Asparagus pizza, raw

Pepperoni pizza

Asparagus pizza, cooked

Asparagus pizza, cooked - side view

Tomate & cheese pizza

Asparagus pizza & tomato pizza on my plate

Asparagus pizza, cooked - another side view, minor variation

I find that this dough is crispier of you bake it on parchment instead of oiled sheets. The asparagus pie was pretty much like this one on Smitten Kitchen – I shaved up the asparagus, tossed it with oil, salt & pepper. Then I crumbled a layer of goat cheese on to the crusts, and piled the asparagus on top – and then sprinkled on Parmesan. I also made a pepperoni pie and one with tomatoes – I didn’t have any mozzarella, so i chopped up some string cheese for the base layer.

After we ate up almost all the pizza, I went over to Steve’s recording studio to watch Jeff DeMark - who I know from cab driving days – perform. Kind of long funny stories of his wayward youth, which was not too different from my own, with Andy Ewen backing him on guitar and Tony Castaneda on percussion. It was one of those Madison 2 degrees of separation events, where everyone either knew each other, or knew somebody who knew somebody.

Before I got busy working at home, I treated myself to a bowl of Honeynut Cheerios with granola and a banana on top and a big Chai made with mostly whole milk & a little 2%, and a Game of Thrones episode – though watching those dark medieval scenes at 8:30 in the morning was a little not quite right. I guess I waiting for the guys in the little red truck to come to fix the windshield on John’s car (formerly Dad’s car – Mark’s father’s car that he gave Mark when he decided he should stop driving at the age of 89 or so). It’s a 2003 Toyota Camry, the type of car that Madison is full enough because people give them to their kids to take to college and then buy something new for themselves.

I guess I had a productive day – worked on one of my online classes, mostly. John came back and we had coffee and talked about his prospects as a someone with a 2-year-old BFA, living in Milwaukee – graduate school still looks like the best plan. School portraits – driving miles & miles and getting only paid for like 17 hour per week, supplemented by the occasional wedding – just isn’t enough to sustain him. Even if he has fun from time to time getting to shoot high school sports.

I made pizza for dinner, kind of the usual flavors – pepperoni & artichoke hearts & fresh tomato and tomato sauce, squash (using up that bit of cooked, roughly mashed, squash that had been in the fridge for so long) caramelized onions, and goat cheese, and mushroom, fresh garlic, and a sauce of pureed roasted peppers and tomatoes. Tomatoes & peppers that I’d thawed for this pie last Saturday. There’s a little bit of squash, onions, and pepper purèe left – they’ll be a good start for veggie broth, along with that old bunch of parsley in the veggie drawer – good thing, too because I decimated my freezer supply, because I donated 10 quarts of of broth to the slow food dinner. John didn’t make it back, he was off celebrating a friends’ birthday, so he gets pizza to take home.

I made a red velvet cake, too – I’d been wanting to all week, since I had cream cheese frosting left from slow food dinner, and another tub of it at the back of the fridge. I had gotten out the butter and eggs to come to room temperature, (can’t remember exactly which day – it’s been that kind of a week) and put them back after not making the cake, so I was glad to finally get to it. I used a recipe from this All Cakes Considered book, by a woman who works at NPR and take a weekly cake to the office. There are some good recipes in it, but some annoying aspects – it’s laid out so that the ingredients and the instructions are almost never on the same page, or even page spread, which I don’t like. The red velvet cake is pictured on the cover, and as well as inside the book, as a three-layer cake, but the recipe only calls for two 8- or 9-inch pans. And, considering it’s a recipe that also calls for 6 eggs, 2 sticks of butter, 2 1/2 cups of of 2 kinds of sugar, granulated and  and & light brown, 3 cups of flour and a cup of sour cream, I think if you did try to bake it two 8-inch pans you’d have serious overflow (it might not even fit in two 9s). I used 3 8-inch, and it’s one tall sucker of a cake. I’m looking forward to photographing it sliced, for the white icing/red cake contrast.

Pepperoni, artichoke, etc. in the oven

All three kinds

Crust of the mushroom pizza

Leftover squash pizza

3-Layer red velvet cake

Three-layer red velvet cake

My slice of cake

Joelle's slice of cake

My slice from above

I didn’t take a single picture of North Carolina food. My last food shot was Sunday breakfast in the Orlando airport.

We had a few good meals – Sunday night was Bonefish, which I think is a limited chain. I had swordfish and pumpkin ravioli, before I drank too much red wine. Monday after the funeral, and after a lot of the family went home, we went to a place called Ironwood Cafe. Also nice – I had ribs and sweet potato fries and haricot verts – tasty but heavy. I broke my water glass while Gregg & Jean were eating dessert and I was drinking a cup of lemon tea to try to settle my stomach – splashed water all over Mark & Ethan, broke the stem off the glass. Tuesday was the lawyer, lunch at a Panera, and another 9 hours of travel. Meals – half a mozzarella panini & tomato soup at the Panera, scone from Starbucks, and ice cream from Baskin-Robbins in the BWI airpot – shoulda been good but there were too many ice chips in the ice cream.

Today back to work and a 9:00 a.m. meeting, and a 2:00 to 4:30 class. I am sooo out of it.

But maybe it’s not just me – I made pizza for dinner, and Instagram and Tumblr don’t seem to be talking to each other – here’s the pix tho -

Plain tomato pizza

Goat cheese, squash and caramelized onion pizza

Arugula & prosciutto pizza, with goat cheese, squash and caramelized onion at the back

The fresh tomato was extra thin crusts, topped with Roma tomatoes I bought at the Wednesday farmers market and brought home on my bike, skinned and chopped and marinated with olive oil and 3 cloves of garlic overnight. I thought my lunchtime yogurt tasted slightly touched with garlic, from sharing the same fridge with the marinating tomatoes.

The eggplant was layer pizza sauce, and spread over that, the last of a sort of scalloped squash casserole – sautéed squash, tomatoes, onions, Swiss cheese and cream, topped with roasted eggplant and provolone.

I had bacon bits leftover from the post-wedding breakfast I served on Sunday, and throught they’d be good on pizza. I bought a bag of assorted peppers from the guy with the New Zealand accent at the Wednesday market, and sliced those onto a pizza with pizza sauce and cheddar and hot pepper cheese.

My favorite was roasted the zucchini, tomato, onion and olives (from leftover zucchini tian with honey-goat cheese.

Pizza night was fun – 12 people, a bunch of different kinds of pizza:

1. Pulled pork & corn & with bbq sauce & a few dabs of tomatilla salsa, topped with mozzarella
2. Veg version, with black beans instead of pork and Farmer John’s quite spicey Pepper Jack instead of mozzarella
3. Roasted broccoli, caramelized onions, a few olives and roasted peppers, on whole wheat crust. I was going to top this one with goat cheese, but I forgot to bring it, so this pizza got mozzarella, too.
4. deep dish sausage with Willow Creek sausage, and a cornmeal crust
5. Thin layer of pesto, chopped tomatoes, and mozzarella

Today I’ve been cooking for the pantry – I got a box of red peppers, and one of plum tomatoes from my CSA. I roasted most of the peppers, pickled a few, and I’m going to make what Deborah Madison calls pepper confit and I call pepperonata with the last one, along with some nice orange and red frying peppers that came in the regular box. It’s kind of a pepper relish – peppers and onions cooked slowly with herbs, and a little tomato paste, with some balsamic vinegar added at the end – to eat with eggs, or spread on bread. I used some peppers I’d roasted the other day, and some of the tomatoes, to make about a quart of pizza sauce. And tomorrow I’ll finish the  rest of the tomatoes: I blanch and skin them, and squeeze out the seeds and freeze them in pint bags – the equivalent of a 14-oz. can of diced tomatoes. I’ll I’ll roast some of them, too – I’m just trying to remember if I did it skins on or skins off other years – I think it was skins off.

The peppers are quick pickled peppers (called quick because you don’t have to can them; process them – you just put them in a brine, and then refrigerate) from Anna Thomas’ Vegetarian Epicure Book Two. Use 4 large bell peppers – I usually like to use yellow, red and green, but I only had red ones this time, one of which had green patches. Cut them into thick strips, and save the tops and seeds of two of them. Mix 1 cup of cidar vinegar, 3 cups of water, 1/3 cup sugar (Anna says 1/2) in a pot, and add 1 1/2 TBLS coarse salt, and 2 TBLS mixed pickling spices (or make your own mix, with whole spices like bay leaf, clove, mustard seeds, hot pepper flakes, fennel seed, cinnamon sticks ….). Heat the liquids to a boil, and add the peppers. Simmer for 15 minutes, then remove from the heat and let the peppers sit in the brine another 15 minutes or so. Using tongs or a slotted spoon, fish out the pepper strips and place them in glass jars (I use 2 of the quart mason jars I get with honey in them). Strain the brine over them, cover and refrigerate overnight before eating. They’ll keep all winter in the fridge. They’re great in cheese sandwiches.

Granola and a biscuit & jam for breakfast

Granola and a biscuit & jam for breakfast

Granola and a biscuit & jam for breakfast

Granola and a biscuit & jam for breakfast

Corn & barbecue sauce pizza

Thursday: I got up and made a big fruit salad with watermelon, from my CSA box, and plucots and grapes and pineapple, and then biked to the library and the hardware store. Came back and ate blueberry pancakes (from the freezer) with bacon and fruit salad for breakfast. Ethan had a soccer game on the East side so we decided to save car trips and drive there together- I would loop back and unload the dishwasher at School Woods and tidy up while Mark watched the game – then back west for a movie. It didn’t quite work. The kids needed a ride home from the game, and the traffic was really bad, and we read the movie listings sort of wrong – there was no 7:05 movie that we missed, but there was a 7:45 we could make. Plus our stomach clocks were off – I hadn’t eaten since my big breakfast at noon, and Mark had made some of the leftover bacon into a sandwich at 3:00 – so he was OK with a 7:45 movie and dinner after, but I wasn’t. So I ate scraps for dinner – salami and toast and Jarlsberg and red licorice. We went to see Inception and then finished the pie for dessert.

Friday: a lazier day – another bike over to the east side, Willy Street for groceries, and this time I stopped for coffee and a bear claw. Worked more on converting old School Woods to Word Press, and then the height of decadence, a movie at 4:20 – The kids are all right, which I think I liked better than Inception. I made corn & barbecue sauce topped pizza for dinner.

Saturday: Kids started showing up, first Al, then John. Took Al, who had been phoneless since he jumped in the lake with his iPhone in his pocket in June, to the Apple Store to get his iPhone 4. Which started a series struggles trying to get it to connect with his MacBook, that needed a system upgrade. We had corn and black bean salad in front of the Emma Thompson, High Grant, Ang Lee Sense & Sensibility for dinner, meanwhile continually trying to get the new OS to install on Al’s computer.

Sunday: On Sunday Rach and I walked and got caught up – we say we’re not seeing each other enough when her number goes out of the recents in my phone – she’d been gone from there for over a week! I stopped by the bagel place, and we had a true Shapiro family Sunday brunch – bagels and cream cheese and sliced tomatoes, and scrambled eggs and bacon. John showed up just in time for his everything bagel. Al made a bacon sandwich with his. Then back to the Apple Store for John’s new iPhone, and for help from the genius bar with installing OS 10.6+ on Al’s machine. Our Apple sales dudes were night & day – Al’s was just “sure, cool, let’s do that” – John’s was all about overly explaining everything in a smarmy way. We had a few minor and not so minor crises – John couldn’t remember his IMAP mail password, but once he restored his new phone from his old phone backup, all was well. Al’s machine needed yet more upgrades that had to download from Apple before his computer’d recognize the new iPhone – Al suffered a brief meltdown – the stress of being phoneless for so long, and the new one not working – but once the download finished all Al’s stuff worked, too. I wanted to grill, and so did Al – and he kind of took over, which was fine – we had brats, burgers, salmon, shrimp, sausages, and a lobster tail. Al grilled it all. The kids hung in the driveway, and John and I sat on the couch to eat inside, with me jumping up to pull non-recyclables out of the recycle, and wipe counters, and remove food from where cats could get it, and generally help Al’s friends, even though John kept telling me to stop it. Everyone was gone and all cleaned up before 9:00 – so I watched the last 10 minutes of vampires with Mark, and waited for it to come around again at 10:30 for the whole show.

The nicest part, to me anyhow, was that it was just reassuring somehow, that this big mess of vegetables could be made into a dinner that not only I found satisfying – I’m the person that’s known to eat lima beans with butter and grated nutmeg as comfort food, after all -  but everyone else did, too.

Beets

We went to see the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, that I wanted to see because it’s Terry Gilliam, and Johnny Depp is in it. As anticipated, it looked great, due to the Gilliam influence. Johnny Depp is barely on screen, as one of the three actors playing “Tony” to replace dead Heath Ledger, but while Depp is there, he is beautifully romancing a lady of a certain age. There were also Victorian cardboard pop-up forests, rolling green fields and puffy clouds to make Peter Max swoon, and a tap-dancing troop of British policemen in half-drag, from the waist down – nylons & high heeled shoes below their jackets and hats.

We went for pizza afterward at Porta d’Alba, no doubt the best wood-fired pizza in Madison. I think they must do their crusts the way that my Big Sur Bakery Cookbook instructs – you divide the dough into individual pizza crust size balls, and then rise it overnight on a tray in the fridge – or on a rack of trays in a big walk-in if you have one. Then you stretch it out and bake it per pizza – you can even toss it if you’re feeling especially dexterous. You end up with this great round rim of chewy dough with a pool of pizza inside.

Meanwhile, the Packers came back to tie the game; I started checking on my iPhone when we got to the pizza place, but then lost in overtime. Our bill at the pizza place plus tip equalled the score: $45.51.

And everyone’s saying that this cardinal player grabbed Rodgers’ face mask, causing him to fumble – not an argument I’m gonna get into.

Is he or isn't he?