a freezer-friendly recipe and provide enough ingredients to make one giganto batch of it. Annie made chicken and sweet potato burritos . . .

. . . 30 of them.

I made egg rolls . . .

. . . 65 of them.

Julie manned two huge pots of chili.

There was chopping, there was wine, there was good conversation with these two sweet girls, there was music, there were wasabi-coated peas, there was frying and assembly-line burrito wrapping and egg roll-rolling. There was cast iron cookware all over the place, a brief moment in which Julie’s oven mitt was on fire, a short struggle with the Kitchen Aid attachments which ended in a rollicking cheese-grating success, and so much snacking along the way that by the end of the experience, I was stuffed.

We cooked for about 4 hours, and around 7:30 split the results. We each ended up taking home 9 meals for two.

It was fun!

It made my back hurt.

It made my heart happy.

It made my freezer full.

Thank you, ladies, for spending your afternoon/evening with me! It was lovely and we absolutely must do it again, whether or not there are babies imminently arriving.

Here are the nicely stacked bags, with the two new Ziplocs of chili added to the mix:

And the burritos and egg rolls live in the bin at the bottom of the freezer:

Our apartment smelled like egg rolls for the next 48 hours . . .

. . . but my man didn’t seem to mind one bit.

He’s already looking forward to eating those egg rolls, I can tell you that much. Hurry up Alice! We can’t eat ’em until you get here!

White Pizza with Roma Tomatoes

Last week I was unexpectedly told I could work from home on Thursday and Friday, which was not only awesome for its own sake, but because it allowed me to hibernate in front of our living room window unit instead of venturing outside into the blistering sun, which has the potential to scorch the very skin off my bones in about 1 minute flat.

So Thursday and Friday, I booted up our old Compaq laptop (the one that the burglars in January took out of the case and then–hah hah–did not deign to take), logged into my remote desktop, and set up a little station right in front of the air conditioner with: my coffee. The laptop (incidentally, still covered in fingerprinting dust from the detective). My work cell phone. My coconut Greek yogurt (divine). A big glass of water. Two cereal bars. An old, battered copy of Jane Eyre. What ensued were delightfully peaceful mornings and afternoons, with my attention riveted on the passionate dialogues between Jane and Mr. Rochester and the chilling relationship between Jane and the inexorable St John Rivers, with the occasional distraction of answering my cell phone to set up a delivery appointment for a shipment of citric acid, sending an order confirmation to a customer in South America, or getting a transportation quote for a customer Stateside, or going back and forth about a mysterious wire transfer that a customer claims to have sent but we never received. And then–back to the plights of Jane as her will is tried and bent under the stern command of St John Rivers!

Aaaaah. Life is good.

The downside of this break in routine–I got a little lazy with my blogging. Thankfully I had this recipe hanging around in my drafts, and it’s the perfect follow-up to Erica’s pizza crust recipe from last week. So it’s all coming together after all, despite my neglectful 4th of July ways!

I love the simplicity of this lil’ white pizza. It’s not up my husband’s alley, so I’m pretty much guaranteed to get it all to myself. Mmmmm!

My sister Erica called me up and pretty much commanded me to make it. I’m so glad that after a bossy start in my career as a sister, I have learned to listen to the Blonde One when it comes to culinary matters. And decorating matters. And many, many other matters.

Ingredients

(makes 1 pizza)

1 pizza crust
2 spoonfuls Alfredo sauce
2 handfuls grated cheese (mozzarella + Italian blend)
1 sprinkling grated Parmesan cheese
2 Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced

Preheat the oven to 500 F with a pizza stone inside, and shape the pizza crust on a piece of parchment paper.

Spread the Alfredo sauce on the pizza crust very thinly. I emphasize–very thinly. If not, things get a little gross. Sprinkle on the mozzarella/Italian blend, and then layer on the thin slices of tomato.

Sprinkle a little Parmesan on top of the tomatoes.

Slide the parchment paper with the pizza on top straight on to the pizza stone as soon as the oven is fully preheated.

Bake at 500 for 10-14 minutes, consume, rejoice! You could even sprinkle it with fresh basil right before eating, if that’s your thing.

Now this is my idea of a good pizza! Not a piece of pepperoni in sight.

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