Today Is A Good Day...

Tonight the Relief Society is having a Soup and Bread Social. I decided to contribute Potato Chowder, a crockpot recipe I haven't tried before. I started it this morning before I left for school and thus I have the wonderful feeling of knowing what's for dinner, and that it will be ready at a reasonable hour. I have really fallen hard for crockpots this winter. I've been using them once a week this month. You can cook almost anything in a crockpot, I've discovered.
Also, today is the day that Campus Police Services give away all the stuff that people lost last semester, and never claimed. I scored two pairs of nice sunglasses and a jacket. Saves me from having to buy them!

New Recipes!

I guess you can see which blog is my favorite--half of my posts here are about my cooking blog! This is one of those posts.
I put some more crockpot recipes on allisonsrecipes.blogspot.com this week. I also borrowed a crockpot cookbook from my old friend Adrianne Bitondo, and will be posting 10 or more recipes from it as soon as I'm able.
Jason and I spent MLK day looking at houses in Martinez. Now don't get all riled up, we are not quite ready to buy anything, but since housing prices have gone down, we wanted to see what our money would be worth. We saw a lot of dumps. :) But for the first time in years, you can buy a dump for less than $500,000! What a deal!

She's back!

Sorry folks, I realize it has been too long since I last posted here. After enjoying time with my family over the holidays, I have been spending a good bit of my blogging time at my new annex blog: http://allisonsrecipes.blogspot.com
I love having this site! And as I begin using it to decide what to cook (I search for recipes by how much time I have to cook), and what to shop for, it just makes me think of more recipes to add. Right now I am working on crockpot recipes. Finding vegetarian crockpot recipes is surprisingly difficult, but I posted one today for crockpot mac and cheese that I think I will try tonight. It looks really easy, and only requires 3 hours of benign neglect.

Also New: Allison's Recipes

Yes, it's true! Allison's Recipes, a creatively titled new blog, is available for your consumption! It's full of wittily titled recipes, like "3 Bean Salad". Hahaha, oh, that was a good one.
Okay, so it's not funny. But it is a site of all the recipes my friends and family ask me for frequently, as well as family recipes, and even some recipes I'd like to try, but haven't yet. You can find the link to the site in the sidebar, under "Blogs I Love".
If you have an Ogden, Buchmiller, Searles, Huff, Brown, or Avilla recipe you'd like to submit, e-mail me.
Also, I got my grades back for last semester--A's in Nutrition, Political Science, and Weightlifting, and a B in Math. I am very pleased.

Smoky Cheese Pizza With Artichokes and Mushrooms

(For you fortunate ones, all the ingredients can be found at Trader Joe's)
Ingredients

2 ounces of Oak-Smoked English Cheddar (it's $10/lb, but you don't need much, and the leftovers are great mixed with jack cheese to top casseroles)
2 packages refrigerated pizza dough
5 Tablespoons of bottled Artichoke Antipasto Spread
5 or 6 whole cremini mushrooms

Roll out each bag of pizza dough on a floured surface until ½ inch thick, to make two pizzas. Begin preheating the oven to 450 degrees.
Place on a cookie sheet.
Spread dough rounds with artichoke spread.
Slice the mushrooms and sprinkle them on top of the spread.
Slice the cheese into about 1/8 inch slices, and cover the pizza with them.
Bake in a 450 degree oven for 8-10 minutes, or until the cheese bubbles.

Makes 2 personal-size pizzas. Also can be baked on a barbeque grill for a truly sublime, crispy crust. I'm tellin' you, this is the best pizza I've ever had.

Telestial Kitchen

A friend of my sister's started a blog about cooking called Telestial Kitchen. I love looking at the recipes there--there are comments, reviews and pictures of the dishes people have tried. My contributions are under the name allison b. Check it out!
http://telestialkitchen.blogspot.com/

Pesto With Michael

Here are some pictures of us at a restaurant called Chiak, on the coast of Italy, where we had amazing pesto. While at this restaurant, my dad waved around seafood parts while the rest of us pretended we didn't think it was funny.


Jason's friend Michael Griego is up here for a few days. Some of you may remember him from our wedding reception, he was one of Jason's groomsmen. He and Jason had lunch together today, and we're hoping to convince Michael to come over later this week for dinner. Jason and I consulted, and since it is a special occasion, we might just have homemade pesto served over gnocci. We made a batch of this pesto a while back, and it was sooo good. Almost as good as the pesto Jason and I had at Chiak when we were in Italy. It is heavy on the garlic.

The pesto recipe is now posted at allisonsrecipes.blogspot.com as Milanese Pesto

French Apple Pie

I posted this recipe because a few people have asked for it. It makes a really great apple pie, and is fairly easy. Between Jason and I, we have probably made 10 of these pies in the last 4 months.

1 ready to bake pie crust
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch of salt
6 cups cored, peeled and thinly sliced tart baking apples (approx. 4-5 med. sized apples)
1 cup flour (we have found that King Arthur's White Whole Wheat is actually the best.)
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1/2 cup butter or margarine, room temperature

Bring the pie crust to room temperature, and prepare as directed on the box for a single crust filled pie. (Really, just unfold the crust in a pie pan. Easy.) Preheat the oven to 350* F. Mix sugar, starch, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt into a large bowl. Stir in sliced apples. Dump apple mixture into prepared crust. To prepare the crumb topping, mix together flour and brown sugar. Blend in the butter or margarine until crumbly. Sprinkle crumb topping over pie. Bake pie on a sheet pan for 1 hour and 30 minutes.

This is an especially great recipe if you happen to know someone with a surplus of apples, as we do. That makes it really cheap to make!