Monday, July 21, 2014

Playing with Our Food!

Looking for a bit of variety in our diet, I keep experimenting with simple meals.  Sometimes I come up with a winner and other times not so much!


As anyone who reads my blog is aware, I keep playing with pizzas at home.  No, I don’t make the crusts… My motto is, keep it simple!  Of course a significant part of my approach is that I don’t want to work hard for my food!
 
I’ve been using Mama Mary’s Thin and Crispy individual pizza crusts and they work well.  But for the two pizzas shown above, I tried something new.  I picked up a couple pieces of garlic naan for the crusts.  I applied tomato based pizza sauce on the one to the left, then cheddar and pizza shredded cheese, garlic, Italian seasoning, cracked hot red peppers and pepperoni.  I used Alfredo sauce instead of the tomato base for the one on the right…and then I added a little Benton’s prosciutto to the mix as well.  Garlic Nan is now our favorite pizza crust!


For lunch one day I was on my own… What to make for myself?  I like broccoli and I had a little left over in the vegetable keeper.  So I sauteed these broccoli florets in some olive oil with roasted garlic, hot crushed red peppers and pepperoni.  I really liked the results of this experiment!


Another day, another individual pizza!  This time I used one of Mama Mary’s pizza crusts, brushed it with olive oil and pizza sauce, then added crushed red peppers, Italian seasoning, a mix of shredded cheese, roasted garlic and a boatload of pan fried Italian sausage.  This was a ‘meaty’ and satisfying pizza!


I bought these ‘boneless beef ribs’ at the local grocery store.  They looked good in the meat counter…with enough ribbons of fat for flavor.  We marinated them for 24 hours before grilling them.
 

We each had a nice little salad with heirloom tomatoes, broccoli and lettuce…and I added asiago cheese to mine.  Laurie used shredded Parmesan on hers.


There were a couple of leftover slabs of tomato remaining so I added some roasted garlic and asiago cheese along with a bit of Italian dressing.  Very tasty indeed!

The boneless beef ribs…a true contradiction in terms…looked good when I brought them to the table.  As you can see, I applied BBQ sauce…Famous Dave’s “Devil’s Spit”, to be specific. 

As I mentioned at the beginning, sometimes I come up with a winner and sometimes, not so much.  These beef ‘ribs’ were tough!  The flavor was OK but they were chewy… I guess that I should have beaten the heck out of them before I marinated them.  Lesson learned!  At least the salads were good…

That’s about it for now.  Just click on any of the photos to enlarge them…

Thanks for stopping by for a visit!

Take Care, Big Daddy Dave 

8 comments:

  1. I love pizzas and MEATS... But--I'm not a rib person --boned or boneless... Too fatty for me--especially now that I'm being so careful of my weight. I also like the not-so-healthy THICK crusted pizzas... SO---you can make me a happy girl with one of your pizzas with plenty of meat--but not too spicy please... ha ..... (This post has made me hungry already this morning... ha ha )
    Hugs,
    Betsy

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  2. Dear Dave, It looks like you did a good job fixing up a meal or two. The ribs should cook long and slow on a relatively low temperature. Then they will not even need a knife to cut them.
    Blessings, Catherine

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  3. The naan breads are so much fun to use and I sometimes forget all about them. Thanks for the reminder. Playing with your food is fun and our motto is "if it's not good, we'll go out."
    Sam

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  4. The pizza's look good Dave and we like Naan in this same way. I like seeing you becoming a foodie.

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  5. Great pizzas, Dave! Growing up our neighbor made the best pizza ever, with her own dough, but I've seldom made it. That needs to change after seeing this. And I'm half embarrassed to say, I've never had nann. It's sure plentiful around this area; need to do something about that too. Have a good rest of the week!

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  6. I am catching up with all the posts I have not read. I saw that you went to the Norton Museum and ate at the same Diner as us while in West Palm Beach. I wrote a post on the museum, not the diner but another restaurant (http://avagabonde.blogspot.com/2010/03/and-also-in-west-palm-beach-florida.html) I still have some photos and posts to make about the Flagler Museum. By the way what are those white circles in your post of May 19?

    When we were in Monaco a couple of years ago, a Sunday, hungry and trying not to kill the budget, we went to a cafĂ© and had a pizza. It turned out the best pizza I have ever had. The dough was thin and crusty – I am not sure what was on it but it was delicious. Since then I have been trying to find a good thin and crusty pizza somewhere and so far no luck in our area – going back to Monaco is a bit far and too expensive to get a pizza. Do you know of a restaurant that may have a chain that makes a thin and crusty, but good pizza?

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  7. Broccoli & pepperoni???
    Why contaminate the pepperoni, what did he do to earn such an affront to delicious meats? Ugh.... next time step away from the broccoli & think it through more clearly :-)

    Love you, mean it!

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  8. Dear Dave I love this salad with tomato and cheese!
    Look perfect!
    xo

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