Pork Lo Mein
Lo Mein is a great way to sneak in an extra night of pasta in the week. I mean, you can’t expect the family to tolerate pasta too many nights in one week. If you’ve got Sunday pasta with gravy, and another dinner planned with pasta and other mix-ins, how can you sneak in another night to get your full pasta fix? By calling the dish by a foreign language. Then the family believes you’re having Chinese food for dinner and not serving up more winter, hibernation comfort food for yourself. Lo Mein by another name would be a pasta dinner with pork and vegetables. But Lo Mein sounds foreign, more exotic, less redundant, more diverse for my ever so deserving, discriminating family.
I’m so glad I’m clever.
Might Have Been the Best Pizza Ever!
You just never know where a problem will take you. I planned on making pizza last Friday night, and was going to use some pizza dough I had frozen a few weeks ago. I had pulled out the bag of dough to defrost earlier in the afternoon, and it seemed a little small, but I hoped that once it defrosted it would rise and grow to be enough for our dinner. So I proceeded with frying up the pancetta (I’ll pause for the expected oohs and aahs), grating the Robusto Gouda cheese (another pause to savor the moment), and chopped the sun dried tomatoes and olives I had scrounged out of the back of the fridge.
Then I began to attempt to roll out the dough on my usual baking tray. Push. Ugh. Stretch. Ugh. Stretch again. I barely made it across the entire sheet without tearing, but it was probably 1/2 inch shy of the edge all around. Dinner would be light. But then Louisa helped me to top with all of my planned toppings and they all distributed just about right. It came out with the thinnest crust I’ve ever made, definitely not for fans of a Sicilian pie. But the cheese just melted across it and sealed itself right to the dough so perfectly, that it almost seemed like I had created a frico pie, not a pizza pie. Let me explain, fricos are those cheesy, crispy wafers made from grated cheese that has been toasted in a skillet. They are a decadent little treat for a cheese lover. In this case, the dough was so thin that it seemed like the base of this pizza was crispy cheese, not pizza dough Not only was the texture of the pie appealing, but the flavors of the gouda and pancetta were perfect. The other toppings added just a bit of punctuation to the whole thing.
I will repeat this recipe.
Happy World Nutella Day – Celebrate with Inner Beauty Nutella No-Bake Cookies
Happy World Nutella Day. For this year’s celebration I decided to create no bake Nutella drop cookies. They aren’t very pretty, but they’re very tasty and addictive. Because the looks are deceptive, Louisa named them Inner Beauty cookies. Enjoy!
Inner Beauty Nutella No-Bake Cookies
Ingredients
5 cups corn cereal squares
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups Nutella
1 cup peanut butter chips
1 cup peanuts
Directions:
Prepare a large baking sheet by covering with waxed paper.
Pour cereal, peanut butter chips and peanuts into a bowl and gently stir together. Set aside.
Stir corn syrup and sugar in a large saucepan over medium high heat until sugar dissolves and mixture comes to a simmer. Remove from heat and quickly stir in Nutella until blended.
Pour Nutella mixture over cereal mixture in bowl. Mix well until cereal, peanut butter chips and peanuts are well coated.
Drop by large tablespoons onto covered baking sheet. Cool at room temperature until cookies hold together. Store at room temperature in airtight container.
For more information on this delicious celebration and other nutella recipes visit:
