Pizza (with a lot of ingredients that start with “C”)

It’s surprisingly easy to do crazy things with pizza. Granted, I didn’t make my own pizza dough; I bought a pre-made crust from a store. If I had made it myself, I can guarantee that there’d be strange things in the crust itself (maybe olives?), but the toppings are fun, too.

Ingredients:

- 1 pizza crust (make your own if you know how — I imagine it’d be tastier)

- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

- Two vine tomatoes

- Feta cheese to taste, crumbled

- Fresh basil leaves to taste

- 1/2 can of chickpeas

- Capers to taste

- Cumin

- Cinnamon

- Cayenne

In a small bowl, mix the olive oil and spices to taste. Drizzle most (but not all) evenly over the pizza crust. Add chickpeas to the remaining olive oil and stir until coated. Place basil, tomatoes, chickpeas, and capers on the crust, and sprinkle feta on top. Bake at 400F until the crust and chickpeas are lightly browned.

The chickpeas roll around a bit, so be careful when slicing (and eating) the pizza. It’s tasty and interesting; I’d never had cinnamon on a pizza before. (Or chickpeas, cumin, cayenne, or capers, for that matter.) If I make this again, I’ll probably add garlic.

Beets, Chickpeas, and Peaches Over Rice

I’m feeling a little financially strained these days, so I did some brainstorming and came up with cheap, nutritious, strange things to cook. I’ll definitely make this concoction again.

Ingredients:

- 1 1/2 cups long grain brown rice (that’s 1 1/2 cups uncooked rice, not cooked rice)

- 2 small beets (or 1 large one — I happened to have two small ones on hand)

- 1 ripe peach

- 1 can of chickpeas

- turmeric to taste

- cayenne pepper to taste

- salt to taste

Cook the rice. While it’s busy absorbing water, rinse and drain the chickpeas. Also, grate the beets with the large side of a box grater, and cut the peach into small cubes. When the rice is done, add turmeric, cayenne pepper, and salt to taste. After that, stir in the beets, chickpeas, and peaches — and voila! You’re done. No more cooking is required; if you’d prefer to heat everything through, though, that’s perfectly acceptable.

The whole concoction cost me about $3.75, and there are lots of leftovers.

Strawberry-Orange-Lime-Iced Tea Smoothie

This makes a tart smoothie, so if you prefer your smoothies a little sweeter, I suggest that you add part of a banana and/or maple syrup to the blend. We actually have no ice cube trays, so this smoothie contains no ice; I liked it that way, but if you like your smoothies colder, by all means, use ice (maybe frozen cubes of iced tea?).

Ingredients:

- 6 ripe strawberries, halved or quartered (depending on size of berry)

- 4 orange wedges

- Juice of 1/2 a lime

- Approx. 1/2 cup iced tea (you’ll have to eyeball this)

Place fruit in blender. Add lime juice. Pour in iced tea until it looks right; it should cover a little over half of the fruit. Blend until smooth.

If we’d had some fresh mint lying around, I would have added some. Ah well — there’s always next time.

Asian Pear Butter Sauce

L and I had green beans for dinner, and I decided it’d be nice to make a sauce for them. What better ingredients to use than Asian pear butter, sherry, white wine, lemon, and soy sauce? (I would have added some cayenne, but L wouldn’t have liked it.)

Ingredients:

- 1 Tbsp Asian pear butter

- 1 Tbsp sherry

- Splash of white wine

- Splash of soy sauce

- Splash of lemon juice

Adjust amounts as necessary (this makes a very small amount of sauce). Gently simmer sherry and wine to burn off the alcohol, heating over over low heat. Add the Asian pear butter and soy sauce; mix well. Heat over low heat until thickened. Serve over fresh steamed green beans.

This makes a tasty sweet sauce, but it lacks body — it tastes great for a second or two and disappears. This could be because the green beans have a lot of water in them, so they immediately diluted the sauce as soon as I bit into them. Next time, I might try adding cayenne and peanut butter.

Savory French Toast

French toast. Fluffy, sweet, piping hot bread drizzled with maple syrup and sprinkled with cinnamon — a decadent morning treat. That’s how I always thought of it, but I recently realized that French toast has so much potential.

L and I were trying to figure out what to make for her mom and her stepdad, and I hit upon the idea for savory French toast. It was so delicious that we had to do it again earlier this evening. (Also, there was leftover egg and milk mixture that had to get used up.) The first time around, I made my slices with oregano, parsley, basil, and dill. This time, I decided to get a little more adventurous — I used turmeric, coriander, black pepper, lavender, fennel seed, and dipped each bite into balsamic vinegar.

It was delicious. Trust me.

Ingredients:

- Bread of your choice, sliced (I used rye)

- 4 eggs

- 1 cup milk

- Desired spices/herbs

Beat eggs in a wide bowl; add milk and whisk together. Add desired spices/herbs to batter. (If you’d like to use different combinations of spices/herbs for each slice, skip this step.) Coat a frying pan or griddle with butter and put it on medium heat. When pan is hot, dip slices of bread into the egg/milk/spice mixture and place on pan. (If you didn’t add spices/herbs to the batter, sprinkle them on individual slices before you flip them.) Flip slices once they turn golden-brown on the bottom; remove from heat when the other side is done and eat with whatever toppings you choose. Some suggestions: savory jam, cheese, and mushrooms.

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After making savory French toast, I was curious and decided to look it up online. It’s apparently relatively common, though not in the States. There were some interesting ideas about it on the web; at some point, I’ll have to try making stuffed savory French toast.