Pizza

 

I decided to quit buying Naan for my pizza endeavors and just started making my own. I've done P-Dub's Basic Pizza Crust and it's pretty tasty. I'm still working out the kinks on how to make it crispy on the bottom but, generally it's pretty perfect (Someday, I'll quit being lazy and I'll dig out my pizza stone.) Today, we incorporated kale which was weird but I felt really healthy afterward, despite the massive cheese intake. Total combo included kale, tomatoes, red onion, crimini mushrooms, minced garlic, sundried tomato, and basil pesto base. WHY NOT? It was great.

Bread and Butter

Sometimes I get mad cravings for delicious crusty bread lathered in expensive butter that's so delicious it tastes like cheese. This is one of those times. I'm too lazy to go start myself a round of 5 minutes a day bread or the go to No-knead so I'm just gonna satisfy myself by checking out these loaves of days gone by...

 Ugh. No satisfaction. Must start on that "year of the perfect crust" thing...

Po Boys for President

This is a Po Boy. You will find such things if you randomly hop in a car and drive to New Orleans for New Year's Eve or Groundhog's Day or whatever other time strikes your fancy. You will become overwhelmed with the number of "authentic" cajun restaurant offerings and you will want to pull off the highway and get some gumbo in your belly, pronto. I would encourage you to wait. Stake out your options. Look for something real. And, by "real" I mean real good. To do this, you may need to venture a little further off the highway than within sight of the exit. You may need to drive in circles a little bit. You may need to stop and call for directions even though you have three iphones at your disposal and a gps. You may even find that you've passed the place... once or twice. You may accidentally mistake it for an abandoned convenience station. You may realize it WAS a convenience station. At this point, you must go in.

 This  is Robbie G's in Alexandria, LA and I found it ALL BY MYSELF. Okay, Yelp is a helpful tool for this and I am a huge fan but I'm gonna go ahead and claim credit for this because Yelp only got us so far. It got us a name of a place where the "locals go." I had the daring nerve to seek it out and call it my own. I even used their toilet ( which is located " 'round back.")

Mr. Robbie G came out of the back himself, apron on with spatula in pocket and said "Whadyallwan?" We asked. And, we received.

Yum. Get yourself a Po Boy at your earliest convenience like these fine folks. I recommend it with cheese ( as I do for most things.)

New Year, New Word

Once upon a time, I was was way into scrapbooking. Well, more accurately, I was really into buying scrapbook supplies. Anyway, through this process, I became a  follower of the  "one little word" challenge known to the scrapbook community. I liked the idea of having a simple guide to help me remember what's important and be able to document my life accordingly. It soon became evident that the one little word challenge was deeper than a page layout. Thus, Aubrey and I started picking a word every year. For example, our year of "Experience" led us to sacrifice buying home comforts and we saved up like crazy to take a European adventure. Our year of "Be" led us to figure out what makes us tick and brings us peace so we literally moved to a new town. For 2011, we have chosen the word "story." We aren't exactly sure what this means yet... or, more specifically, how this will manifest itself. It's a pretty powerful concept to me. Also, it's compelling because there is no clear direction. What will the story be? I don't know but I want to be presently aware of the actions I take and the contributions I make that develop my own narrative. To me, it's the opposite of "summary." A story is something I've consciously contributed to as both a participant and an observer. Maybe I'll have a story of the year I finally learned how to make baguettes. The story doesn't start if I don't get up and grab some flour. Maybe it's something bigger than perfect crust. I don't know. I'm looking forward to where our word and our story will take us this year.



Now, with all that said, we got a jump start on adding to our personal narrative. We pretty much recruited a buddy, hopped in a car, and celebrated the new year New Orleans style. Stories about that are to come...(yeah, this is a food blog, so expect a bunch about food.)