Source: Banoffee Pie
Ricotta and Pesto Pizza
Doesn’t this just look delicious?
At least once a week I try to make pizza for dinner. It is a fairly simple meal that everyone can agree on. The combinations are endless too. It doesn’t need to be the same old red sauce, mozzarella, and pepperoni pizza each time. Get creative! If you can put it on bread it can go on a pizza. I opened the refrigerator and looked to see what we had to put on a pizza. Genoa salami? Ricotta? Spinach? Ooo, fresh mozzarella!
So, I decided to go simple with Ricotta, Pesto, fresh mozzarella and Parmesan.
Verdict:
Even my ricotta hating son liked this pizza. It had enough flavor with the pesto and cheeses that he added a bit more pesto and was thrilled with it. Still didn’t care for the texture of the ricotta but he ate it. It was a good dish because it was so simple to make…
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Spring Fling Challenge Hearthsteader
http://hearthsteader.net/2013/03/04/spring-fling-challenge/
Hearthsteader was nice enough to let me guest post for them today! Awesome page by the way. I promised I’d share the Spring Fling Challenge with all of you and don’t forget to head over and check out their page.
My Shopping Trip
This past weekend I went shopping for some dress clothes at the mall and it was the most frustrating experience ever. I generally am not a “shopper”, I like to get in, get what I want and get out. This has kept me from over spending on more than one occasion and not wasted my time. I like nice things just as much as anyone else but I think I would buy things I do not NEED to satisfy some strange craving inside me. I think they call this retail therapy and I try very hard not to do this. I’d so much rather spend the afternoon with some friends and family and laugh the time away.
Anyway, I was struck by how many retailers offered credit cards when I was checking out. Unfortunately I am a plus sized woman and apparently in NH we don’t tend to dress professionally often because finding a suit was next to impossible! I had to go in quite a few stores and spend more than I had hoped in order to come out with just a decent looking outfit. That in itself was extremely frustrating but the credit card offers were insane. When checking out each retailer offered me significant savings if I would sign up for their card. It was so very tempting, I really wanted to do it because it would have saved me about $25 on my $90 purchases and that is nothing to shake a stick at. I did not though and here is why: Number ONE if I did take out a credit card in each of the three stores that I visited my credit score would have likely decreased. That is right; when you take out credit whether or not you actually charge anything on the card ever it appears that you have a certain amount of credit available to you that you COULD charge. So when going to purchase a home for instance a mortgage company might look at your credit and see that you have 20,000.00 worth of credit available to you, assume that you would use it all and charge you a much higher interest rate OR if there are other issues turn you down all together! Number TWO the interest rates on store cards are astronomically high. Sometimes you will have periods where you can buy things at no interest and if you pay it off in a certain amount of time you are alright. I’ve never been able to do that (and know this about myself). In the end though I know I would buy several hundred dollars worth of clothes that I could not really afford and then pay twice as much for them to boot. When you write it out like that it sounds ludicrous to do but we do it all of the time and seem to have no problem with it. Number THREE I would incur a monthly payment that I had not budgeted for in the first place. And you think to yourself “what’s another $30?”. Well in six months you could save that money to take that couple hundred dollar shopping spree or you could pay that $30 for years on end and still not have the card paid off. When you pay the bare minimum you barely touch the principle of the debt and just pay interest on what you originally charged. It’s like throwing your money away. I for one do NOT intend to throw my money away. I’ve done it enough in my life and forget the pain after some years and do it again. I don’t know what I was thinking and kick myself every time the bill comes. I aim to pay that stupid thing off soon and swear off credit cards all together. I work much too hard and do not intend to just hand it over to someone else because of it. Doesn’t that just sound crazy?
New Hampshire Weather
New Hampshire Weather
I’ll start with a quote; “What New England is, is a state of mind, a place where dry humor and perpetual disappointment blend to produce an ironic pessimism that folks from away find most perplexing” ― Willem Lange
Where is away you ask, anywhere else of course. As the quote suggests we are used to perpetual disappointment and our yearly travels into Spring time are no different than the rest. The sayings about weather in these here parts could go on and on until the cows come home. “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” ― Mark Twain “Don’t knock the weather. If it didn’t change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn’t start a conversation.” ― Kim Hubbard “If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.” ― Mark Twain ”We have two seasons: winter and the Fourth of July.”
“In New England we have nine months of winter and three months of darned
poor sledding.” ”Take off your flannels before the first of May, and you’ll have a doctor’s bill to
pay.” I think you get the idea. If you could only hear it said in the accent of the old farmer you’d be laying on the floor laughing now.
My point is that about this time we get pretty sick of winter and we are searching for signs anywhere that Spring is on it’s way. There hasn’t been a hint of green since sometime around the end of October in these here parts, the wood pile is down to a nub and all the stores we put up last summer are dwindling to nothing. We are simply worn to a raveling. The problem is that a whole lot of winter is still left despite what any calendar says about Spring. Hell, we won’t get leaves on the trees until the first week of May, that’s 11 weeks away! Alright maybe that doesn’t seem awfully long to you but when we just had two feet of snow less than two weeks ago and the weather man comes on and says a Nor’Easter is brewing, two storms will collide leaving a low to the east of the Cape and we will get plowable snow (yes plowable is a word HERE) and then he says well I think it’ll only be a foot which is much better than the last one (the aforementioned two foot blizzard) AND he delivers it as though that is GOOD news.
New Hampshire Weather
I’ll start with a quote; “What New England is, is a state of mind, a place where dry humor and perpetual disappointment blend to produce an ironic pessimism that folks from away find most perplexing” ― Willem Lange
Where is away you ask, anywhere else of course. As the quote suggests we are used to perpetual disappointment and our yearly travels into Spring time are no different than the rest. The sayings about weather in these here parts could go on and on until the cows come home. “Everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it.” ― Mark Twain “Don’t knock the weather. If it didn’t change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn’t start a conversation.” ― Kim Hubbard “If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.” ― Mark Twain ”We have two seasons: winter and the Fourth of July.”
“In New England we have nine months of winter and three months of darned
poor sledding.” ”Take off your flannels before the first of May, and you’ll have a doctor’s bill to
pay.” I think you get the idea. If you could only hear it said in the accent of the old farmer you’d be laying on the floor laughing now.
My point is that about this time we get pretty sick of winter and we are searching for signs anywhere that Spring is on it’s way. There hasn’t been a hint of green since sometime around the end of October in these here parts, the wood pile is down to a nub and all the stores we put up last summer are dwindling to nothing. We are simply worn to a raveling. The problem is that a whole lot of winter is still left despite what any calendar says about Spring. Hell, we won’t get leaves on the trees until the first week of May, that’s 11 weeks away! Alright maybe that doesn’t seem awfully long to you but when we just had two feet of snow less than two weeks ago and the weather man comes on and says a Nor’Easter is brewing, two storms will collide leaving a low to the east of the Cape and we will get plowable snow (yes plowable is a word HERE) and then he says well I think it’ll only be a foot which is much better than the last one (the aforementioned two foot blizzard) AND he delivers it as though that is GOOD news.
Omelette
If there is one thing that is very easy to find locally it’s eggs. I happen to get mine from a family member just down the road who raises chickens but you can find yours all over the place! You can find them at your local farmers market http://www.nhfma.org/ or at your local farm stand. In Northwood NH a young man named Nick raises his own chickens and calls them Nick’s Chicks (very cute) http://www.sugarmommasmaple.com/. You can find them where ever you can find Sugar Momma. Now as far as my morning Omelette, I used tomatoes from my garden and sharp cheddar cheese from Cabot in Vermont. You can find that right in your local grocery store.
Tomato Omelette
4 Large Eggs
1/2 Cup diced tomatoes
3 Tablespoons Sharp Cheddar Cheese
Salt and Pepper to Taste
1 Pat Butter
Heat Large Skillet on medium high heat (I prefer cast iron) and add butter. When the butter is bubbling just a bit, add the eggs and cook until the edges start to set. Put tomatoes and cheese on one half of the eggs and cook further on low heat until you are able to get spatula under the eggs. Flip the half with nothing on it onto the tomatoes and cheese. Let cook a bit and then turn over the whole thing and let sit in the pan a minute or so. If you aren’t an expert at flipping a big omelette, just cut it in half to do it. It’s taste just as good, trust me. I had mine with a big piece of home made wheat bread!
And why do I use cast iron? First of all I like the way it cooks, it’s more even and you get trace amounts of iron from it so there is no anemia in this house! Finally another plus is well building and keeping strength, they are heavy and if you toss around those pans enough you will build and keep muscle in your arms….who knew?
Bread
There is nothing that smells better than a loaf of bread in the oven. It just started to rain here in Strafford NH so it’s perfect timing. I would highly suggest the book ARTISAN BREAD IN FIVE MINUTES A DAY http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/ for anyone that would like to learn how to make bread. And be sure to keep practicing if it doesn’t come out right. Fortunately for us the King Arthur Flour Company right in Norwich Vermont so we are using a wonderful local product and it really is the best flour I’ve ever used!
Cucumbers
These were picked just last night and refrigerated over night. Don’t ask me what kind of cucumbers they are because I don’t know. We kind of got them by mistake. We had gone over to Wentworth Gardens in Rollinsford (a wonderful green house, if you haven’t been I highly recommend it) for our plants this year and somehow we got these plants without realizing it. We do love them though and the skins are quite thin so they are great for pickling or relish etc. We’ve already eaten a ton of them and have so many more coming. They are prolific, that is for sure!
cookinglocalnh 