Summer Fruit Pizza; Grilled Chicken & Pepper Pizza; Pinata

     As I have mentioned before, I am a creature of habit.  I get nervous when things are unfamiliar, out of order, or not preplanned.  Jennifer and Roger (my sister and brother-in-law) are remodeling their kitchen and dining room area.  Wednesday, their floors were being refinished.  Roger called me at 5 to 5, asking me what we (Jeff and I) were going to do for dinner.  Mom and Dad were coming down from Nisswa for a funeral, and, as always, they were going to stay at Jen & Roger's house.  Roger said that they would have to go out to eat, because they cannot cook anything in their house with no floor that they can step on.  Did Jeff and I want to come?  Well, of course we would want to come, but it was Wednesday, a.k.a. "pizza prep night".  What would I do about that? 

    I called Jeff. He was at the grocery store.  He had gone to the grocery store yesterday and discovered a good deal on our favorite sodas, but there was a limit.  So, he was back again on Wednesday, trying to soak up more deals.  He said that since he was at the grocery store, we should just have them over to our house.  His real thinking was, he could sneak away, more easily,  and do his own thing while we were all spending family time together.  He bought some preformed burgers, some all-beef hot dogs, and some Italian sausages, along with buns and requested that I make a pasta salad.

     Jennifer said she would bring a spinach salad and whatever else I wanted her to bring, but I didn't think

there needed to be anything else.  That's already a lot of food.  I took a deep breath and tried to shake the stress of the workday off and get into family enjoyment mood.  Hmmm, a little martini is the perfect foil!  I had just bought (on sale, of course) some new mixers.  There was a diet Pomegranate Ginger Ale.  I poured a splash of that into the bottom of the glass.  I had some grapefruit juice in the fridge that I poured into the shaker along with some (just a little, hardly any really, quite negligible amount) vodka.  Shake, shake, shake!  Shake that vod-ka.  Ah, now that is my favorite song.  Delicious and nutritious.  I am sure that all of the vitamin C and anti-oxidants from the pomegranate were going to course through my veins with special force and cure all that ails me.  Or, I was just going to relax a bit and not worry that Wednesday wasn't going to be what it was scheduled for.

Jeff's idea of cleaning off the table

     Jeff was the chef.  He cooked all of the meat products while I assembled the salad.  I had to sift through the refrigerator and cupboards to see what I could possibly use to make into a salad.  Pepper, onion, cheese, macaroni, new pepper from the garden (two of my first three Hungarian Wax (hot) peppers).  All of that could work.  I started boiling water for the pasta, while I chopped the veggies.  I needed some kind of goo for the pasta. . . .   I have no mayonnaise (Jeff has decided that if we stop eating mayonnaise, we will lose weight - it has been a couple of years now, and I think we have found other things to take up mayonnaise's void).  I have sour cream.  I have a jalapeno cilantro dip - I could throw that in there...

     Mom and Jen showed up, and I brought out the dip.  I offered it to them to taste, and the three of us ended up just finishing the dip on chips instead of progressing with any type of salad.  It was good, we couldn't help ourselves.  I had bought the dip mix on clearance at Cub.  I am a sucker for a mark-down.  I would definitely buy it again, if I could remember the name brand, and if I could figure out where to get it, now that Cub isn't carrying it.  Or, better yet, I could probably figure out a way to make my own.

     Anyway, as I was saying, I tossed the veggies together.  By this time, the noodles were done (the box says 6 minutes, and they weren't kidding!  They were slightly past perfect at 6½ minutes).  I could season some sour cream and throw it in there - maybe add a little unsweetened yogurt.  that sounded like a lot of effort and a lot of thinking on my part and a bit of scramble through the spice cupboard.  Then I remembered that I had just bought Vidalia Onion salad dressing at Sam's Club (it is hit or miss when you go there - sometimes they carry it, sometimes they don't, so you HAVE to buy it when you see it.  I poured a little of that over the veggies and macaroni.  I added some cheddar cheese, and VOILA!  Insty-salad.

    We had a lovely dinner.  The burgers were good, and the macaroni salad seemed to be a hit.  I, of course, made way too much, so there was plenty left over for our lunches the next day.  Jennifer's spinach salad was delicious, too.  She had blue cheese crumbles and walnuts in there and had made a balsamic vinegrette that we passed around at the table.

     Once everyone had left, I started on the "preps".  I started with the recipe for the Grilled Chicken & Pepper pizza.  First things first:  the crust.  I poured all of the crust ingredients into my Kitchen Aide with the dough hook installed and let it do its thing.  I hadn't read the ingredient list before-hand, so I was amazed that I actually had everything:  I even had semolina flour.  It stirred up a little dry, so I ended up adding liquid to the dough. 

     Along with my other mental disorders, I have an issue with throwing things away.  I don't think that I have reached hoarder status, but as far as food goes, I make sure I save everything that could possibly be used for something.  Milk is one of those items.  I frequently buy milk for various reasons, and Jeff and I don't drink it, and we don't really eat cereal any more (we should- we both like it... ).  So, when I buy milk, regardless of the size of the milk, some of it invariably goes bad.  I have discovered that this is a great additive for breads and crusts.  It gives them an almost sourdough flavor and it makes something that should have been thrown away into something useful.  The rest of my family has this issue with Ziploc bags - they are continually washing them out and reusing them, which (in my opinion) totally contradicts the reason you buy them - so you can store food and throw away the wrapper - but I digress...  Anyway, I added some sour milk to the dough to up the moisture content and make it hold together.  As with all of the crust recipes in this book, I divided it into four heaps and froze three of them.  The fourth heap went into the refrigerator for tomorrow;s crust.  Hopefully, I would remember to take it out of the fridge before I went to work on Thursday, so it is flabby and able to be rolled out when I come home.

     The sauce was the slow-simmered sauce.  It makes a whole mess of sauce, so I freeze a bunch of that, too, when I make it.  There was one lonely container of sauce left in the freezer, so I threw that into the fridge.

     I had been thawing what I thought was two chicken breasts for the mesquite smoked chicken the recipe called for.  I do not have a smoker, and I didn't buy mesquite chips to put into my grill - which I could have and should have - I would really be interested in trying it all, but I felt like going to that extreme wasn't really a weeknight recipe.  Instead, I had mesquite seasoning.  I thought it would work.  I originally thought that I would grill the chicken, but since my guests hadn't left until 9ish, I thought it would be easier and faster if I broiled it.  So, after the fam was gone, I opened my package of chicken breasts.  It turned out to be ONE chicken breast!  It was roughly a two-pound chicken breast.  I think this girl was a triple D if not bigger!  I sprinkled my mesquite seasoning onto both sides of the chicken.  The oven was set on broil at 500º.  I had to lower my top rack to fit the pan and the chicken breast in there without having the chicken breast touch the oven coils.  Normally, when I broil chicken, it is about 4 minutes per side.  I set the timer for 4 minutes, and it wasn't even close to be flipped.  I put it in for another 4 minutes, and the outside of the chicken looked good, but it was still jiggly.  I flipped it anyway, and set the timer for another 4 minutes.  It still was very jiggly, so I put it in again for another 4 minutes.  It still wasn't quite firm, but I don't like to cook chicken all the way through if I am going to put it on a pizza and re-cook it, especially if it is breast-meat, because it will get dried out and chewy if you cook it too much.  I took it out and let it cool.

     I, then, read through the recipe for the Summer Fruit Pizza.  It called for the "Sweet Crust" that I have made numerous times before and have had a hit-or-miss (mostly miss) experience with, so I had purchased a pie crust dough.  Yes, I know it is a cardinal sin to do that, since the ingredients are cheap, and the process is supposedly so easy, that there is no reason to spend extra money for the pre-made version, but I was gun-shy after my last attempt AND, I do work every day and every little bit of help (like pre-made crusts) can be a boon.  So, crust is covered, I don't need to work on that.  Then I read the rest of the recipe.  Place the sliced fruit onto the crust, sprinkle with brown sugar, and bake.  Easy as pie....  There really wasn't anything I NEEDED to do in advance.  The Liggetts weren't going to show up until after 6, and Pam could help me before they got there.  So, once the giant chicken breast cools, I think I can go to bed. 

     I was hoping that my mom would stay after the funeral on Thursday and join us for pizza night, but I guess she had pressing engagements back at home (Nisswa, MN).  She was definitely missed.

     I raced home after work.  I had hoped to skip lunch and come home early, but I don't know what I was thinking....  I always skip lunch, and I still don't get to go home early, so why did I think today would be different?  Oh well, the world was built on hope, right?

     I emptied the dishwasher from yesterday's dinner party.  That was about all I had time for before Pammy arrived. 

     She offered to start working on today's food, and I set her on slicing the fruit:  peaches, nectarines, plums, and cherries.  She started with the peaches and nectarines.  We debated a little about peeling first, but since the recipe didn't mention it, we figured that we didn't need to.  She figured that one nectarine or one peach was about all we needed for a half a cup of sliced fruit.  For the plums, which I was working on, it appeared that one and a half plums was the magic half a cup measurement.  We sampled a little of each "extra" fruit.  The peaches were fantastic, no complaints about that.  the nectarines were very yummy and flavorful, but they were a little gritty.  Not sure what causes that.  The plums were a little less flavorful.  The darker red plums seemed to have a little more flavor, but still nothing powerful  I am not sure if that is because we tasted the peaches and nectarines first, and they have a stronger flavor, or if they just really weren't that great.  Oh well.  We have what we have, and we are going to use it.

    I unrolled the purchased crust and put it into a deep disk pizza pan.  It fit in there with a little lip around the edge.  I had considered using a pie plate for the dessert "pizza", but I was afraid there was going to be too much fruit to fit in there.  On hindsight, I think that may have improved things a bit.  I was able to use my cherry-pitter again, which is all kinds of fun!  Again, I was simply amazed at how easy it was and how perfect the cherries came out.

     Jennifer and her family showed up and brought a Ham and Pineapple Pizza from Pappa Murphy's.  It is one of the kids' favorites.  That may be the wrong phrasing:  the kids really like it, and so does Jeff.  He actually commented that this IS his favorite pizza.  I asked him to reconsider that if he wanted to ever to have home-made pizza again.  He said that he meant out of the store-bought pizzas, that was his favorite....  Sure, under pressure, people will say whatever gets them their goods .... 

     The fruit pizza, after the recommended time on the recipe, still didn't appear to be done.  What was it,exactly, that we were looking for, anyway?  I was hoping for a crispy crust, at least around the edges.  I wasn't sure how that was going to work, since I substituted the original recipe's "sweet crust" for a pie crust.  Maybe I should have baked it first, because it still seemed white and pasty after the recommended 10 minutes.  We put it in for more time.  We upped the temperature of the oven, and we put in the Ham and Pineapple pizza. 

     We had commissioned Pammy to make the drink of the week.  It was called Pinata.  I am not sure how you are supposed to pronounce that, but reading it in my head, it sounds like the toy you hand on a string and let little kids whack on until candy spills out.  I wondered if that meant that the drink was so potent that we might become pinatas at the end of the night.

     We debated a bit about whether to use real lime juice or the stuff that comes in a bottle.  Pam had the ultimate deciding power, since she was barkeep this evening.  She decided that we needed slices of lime at least for the garnish, so she would slice off a few (at least three for us ladies), and squeeze some into the drink, and if that didn't cover the recommended amount of lime, she finished off the measurement with the bottled stuff.  It was a gorgeous drink.  It was refreshing, not to tart, not too sweet.  Jennifer and I decided that since the end result didn't have an overly banana flavor that perhaps the banana was just there to add sweetness and combat the tartness of the lime.  Whatever it was, we could have had bowls-full of the stuff.  Wait!  I think we may have.

     Once the drinks were formulated, it was time to heat up the grill.   I was a little hesitant about leaving the party to go outside for the grilling portion of the evening.  It was warm, but it was a little dreary, and it was threatening to rain.  I piled up a cookie sheet with the diced chicken, the cheeses, the sauce, and the crust.  This went with a spoon for spreading the sauce and the paddle for removing the finished pizza.  Jennifer volunteered to follow me out.  I reiterated that the pizzas in the oven still needed to be watched over, so Pam and Roger would tend to them.  Jennifer was gracious enough to grab my drink for me.  She is a saint, isn't she?

     Once we were outside and enjoyed a little bit of the impending humidity, we quickly finished our drinks. The grill was on and warming up, and we were just waiting for the proper moment to put on the crust.  We had both sides of the grill on with burners running.  We were hoping that all of the crud that had built up on the grill prior to this moment was burning itself off, and that the grates were warming up to put a nice char pattern on the crust once we deposited it.  Just standing there, thought, our drinks had evaporated.   Being the resourceful girl scout that Jennifer was, she had her phone with her and was able to text the bar wench and ask for another shaker-full of drink.  There was no immediate response, but then, as I was looking through the window into the kitchen, I saw Pammy approaching the back door with the shaker.  Hallelujah!  We are saved!  She was laughing when she came out of the house.  She said she made another shaker-full and was going to surprise the two of us with a refill, but she thought she should check her phone first and saw the text.  Jennifer and I tried to get her to empty the whole shaker into our glasses, but she wanted to have a refill too.  And WE thought it was just for US!  I guess not.

     Pam had taken the dessert pizza out of the oven along with the Ham and Pineapple pizza.  The Ham and Pineapple Pizza was a little brown on top.  It looked beautiful.  She brought it outside, and the decision was made.  Regardless of what the sky looked like, we would eat outside until the downpour.  It was our first outdoor pizza night of 2011.

      The grilled pizza wasn't quite ready yet.  Jen and I thought it would be much better if the cheese would brown.  However, we weren't sure if that was possible, since it was on the grill.  Jennifer, who has been without a kitchen and cooking several meals on her grill assured me that it was possible if we would stop lifting the lid to peek at the progress.  I believed her (sort of) and decided to leave it go for a while.  Ohmygosh!   She was right.  It browned up nicely while I was eating the ham and pineapple pizza. 

     The chicken wasn't as mesquite-y as I had hoped, and, of course, I didn't splurge for the mesquite chips to add to the grill while grilling the assembled pizza.  The mesquite was barley detectable.  The flavor was great anyway, though.  The chicken had stayed moist, there was more than enough cheese to bind everything together, and the peppers were the perfect touch of sweetness to compliment the other ingredients.  The sauce was part of a batch that I used Pammy's habanero salt for the salt it called for, so there was also a subtle building heat with every bite.  It was lovely.

     Once we had eaten more than enough of each of our shares of the chicken pizza and the ham and pineapple pizza, we remembered that there was the dessert pizza.  We brought it out and started serving it up.  Roger refused to try it.  Pam, Jen, Jeff, and I each had a small piece to start.  At first, I was really disappointed, because the crust didn't seem like it ever set up, which it didn't.  However, the flavor of the fruits combined totally overshadowed that fact.  I was really glad that we didn't use the sweet crust, disappointed in the result of the pie crust, but overall overwhelmed by the great flavor of the resulting dish.  I can't believe that just those few ingredients would have made that fabulous flavor!  The crust was a little soggy.  I think that if I had pre-baked the crust, it would have been too fabulous for us to stand it.