Shift the Balance: Reza's Cheese Soup or Sausaquences and Peppers

Guess what today is! Guess what, guess what, guess what!

Okay, you're not going to guess so I'll tell you: TODAY IS THE DAY THAT DREAMFALL CHAPTERS: BOOK 5 COMES OUT!

No, but you guys, you have to understand, it's the final part of the final game of The Longest Journey saga, and it's been so long since Book 4 came out, and the ending of Book 4 kind of left me sobbing on my keyboard and I just...

I have a lot of feelings, okay?

Anyway, since we all know I celebrate with food, and since I already made Balance Cupcakes, I decided to make something out of the game itself.

Pretty early on in Book 1 (it seems so long ago...), Zoe-- one of the main, playable characters-- has a simple fetch quest: pick up lunch for her boyfriend Reza, and bring it to his office. Seems simple enough, right? It's designed to help you get used to navigating the Propast area (which is totally my favorite in the game), so it's not trying to trip you up or anything. Go to the food cart, talk to the vendor, pick up a food item, find Reza. Easy peasy. Reza even gives you free reign to pick whatever you like, though Zoe knows he doesn't have the most adventurous palate.

However, this is a gritty technopunk future, so when Nela reveals that she has some very rare real pork sausages for sale, it's a bit of a game changer.

Zoe knows that Reza would prefer his usual order of cheese soup, but she also wants to broaden Reza's culinary horizons, and the pork sausages are hard to say no to. So, it's up to you as the player to make the choice.

It seems like an innocent enough choice, something simple for the devs to throw in to give the player the illusion of control. However, as the end card says when you finish Book 1, this choice actually has unexpected and far-reaching consequences. Or sausaquences, as Zoe refers to them in her journal.

And, after one dev tweeted about everything coming back to a choice to you didn't think mattered, everyone's pretty nervous about the sausaquences coming back to bite us.

In honor of that potentially fatal choice, I decided to make both foods so you can make the choice for yourself.

Since it's mid June and it's been pretty warm here in NJ, I decided to make both meals in the slow cooker. Not that Nela does that, but I didn't feel like standing over the hot stove or turning the oven on. Plus I don't have Karl to help out. (Karl is the name of Nela's food cart. It makes more sense in context).

Reza's favorite cheese soup I decided to make nice and hearty. The broth is creamy and flavored with sharp cheddar cheese, and it's chock full of broccoli, potatoes, carrots, celery, and onions. Plus, to thicken it up a bit, since there's not much evaporation in the slow cooker, I added a couple tablespoons of instant potatoes. That's totally optional: you can add rice or noodles with will absorb some of the liquid, go for a cornstarch slurry, or leave it as is, but I liked it this way.

One note is that you really need to add the cheese at the end. Cheddar breaks very easily if it's cooked for too long. You can always use Velveeta to avoid that, but we all know real cheese tastes better.

As for the sausages, since I wasn't going to make my own (Nela didn't either, so we're square), and plain sausages doesn't seem like much of a lunch, I went with sausage and peppers. Or, sausaquences and peppers, get it?
...
I thought it was funny.

Sausage and peppers is a ridiculously simple dish that I think every Italian knows how to make, and it's a fairly common street food around here, especially down the shore (usually served on a roll), so I thought Nela might approve.

My family usually makes it in the oven (dump everything in a baking dish, cover with foil, bake until the sausages are done), but now I might always make it in the slow cooker because holy crap on a cracker did it turn out good. The sausages were so tender they were like butter, and everything just came out so flavorful that I ate like three helpings when I went to taste it. Plus, it's even easier to make it in the slow cooker than the oven, since I don't have to preheat the oven or worry about a timer.

Now, you can brown the sausages on the stove first if you like. I won't stop you. Many people do, to cut down on grease and crisp up the casing. But that just seemed too much like work to me.

So now you have a very important choice to make: Reza's cheese soup or sausaquences and peppers. The fate of two worlds may be in the balance. Or possibly just the fate of your dinner.

Reza's Cheese Soup
Yield: 12 servings

Ingredients 
3 ribs of celery, chopped
2 potatoes, chopped
1 head of broccoli, chopped small
1 onion, diced
1 cup shredded carrots
6 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
2 tsp. ground cumin
2 cans evaporated milk (I used skim)
3 tbsp. instant potato flakes (optional)
16 oz. shredded sharp cheddar
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan
Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions
In the bowl of a slow cooker, add the first eight ingredients. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours until the vegetables are soft and the potatoes are fork tender. Add the evaporated milk and potato flakes, stirring until the flakes have dissolved. Cover and cook 30 minutes, until heated through. Add the cheese, half cup at a time, stirring until completely melted. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and serve.

Recipe by Kim

Slow Cooker Sausage and Peppers
Yield: 6 servings 

Ingredients 
12 sweet Italian pork sausages
1 (28 oz.) can crushed tomatoes with basil
2 red bell peppers, sliced into strips
1 onion, sliced into strips
2 tsp. garlic powder
Salt and pepper, to taste
6 large rolls, to serve

Directions
Add the peppers and onion to the bowl of a slow cooker. Season with garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Add the sausages and crushed tomatoes. Give a quick stir to coat. Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours, until the sausages are cooked through and tender. Serve in rolls.

Tip: if you have leftover sauce, add it to rice or pasta

Recipe by Kim 

BB8 Pizza

So, I apologize, I meant to post this earlier in the week, but I got distracted by the new episode of Dreamfall Chapters (all the feels, guys. All the feels. My poor Crow.)

But do you know what helps with video games feels? Adorable droids. And you know who might be one of the most adorable droids ever? BB8.

Source

BB8 was introduced in the trailer for Episode 7, and everyone pretty much agreed that he (she?) was ridiculously cute. I mean, R2 is still my favoritest astromech droid of all time, but I have to admit that BB8's chubby little ball-with-a-head design is fairly squee-worthy.

Source

You gotta admit, that's pretty adorable.

And of course, since BB8 is just kind of round, it was pretty easy to make him into a pizza. Because that is the way my mind works.

BB8 pizza is not all that different from a regular pizza. I just used a large dinner plate to measure out the circle for the body, then made a smaller half circle for the head. Then I just chopped up an orange pepper (I got one of those bags of the tiny sweet peppers-- it had mostly orange peppers) and some olives for the designs.

Then you gotta chow down on BB8's adorable little head

Super simple and easily recognizable, making BB8 pizza is an awesome treat to make before seeing The Force Awakens (less than a week, guys. Who's excited?)

BB8 Pizza

Yield: 1 pizza

Ingredients

1 recipe pizza dough

Approx 1 cup prepared tomato sauce

Shredded mozzarella cheese

1 orange pepper, chopped

Chopped olives

Directions

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Prepare the pizza dough according to recipe instructions. Roll it out to about 1 inch thickness. Cut out a large circle for the body (I used a dinner plate as a guide), and a smaller half circle for the head (I free-handed it, but you can use a smaller plate as a guide). Place both pieces on a baking sheet and pinch them together to create one pizza.

Spread a thin layer of tomato sauce over the crust and top with the shredded mozzarella. Use the chopped pepper and olives to create the BB8 design. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and the cheese is melted and bubbly.

PizzAvengers Assemble!

This is one of those posts that you only get because of the unique way my brain works.

It started out simply enough. I was looking up Iron Man cupcakes on Pinterest (for completely non-blog related reasons. Sometimes you just wanna look at superhero cupcakes, y'know?) and I stumbled across an Iron Man pizza. I thought that was a really cute idea. And then I thought, I wonder why I've never seen a Black Widow pizza. That would be super easy. And then my brain thought about doing a Captain America fruit pizza, and it just kind of snowballed from there.

Plus, with Avengers: Age of Ultron coming out in LESS THAN A WEEK OMG I AM SO EXCITE, it seemed like the perfect time to let Mr. Brain go wild and create the PizzAvengers: Earth's Mightiest Pizzas. (Those of you that live places with an earlier Avengers release, no spoilers, please!)

I stuck with the core 6 Avengers from the first movie because it just worked out better that way. 6 pizzas is already more than enough for just me, and I wouldn't have the slightest idea of what to put on a Scarlet Witch or Quicksilver pizza.

All of the pizzas (except Cap. He's special) start off the same way. I used pre-baked crusts to save some time (you can usually find them in the refrigerated section of the grocery store near the cheese), a simple tomato sauce and shredded mozzarella. You can go with any sauce/cheese combo you like-- the Thor pizza would be really good as a barbecue pizza-- just make sure the cheese is white or lightly colored to give you a plain backdrop.

Because I'm cooking for just me, I decided to make three of the pizzas mini. You can totally make them full size, this is not a comment on their importance as Avengers, they just had the easiest designs to scale down and gave me less to fit in the fridge.

I started out with the Black Widow pizza because she really did have one of the easiest designs to put on a pizza. Take some pepperoni and cut it in half. Outline an hourglass shape using the cut side of the pepperoni to give you straight lines. Fill in. You're done.

Simple and elegant. Just like Natasha. But the pizza is far less lethal.

Hawkeye's pizza may look simple, but it took me forever to figure out. Hawkeye's costume is purple, which means that purple is usually used to represent him, and I couldn't figure out anything purple to put on a pizza. I briefly thought about skipping him, when I remembered about Pizza Dog, and when a character has a Pizza Dog, you can't not make him a pizza. (Lucky, aka Pizza Dog is from the comics, but I'm totally hoping he shows up in the MCU soon)(Lucky is called Pizza Dog because Clint gave him pizza and called him Pizza Dog. It's that simple)

Finally, I remembered that red cabbage is purpley. I chopped it and gave it a quick saute in a hot skillet-- not long enough to make it soft, I just wanted to jumpstart the cooking process since it didn't get very long in the oven-- and used it to make a bullseye pattern.

I feel like Clint would be very torn about whether to shoot at it or eat it.

The Hulk pizza is the one I'm least happy about because he kind of just ended up looking like generic green monster. But I didn't know of anything else that seemed appropriately Hulk-y, so that's what I went with. Plus he's kind of cute.

So what you need are some chopped green peppers and olives, and some extra mozzarella for eyes and teeth. I found it easiest to start by outlining his mouth with the chopped olives. Fill it in with more olives, then add some little pieces of mozz for his teeth. Fill out the shape of his face with green peppers and cut out some eyes out of more mozz. Make the eyes kind of slanty and angry looking, but don't worry if the shape's not perfect since it will melt in the oven. Add tiny pieces of olives for the pupils.

Once you're satisfied with the size and shape of the head, outline it with more chopped olives. Use larger olive pieces for his hair and nose.

I totally meant to add some angry slanty eyebrows and some red onion (cause the Hulk is always wearing purple pants), but since it was one of the mini pizzas, I didn't have room.

HULK LIKE PIZZA

For Iron Man, you need pepperoni, cheddar cheese, and some more chopped olives, plus some mozzarella to make the eye slits. Start with outlining the Iron Man helmet shape with pepperoni. Tony has a big head, so don't be afraid to use most of the pizza. Then you need to shape the face plate. I found it easiest to create the shape with the cheddar, then I used the halved pepperoni I had left over from the Black Widow pizza to give it a more defined outline. Place vaguely rectangular pieces of mozz for the eye slits (again, don't worry about getting the shape perfect), then use the olive to add some of the ridges and details in the mask.

Tony probably thinks ALL pizza should have his face on it.

Thor's pizza I almost forgot about because I was so worried about what to do for Hawkeye's pizza, but it actually ended up being one of my favorites. What you're going to need is shredded cheddar cheese, chopped olives, plain shredded chicken, and cooked, crumbled sausage.

Start by using the cheddar to draw a lightning bolt on the pizza, slightly off center, and then learn from my mistake and outline it with more chopped olives (the lightning bolt got a little lost after baking). Use the chopped olives to outline Mjolnir (rectangular head, long handle). Fill the head with shredded chicken and the handle with the sausage crumbles.

This last step is purely optional, but I put pepperoni around the outer edge of the pizza. I had so much pepperoni left since I bought a 16 oz. bag, and it's the color of his cloak, so I could get away with it. Plus it tickled me to make Thor's pizza a kind of meat lover's pizza. I can just imagine him being all YES MORTAL, I TOO AM A LOVER OF MEAT. LET US FEAST ON THIS STRANGE, FLAT PIE YOU CALL 'PIZZA.'

One last look before they go into the oven. Bake according to the directions for whatever crust recipe you're using. The pre-baked ones I used suggested baking at 450 (F) about 8 minutes for the mini pies and 10 minutes for the large.

While your pies are baking, you can work on Cap's fruit pizza. Since this is a dessert pizza, the crust is a giant cookie. I used sugar cookie dough. Any roll out recipe would probably be best (I can recommend these from LilaLoa). I actually just bought a thing of slice and bake dough from the store since roll out dough and I aren't friends. Spread your dough into a pizza pan (I used a foil one) and bake at 350 (F) until it's a light golden brown. I baked mine about 16 minutes, but keep your eye on it. Let it cool completely. I actually baked mine before I started assembling the pizzas, so it could cool while I was working on them.

Most fruit pizzas I've seen use cream cheese frosting as a base, to which I say ick. We've been over my feelings about sweetened cream cheese before, but honestly, when you're putting all of this fresh fruit on a dessert, why would you use anything except fresh whipped cream? Seriously.

So for this fruit pizza, we're using whipped cream (about 1 1/2 cups after whipping), halved strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, sliced bananas (2 were more than enough for me), and mini marshmallows. Start by spreading your whipped cream evenly on your cookie base. Then work from the outside in on the design: start with a ring of strawberries around the outer edge of the cookie, then do a ring of sliced bananas. My bananas were small, so I doubled them up. If you're worried about browning, you can skip them or use large marshmallows in their place. I made a quick glaze out of apricot jelly, and they only looked slightly brown the next day

Inside the bananas, do a ring of raspberries (I meant to do a double ring, but I made the banana layer too wide, so there wasn't room). In the middle, use the mini marshmallows to make a star, then fill in the rest with blueberries. Use more raspberries to fill in any spaces between the strawberries.

It won't stop bullets, but it's perfect for any 4th of July barbecues

I kind of totally love how they all turned out. Especially when they're all together, you can totally tell who they're supposed to represent.

Black Widow's is my favorite. It's just so simple and clean and immediately recognizable. Plus it was the easiest to make. Bonus.

If the lightning had come out better, though, I think Thor's would beat Black Widow. I love the design of it (is that narcissistic to say when you designed it? Maybe I shouldn't have had Iron Man pizza for lunch), and I love thinking about how much he would enjoy it, that great big Norse labradoodle that he is.

I put the most thought into Hawkeye's, but unfortunately, I don't think most people would get it presented on its own. It fits right in with the other PizzAvengers, though.

In my head, the Avengers have 4th of July picnics together and Tony always makes sure they have a dessert like this. Steve stopped being embarrassed when he tasted it.

Billionaire, playboy, philanthropist. Pizza.

Hulk was my one disappointment, since he looks too generic, but like Hawkeye, when he's around the other PizzAvengers, you know immediately know who he is.

My Age of Ultron excitement level is officially 6 pizzas high. How about you?

Doritos Crusted Chicken Fingers

Can I admit something to you guys? I love Doritos. Like, love them. That's why I don't buy them. Seems counter-intuitive I know, but if I have Doritos, I will eat Doritos. No leaving them on the shelf until I need a snack or something. That bag will be gone in a day.

This is not a Doritos sponsored post or anything. I'm just sharing. This is one of the reasons why my brother says I don't count as a foodie-- left to my own devices, my food choices will almost always be rather pedestrian by any food snob standards. Hence these chicken fingers. Not only are they chicken fingers, which are pretty commonplace, but I skipped the panko and the fancy, homemade bread crumbs, and I breaded them with crushed Doritos. And it was awesome.

(I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of food snobs suddenly cried out in terror...)

Crushed Doritos actually make a really great breading for baked chicken strips. The chips stay crisp while baking and add a great crunch that can often be lacking in baked chicken. And of course, they add a ton of flavor. I used the Nacho Cheese flavor for these, but you could really use any flavor you want. Or, if Doritos aren't your thing, any corn tortilla chips would work in it's place. But then you wouldn't have that orangey nacho cheese powder of goodness to all over your fingers, and we all know that's half the fun.

They're also super easy to make. Flour, egg, Doritos, oven. Dinner's ready in half an hour.

Serve these up with a little ranch dipping sauce and you're good to go. Bonus, you'll have the rest of the bag of Doritos to snack on while waiting for dinner. It's a win win.

Doritos Crusted Chicken Fingers
Yield: Approx. 8 chicken fingers

Ingredients

7 tbsp. all purpose flour (use rice flour for wheat free)

1 tbsp. cheddar cheese powder (or just use more flour)

1 tsp. chili powder (optional)

½ tsp. black pepper

¼ tsp. salt

1 lb. chicken tenderloins (or 1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips)

2 cups crushed Nacho Cheese flavored Doritos

2 eggs

1 tbsp. milk

Directions

In a large zip-top freezer bag, add the flour, cheese powder, chili powder, black pepper, and salt. Shake well to combine. Add the chicken and shake until well coated. Chill in the refrigerator for a minimum of 10 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil, and fit with a wire rack. Spray well with cooking spray.

Take 2 wide-mouthed shallow bowls. In one, beat the eggs with the milk. Place the crushed Doritos in the second.

Working with one strip at a time, dip the chicken in the egg wash, allowing the excess to drip off. Toss in the crushed Doritos, pressing the chips into the chicken to make sure it is well coated. Place the strips evenly on the prepared wire rack and spray lightly with cooking spray. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through (an internal temperature of 165 degrees F). Serve with ranch dipping sauce

Recipe by Kim

Things you may need (affiliate links):

Mac 'n Cheese Pie with Bacon Lattice for the Ultimate Pi Day

Do you guys know what today is? It's Pi Day! But it's not just any old Pi Day, it's the Ultimate Pi Day! *voice echo**explosion sounds**special effects*

As you may know, Pi Day is March 14th every year because 3/14 = 3.14, the first three digits of pi. This year, however, the date is 3/14/15, and 3.1415 are the first 5 digits of pi. Not only that, but at 9:26:53 AM, we're at 3.141592653, a full 10 digits of pi. This is the only time this will occur in our lifetimes, you guys, and I think that's pretty darn cool.

Does that make me a huge nerd?

Fun fact: even though I'm actually pretty good at math, I was really bad at geometry. I took it freshman year of high school, at a time when I was flirting with the idea of going into architecture. After taking geometry, I knew architecture was a bad choice for me. If you can't calculate shapes and angles, you shouldn't be building things. Statistics is more my speed. I killed at statistics.

Now, I knew I had to do something epic to celebrate the Ultimate Pi Day. Since Pi Day is traditionally celebrated with pie for obvious reasons, that was the way to go. But me and pie, we're not the best of buds. I don't really make it that often, and I wouldn't really know how to go epic, you know? So I did some interwebz research and found a bacon topped macaroni and cheese pie on Buzzfeed. That sounded pretty epic, and also pretty easy.

Now, since I'm me and I don't follow recipes, I sort of went my own way. But in this case, "going my own way" actually meant using a couple of short cuts. You may recall that I have a block against pastry crusts. I can't make them. It never works. So, I bought some frozen puff pastry to use as a crust. I also, and I'm ashamed to admit it, bought the cheese sauce from the grocery store. That's not a thing I ever thought I would say, but I didn't really feel up to making my favorite mac 'n cheese sauce, even if it would have tasted better.

I also cooked the pasta in my rice cooker, but that's not a thing you have to do. I've just been cooking everything in my rice cooker lately because it's kind of awesome, and it was so much easier to use it than to boil the pasta on the stove. (Side note: I love my rice cooker. It has a steamer tray so I can cook meat and veggies with my rice. Full meal, no added effort, what's not to love?)

I added some spinach to the pasta because... I couldn't bring myself not to add a little green. It in no way balances out the complete unhealthiness of the pie, but at least you get something good with it. You could also add some broccoli or zucchini, or skip the green stuff all together. I won't tell.

Assembling the pie couldn't be easier. Just press the puff pastry into a pie plate. Mix together the pasta, sauce, some shredded cheese, onion, and cooked spinach and put it all in the pie plate. Take 8 strips of bacon and lay it on top, basket weave style. I folded the edges of the pastry over the ends of the bacon to prevent any grease from dripping into the oven, then I baked it up.

How does it taste? It's macaroni and cheese with bacon in puff pastry. You really can't go wrong here. It it the absolute ultimate in comfort food. The cheesy pasta, the buttery pastry, the salty bacon, so many carbs it puts you in a coma, but the good kind.

One thing is that it kind of falls apart when it's warm, so you'll want to let it cool completely before slicing. I thought about putting an egg in as a binder, but I totally forgot to buy eggs when I was at the store, so I don't know if that would make much of a difference. You can warm up the individual slices to serve, or you could just eat it cold. I actually really like it cold. I know, I'm weird.

As a bonus, I remembered that I had a pi silicone ice cube tray, but since I wasn't making a dessert and couldn't really use chocolate, I was stumped as to how I could use it. I thought maybe I could pour some melted butter in the molds, but a random pat of butter on top of the pie seemed weird. Then I thought about using some of the cheese sauce and freezing it, but I wasn't sure how well that would work. Then I thought, why not just melt some cheddar and try that? And it worked perfectly.

All you do is heat the cheese in the microwave for 20-30 seconds, until it's melted. Then you just pinch off a bit and press it into the mold. Chill the refrigerator until set (between 30-60 minutes), then pop it straight out. I greased the mold first, but since the melted cheddar was pretty greasy itself, I don't know how necessary that really is. I'll just have to try it again (buy ALL the ice cube trays!).

And that's all there is to making an epic pie for an epic Pi Day. Nerd food at its finest.

Mac 'n Cheese Pie
Yield: 1 9inch pie (6-8 servings)

Ingredients
1 sheet puff pastry, thawed
8 oz. elbow macaroni
2 cups packed fresh spinach
1¼ cups cheese sauce
1 heaping cup shredded cheddar cheese
¼ cup diced red onion*
8 slices of bacon

Directions
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Press the puff pastry into a 9 inch pie plate and trim off the excess. Prick the pastry a few times along the bottom with a fork.

Cook the pasta according to the package directions, for 1-2 minutes less than recommended. Drain and return to the pot. Stir in the cheese sauce and spinach. Heat on low while stirring, until the spinach is wilted. Remove from heat and stir in the shredded cheese and diced onion.

Spread the pasta evenly into the prepared pastry. Place the bacon on top (4 strips vertically, 4 strips horizontally) and weave in a basket weave pattern (1 over, 1 under). Tuck the ends of the bacon into the pie. Fold up the edges of the pastry over the bacon to prevent grease runoff.

Bake for 15-25 minutes, until the bacon is cooked through and the pastry is golden brown (tent the edges with foil if it starts to brown too quickly). Allow to cool before slicing.

*If using a cheese sauce that already has onion, feel free to skip

Recipe inspired by Buzzfeed

Things you may need (affiliate links):