Thursday and Friday Have Now Become Oneday

Hello again internet universe. Tonight we will have an interesting combination, but one with a good message. Yes, you can turn frozen pizza into a gourmet meal AND you can make lunch in the morning that is a real meal and not a sandwich.

So, Thursday night in the Hammond Brown household was a late one. Upon arriving back home at 8pm the idea of cooking dinner was a rough one, especially since I also wanted to spend time with the Sydmeister before she crashed out a 9pm. Thus, when the hubs suggested I "just cook the pizza in the freezer," I was tempted. At first I refused, but then I thought to myself, if I pair it with a gourmet salad than maybe it is not so horrific of a family meal. Out comes Mr. Pizza and into the oven he goes. So my only real recipe was my salad and it was AWESOME. Baby arugula, check. Vine ripened tomato, check. I like my tomatoes in big square chunks, there is something about a big chunky bite of tomato that is delicious. No wimpy diced tomatoes in my salads. I also decide that hard boiled egg would be delicioso, so on goes a pot of water and in go 4 eggs and the burner goes to 'high.' Once this boils, I give it maybe 8-10 minutes and then they're done. Just enough time to finish everything else. By the way, 2 of these eggs are for the salad and 2 are for lunch tomorrow. Little things like this are good to make extra of. I am not a big fan of eating left overs from the night before for lunch. It is boring. But if I can do little things along the way for the next day I will.

And now for the piece de resistance, the dressing. I am kind of craving caesar dressing, homemade, but of course I don't have any anchovies. I will just see what I come up with. In the freezer I find pine nuts and pistachios. Yes, I keep my nuts in the freezer (hehe). Bust out the blender or food processor, I personally like my blender bc I keep losing the blades to any food processor that comes into my house. WHY couldn't cuisinart make a food processor with a fixed blade. I don't need to do 6,000 different things with it, I just need to not have 17 tiny parts to keep track of.

My apologies, back to business. In we go with the pine nuts, bout a palm full, then just enough olive oil to cover them. What else, what else? Oh I remember, big ole pinch of sea salt and lots of fresh ground pepper. Parmesan cheese... mmm... my favorite. And this time the good old grated kind in the green canister. Classy Classy! One egg. Raw and delicious. If you fear this part of the recipe than I would like to bring to your attention that every time you have ever ordered a caesar salad in your life you have been eating raw eggs. Same goes if you eat sorbet. Suck it up and drop the raw egg in. I promise that as soon as you blend it and it looks all nice and pretty you won't even remember about the egg. Add a decent sized splash of vinegar. I used balsamic, but sherry would work too. Whatever vinegar you have will work, but the darker the better. Now flip the switch. Please don't forget the lid. Sydney liked watching the blender. She would stare at it like it was magical.

Upon liquification of this loverly concoction, I opened the lid back up, added some pistachios and here is where you would add more olive oil if it was a bit dry. But go easy, this is supposed to resemble caesar dressing not vinaigrette, so it should be thicker. The reason you add the pistachios last is because you don't want them to fully blend and if your concoction is thick enough then some of the pistachios won't sink and hit the blender blades so you will still have chunky pistachios to add crunch to your salad. OR if you are using a food processor you can just hit it once really quick and then you still have chucks of pistachio. Yum!

Check the eggs. Well, honestly you should have checked the eggs already to see if the water was boiling, pulled the lid off the pot and let them boil until now-ish. Pull the eggs off and run cold water into the pot, for a while, to cool the water down. Throw a bunch of ice into the water to cool down the eggs quickly.

Pour the dressing over the arugula and tommy-toes and toss. Dice up a small shallot or a bit of red onion and throw that in as well. Take a breather, sip on some wine or do a shot of tequila or whatever floats your boat. Oh crap! The pizza! Miraculously I check the pizza and it is perfect. Pull it out, slice it up.

Now your eggs should be cool. Peel em and rough chop them into the salad. Toss again. Plate it up. LOTS of salad to make up for the fact that you are eating frozen pizza. Put some slices of pizza next it. Doesn't pizza look healthier and better next to this fabulous salad?! I almost feel as though I actually cooked something... almost.

For lunch the next day I make ground turkey bolognese. I make it in the morning before work. Yeah that' right!! It takes me 15-20 minutes and I do the whole thing with a baby in my arms. If I can do that, anyone can. I will save that story for tomorrow. Just so that I can keep my imaginary readers on the edge of their imaginary seats.