Second Annual Un-Pizza Week Day Three: Pizza quiche

Last year, a Totoro was whored out to make my un-pizza gruel cuter. This year I made an owl my bitch.

Cuteness must be had.

I am not hot in the pursuit of lo-carb but do love both a good deep-dish pizza, or a quiche. So! Both gluten-freedom fighters and lo-carb fans may consider this dish from the Mr. Breakfast blog, a boon.

Vegans should flee in terror.

It’s Wednesday. I’m busy, so I’ll yap no longer. I’ve given you owl-y cuteness and pizza, and that is enough.

Pizza Quiche (adapted from Mr. Breakfast)

2 oz. reduced fat cream cheese
2 eggs
2 Tbsp. + 2 tsp. almond milk
2 Tbsp. grated reduced fat mozzarella
1 1/2 tsp. (after rehydrating) dried chives
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 tsp. dried oregano
1/2 c. Grated reduced fat cheddar
1/2 c. Grated Reduced fat mozzarella
Another 1/2 c. Grated reduced fat mozzarella
1/4 c. Marinara
1 c. Mushrooms, sautéed
1 vegetarian Italian sausage (I love the Lightlife ones), sliced
Heat da ov to 350 F. Greez da pan. I used one that was oval and probably holds 6 cups. Spread cheddar and the first 1/2 c. of mozzarella in your pan.
Blend (I used my immersion blender mini-cup attachment) cream cheese, eggs, 2 Tbsp. mozzarella, almond milk, chives, garlic powder and oregano. Pour over cheese. Bake 30 minutes. Take out and turn on broiler. Spread on marinara, mushrooms, veggie sausage and the last 1/2 cup of mozzarella. Keep a close eye on it in the broiler and let it bubble, toil and trouble, but do not burn it. Let it cool a bit before slicing into this sucker. And remember to turn off the broiler please. It’s getting hot in herrrrrr.

Maine blueberry pudding(it ain’t) aka it’s not pudding part two

First off: next week is staycation week for me. Yeah, I have a callback, yeah I’ll still go on auditions, or jobs, if they pop up, but otherwise I have an out-of-town guest and we have hikes and wine classes, and Big Lebowski/White Russian nights planned.
And I’m going to relax if it is the last thing I do.
Y’all will have to do without me but I’ll be back in blogland a week from Wednesday.
Food:
Sometimes molding something sounds intimidating. Sometimes you want layers. Sometimes you don’t want to wait overnight with weights atop your pudding-only-in-name-cause-Brits-call-all-desserts-puddings creation.

But Mainely you are intrigued by the cinnamon and lemon juice.

This Fannie Farmer recipe was so very similar to the Summer Berry Pudding
I told you about Wednesday. Except it only involved 4 hours in the fridge and was substantially easier to make because you didn’t have to make the pieces of bread fit your mold like a carbohydrate jigsaw puzzle.

Think of this as a dessert knife and fork pudding if you so please.

Or a berry sammich.

And don’t leave out the cinnamon and lemon, they make magic.

Maine Blueberry Pudding(adapted ever so slightly from the 1965 Fannie Farmer Cookbook)
3 slices of bread(gluten-frees, use your bread of choice, I believe me mum swears by Udi’s)
Butter
1/4 cup H2O
Cinnamon
1 1/2 cups blueberries
3 Tbsp. sugar give or take-see how sweet your fruit is and adjust accordingly
A squeeze of lemon
Cook the blueberries, agua, and sugar on stove. First you bring the it to a boil then let it burble. Simmer. Whichever. Take about ten minutes all total. You want it starting to thicken but you still want lots of juice. Add the squeeze of lemon.
Whilst you burble the berries:

Take a square Tupperware container that fits a slice of bread and line it with nonstick foil. Butter that bread and sprinkle cinnamon on it.

I am a cinnamonster and sprinkle lots. Come now, it’s good for you.

There is a reason it is not called sin-namon.

Layer the bread and berries in the container, two layers of berries between the bread. If you are smarter than I you will save more of the juice to pour atop the last piece of bread. Last slice should go cinnamon side down. Cover, and refrigerate about quatro horas.
Take out of the fridge, lift foil out and unwrap. Slice if you desire. Please consider being like me: put reddi-whip on top and devour.

You can make homemade whip if you like but please don’t compare the two. Reddi-whip and homemade whip, in my mind, are two completely different things. Apples and oranges. Each has their own time and place and both are delightful in the proper setting.

Cheez whiz and Brie.

That’s my stand.

Addicted to love

I’m actually not addicted to love, but I do become addicted to stuff I love. And when it comes to rehab I say No. No. No.

I am addicted to cooking from kinky-or-not(?)Chocolate Covered Katie’s eponymous blog.
I’ve made more things from her site than any other blog. I’ll give a little rundown at the end of this post.

An actual substance I legitimately love with addictive qualities happens to be cookie dough. So Katie’s Cookie Dough Dip had been on the to-make list for far too long.

I love her, I love dough. What else am I currently in love with? The cast of my play. My trifecta is complete. Crap, I thought trifecta just described a union of three great things but looked it up and found that it is a bet where you bet on the first three winners in exact order. I stand corrected.

Katie, cookie dough and the cast are not a trifecta. They are a triumvirate. That IS correct. A set of three. Specificly they are a triumphal triumvirate. The hat trick of addictive loves.

Katie’s recipe was naturally gluten-free, as are many of my castmates. Geez, these loves were meant to be. And the Midsummer(tickets here!) cast most certainly would need feeding for our sold out Sunday matinee, oui? That is where I served this up.

We are a sordid group, us thespians.
Here’s the green room evidence:

I think I’m in love with them. Oh yes. Meow.
Perhaps I have kinky-ness to rival that which potentially resides in Katie my chocolate covered vegan blog-writer-love? I do make use of a whip in the play. You make the call.

First make Katie’s Cookie Dough Dip.

I served these with sea salt dusted crackers for the salty-sweet goodness and made mine with peanut butter as the nut butter, brown sugar as the sweetener, and added just a pinch of love. That was cheesy. But it’s the truth.

The Katie round-up. Not obsessed, just in love:

Pumpkin Bread in a Bowl
Baked Pumpkin Oatmeal(boatmeal)
Cookie Dough Balls
Vegan Crustless Quiche
Pumpkin Bars
Singleton Muffin and Cinnamon Baked Oatmeal
Cake Batter Ice Cream
Beautiful Blueberry Concoction aka soy-free love potion
Healthy Ranch Dressing

I can please them all

How smashing that something on my to-make list was already gluten-free.
As I mentioned here a great deal of my fellow thespians in a Midsummer Night’s Dream(next Saturday the 7th is the last show-get your ticket and come see it!!!) are gluten-intolerant. So I made the chocolate cookie bars in a gluten-free manner and they were killed.

By the actors. In the green room. With their mouths.

Except for Demetrius, poor Demetrius, couldeth not been truer foul fortune for him. He eateth gluten, but is lactose-intolerantenty and thusly could not indulge in ye cookies.

This recipe was already on my to-make list and already gluten-free. I had to use almond milk and vinegar instead of buttermilk but it all worked out.

Normally I am a “northern” cornbread person. I prefer sweet and buttery to drier and cornier. This cornbread strikes a pretty good balance. The bean purée helps maintain a slightly softer texture, but it is not terribly sweet and the corn flavor stands out. I don’t think a piece should be eaten naked(you or the bread) but t’would hold up covered in butter and honey or dunked in spicy chili.
Then again, pretty much everything works well with butter.

Eateth up.

Corn and Bean Bread(adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman)
1 c. Almond milk mixed with
1 Tbsp. Of vinegar and allowed to sit while you get everything else ready OR 1 c. Buttermilk
1 1/2 c. Cooked white Beans(drained, puréed, then strained)
1 1/2 c. Cornmeal
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. Sugar
2 eggs
Heat your oven to 375. Spray an 8×8 pan with nonstick spray. Mix beans, milk and eggs. Mix cornmeal, baking powder, salt and sugar. Stir together. Put in your pan and bake until top is starting to brown a just a bit, 30-ish minutes. The clean toothpick test applies as well. Feed a starving actor.

And for the Los Angeles set

I did it. I purposefully made a dessert gluten-free.

I have no personal reason to do this.

I’ve done it not-terribly-successfully for me mum.

And now I’ve done it successfully for my castmates(of the ever-fabulous hard-core A Midsummer Night’s Dream tickets here! Ok I’m done). Being diet-aware as we Los Angelenos, especially those of us in the entertainment industry are, quite a few of my castmates had discovered a lack of digestive patience with good ol’ gluten. Fortunately none of them did it in the misled belief that gluten-free food is automatically healthy. They all actually had health problems caused by wheat.

But if any of them had started talking Paleo I’d have had to bite my tongue. That would hurt.

Despite the gluten-free challenge, the mom in me still wanted to feed the cast of Midsummer. Acting makes us hungry.

Plus, there was a bit of competition. First day of rehearsal and one of our actresses announced she baked. So of course I piped up. And then she dropped that g-free bomb and a good chunk of the cast bonded about being gluten-free so I realized if there was to be a bake-off I’d have to step up.

I was loathe to go buy a bunch of flours I generally have no use for but one of the g-f’s said she’d being me some brown rice flour.

I did done real good. The cast loooved these bars, original recipe courtesy of Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.

All that remained from rehearsal was this sad tiny brownie which I shall now gobble.

So here ya go. My would-be cookbook bf’s recipe, adapted for the g-f’s.

Gluten-free Chocolate Bars adapted from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian
8 Tbsp. melted butter
1/4 c. Applesauce
6 Tbsp. cocoa powder
3/4 c. Sugar(I subbed in Splenda for a 1/4 cup of it)
1 egg
Pinch salt
3/4 c. Brown rice flour
1/8 tsp. xanthum gum
1 c. Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate chips
Spray a 9×9 square baking pan. Preheat oven to 350.
Use beaters to blend up the cocoa, applesauce, and butter then beat in sugar until smooth. Then ye ol’ egg. Which hopefully actually isn’t old. Blend in salt. Switch to a spoon and add remaining ingredients. Bake around 20-30 minutes. Better underbaked than over. Feed starving thespians.

Almost a pizza…but not: un-pizza week day 5

Thank you to all who followed along on un-pizza week! There will be more theme weeks in the future, including a waffle week and the second year of pumpkin-week-in-spring. In spring.

Anyway, hope un-pizza week was enjoyed. I’m taking Saturday off but will be back next week on Wednesday with your regularly scheduled posts twice a week.

And now, to take un-pizza week home, I am going home. Or rather to a blog written in my hometown.
When I happened upon this blog, written by someone in St. Louis I was an instant fan. Particularly because she is not native to St. Louis her fondness for the city seems genuine. And St. Louis is a terrific town.

And we will keep on keepin’ on. Even without Pujols.

Have you been to or are you from St. Louis? What do you think of it? Any favorite places? Please pretty please leave me a comment and tell me!
Of the many recipes of darling Natalie’s I have bookmarked, this one for a polenta pizza seemed easy and, well, I had the stuff to make it so…well minus the pepperoni seeing as I don’t eat that.

For you gluten-free folks(you’re so liberated! I’m gluten’s bitch), I think this is ok? There is no wheat, at any rate.
This is a knife and fork affair. But calling it pizza makes it taste better.
Polenta Pizza(from The Sweets Life blog)
1/2 cup cornmeal
2 1/2 cups H2O
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup diced red bell pepper
3 cups baby spinach
1/2 cup marinara(I used a roasted onion and garlic flavored pasta sauce)
1/4 tsp. dried oreganp
1/2 cup shredded mozzerella(I used reduced fat)
Spray a 9″ pie pan with nonstick spray. Put water, cornmeal and salt in a saucepan and stir it up well. Bring to a boil then stir constantly for several minutes until it is thick. Pour into pin pan and spread evenly, then cover and refrigerate until cold.
Spray a skillet, heat to medium-high then saute onion and bell pepper until soft, add spinach and stir until wilted.
Spread 1/2 cup marinara over the cornmeal base in the pie pan. Spread veggies on top and sprinkle with oregano. Place in 450 degree oven for about 10 minutes. Add cheese and bake a few minutes more.
Give a hefty grind of sea salt and pepper in there at some point.

Balls for Birds, Especially Pujols

Oh happy night last night! I’m talking about Pujols’ three homers. Take that Rangers!
And in honor of Cardinals baseball, I give you cookie dough balls.

Oh Katie, you feed my addiction. For dough. You have so many variations on dough on your blog it makes me dizzy. And giddy. And removes my ability to filter my 13-year-old boy sense of humor which is why I giggled(like a school girl, how’s that for irony) when I came to the instruction to “insert lollipop sticks(or any long object, really)” into these. I fell down on inserting things into these Cookie Balls that were supposed to be Cookie Dough Pops. Cause I prefer balls to long objects. When it comes to food! Don’t let your mind slip into the gutter mine occupies. Or do. Sometimes it’s fun.
I enjoyed these balls. They are quite healthy, raw, and for my mom, gluten-free if made with the correct flours. I opted for a mix of oat flour and whole wheat.
They were not so photogenic which is why I put them on this adorable cat plate(a smashing gift from Eleanor, the fwife i.e. best friend I’d marry if I were gay and she was not married) and played around with photoshop…
Oh yikes, just realized Katie lives in Texas. Sorry. Hope you’re not a Rangers fan although since you are awesome, I’ll forgive that if need be.
So go to Katie’s blog, get the recipe and mix em’ up.
Unless you are a Rangers fan. No balls for you!
Sorry. Normally I am not like this. Two games won, two to go!