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.

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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.

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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.

Crossguard Lightsaber French Bread Pizza

We are less than two weeks away from Star Wars: The Force Awakens! And we have already established the fact that I express excitement for nerd movies with pizza, so you should have expected this to come at some point. In fact this is only the first Force Awakens pizza post I have planned for you.

C'mon, I made all 6 of the Avengers into pizza, did you really think I'd stop at one pizza for Star Wars Episode 7? Do you even know me at all?

I split them up into different post because, unlike PizzAvengers where the only difference was the toppings, these pizzas are each prepared differently, so having them all together would be a massive post. Also, I did not want to make them all together, and this is my blog, so nyah. Expect more to come.

Anyway-- lightsaber pizza!! For those of you that may not know, the crossguard lightsaber is new to the Star Wars universe. We  caught a glimpse of it in the very first trailer, and it sparked a huge controversy. Some people thought it looked awesome, some people thought it didn't make sense, and a lot of people were hating on JJ Abrams for the change.

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Personally, I can understand the reasoning behind the crossguard. Swords have crossguards to protect the wielder's hand and arm. People seem to lose an awful lot of limbs in the Star Wars universe, so if dude wants that extra protection, I can understand it. It does seem a little dangerous-- I would lose a few fingers the first time I turned it on-- but presumably between Jedi training and Force manipulation, that's not an issue.

Also, dude's a Sith. Clearly some of them enjoy hacking their lightsabers. Darth Maul had the double one. I know Vader was a purist but he also ended up being a good guy, so obviously he was more Jedi than Sith the whole time.

...

I didn't need to put a spoiler warning on that, did I? If you haven't seen the original trilogy, what are you even doing here?

I was browsing Star Wars pizza on Pinterest, like you do, and I saw a recipe for crossguard French bread pizza. I thought it was such a great idea since French bread is already vaguely lightsaber shaped, and the crossguard lightsaber is unique to Episode 7, so it's an easy way to celebrate the new movie.

If you've ever made French bread pizza, you know it's super simple. Take a loaf, slice it in half, add toppings, toast it. And you can totally make it that simple, especially if you're not necessarily interested in making the crossguard lightsaber. I made it with a few extra steps, because it's what I do.

Firstly, I decided to use refrigerated bread dough (I used Pillsbury. It was pretty good, but tasted more like sourdough than French bread), so that I could shape it into one piece. That seemed easier to me, but you can totally just get two loaves already baked and cut them up to make the same shape. Easy peasy.

Secondly, instead of slicing the loaf in half, I cut a slit in the crust and hollowed out the loaf a bit to make more of a pizza boat. I thought that would make the toppings look more lightsaber-y. Also, the words "pizza boat" sound delicious, and the cheese and sauce stay warm longer because they're enclosed in the crust.

The toppings are simple: just tomato sauce, shredded mozzarella, chopped olives for the "handle" and pepperoni for the... blade? I actually don't know what the light part of the lightsaber is called. Wow, uh, that's um, I don't know what to say. I feel ashamed. Let's just keep this between you and me, okay? Pinky swear?

Anyway, I like turkey pepperoni, just in general, but I especially like it for this pizza because it tends to be more red than the regular pepperoni. It's not a huge difference, but I think it looks better. You could also use chopped red bell pepper and avoid the pepperoni all together.

cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeese

This pizza would be a great appetizer or movie time snack (you know, while you're rewatching the original trilogy to prepare to watch Episode 7). To make it easier to serve, you can slice the bread 3/4 of the way through, so you can just pull off a slice. I wasn't sharing, so I didn't worry about that.

How excited for The Force Awakens are you? True story: I had to darken some of these photos because they were a bit washed out, and as I was doing that, I found myself whispering, "good, good. Let the hate flow through you. Embrace the power of the dark side." I surprise myself sometimes with my own level of nerdiness.

French Bread Pizza
Yield: about 6 servings, depending on the size of the loaves

Ingredients
1 1/2 loaves French bread*
Approx. 1 cup prepared tomato sauce
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Pepperoni and diced olives to top

Directions
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Place your loaves on a baking sheet. With a sharp knife, cut out a long, thin section of the crust, and remove some of the inside bread to make room for the toppings.

Fill the hollow you made with the tomato sauce and shredded mozzarella. Top with olives and pepperoni. Bake 8-10 minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbly. Let cool slightly before serving.

*I used Pillsbury refrigerated dough

Recipe inspired by Cooking with Plants

Psst, do you have a nerdy baker in your life? Geeky Sprinkles make a great gift. The steampunk sprinkles are my personal favorite, but there are also Tardis sprinkles, Harry Potter lightning bolt sprinkles, and Meeple sprinkles. They are awesomely geeky and can only be found on geekyhostess.com/shop. And for a limited time, you can use the promo code "TRINKETS" to get 20% off anything in the shop. I'm hooking you guys up, dude.

I helped fund the Kickstarter for Geeky Sprinkles, but I'm not affiliated in any other way with  The Geeky Hostess. Tara contacted me and asked if I wanted a promo code to share with you guys just because she's awesome like that. And you can never have too many sprinkles.

Caprese Stuffed Chicken Burgers

I know you guys are probably tired about hearing me talk about my cat these days, but I gotta say: the unconditional love and forgiveness of animals is something that has absolutely amazed me in these past couple of weeks.

Jake still hates his meds (not that I blame him-- I wouldn't like people shoving things in my mouth and down my throat either), but I like to say that he's in denial about them. The easiest way I've found to give him his inhalers is for me to kneel down on the floor and put him between my knees. Every time I do this, he's happy and starts purring and is just generally pleased to get what he thinks is love and attention. I do my best to make it pleasant, speaking in a calming voice and petting him with my free hand, giving him treats, but as soon as he sees the Aerocat, he just goes NOOOOOOPE, and tries to push it away with his paw. Two inhalers, three times a day we do this.

Then he goes on the kitchen table for his eye ointment and his oral gel. I would think he'd start to get anxious on the table, because he never used to be allowed up, so he has to know what's coming. But he's completely relaxed, purring, and lying down to get more pets. He only gets agitated when the oral syringe gets near his mouth, or he sees the eye ointment coming. (Pills are a different story. Pills are the devil. He sees a pill, he's not a happy camper, and if I get it in his mouth, he will cheek it, spitting it out after he gets his treat. Luckily, we finished pills on Monday) Then he gets praise and wet food (his favorite), and when his belly is full, he comes looking for snuggles.

I can't explain to Jake that I'm doing this to help him. I can't explain that he needs the Aerocat on his face so he doesn't have trouble breathing or that the eye ointment will make his eyes feel better, or that the oral gel is going to keep all of his upper respiratory symptoms from coming back. (I don't know what his problem is with the oral gel. It smells like maple syrup. I kind of want to eat it myself) So the fact that he doesn't seem to hold any of it against me and is still my little massive snugglebutt at the end of the day, never ceases to amaze me.

What does this have to do with chicken burgers? Nothing really, except my kitchen table is now a kitty medicating station, so I had to take pictures on a trunk in the dining room library, which involved kneeling on the floor. This meant that a certain furry someone had to come over and help, and mostly did that by getting underfoot and yelling at me for not sitting on the couch so he could snuggle.

Now, I'm not much of a red meat eater. Outside of chili or stew or meatloaf, I will pass. It's not a health thing; I'm just not much of a fan of the taste of beef. Turkey and veggie burgers are more my speed. When ground chicken was on sale at the grocery store, I decided to give some chicken burgers a try.

But, me being me, I wanted to do something special. Chicken burgers can often be pretty bland, so I picked up some fresh basil and some locally grown grape tomatoes (Jersey tomatoes FTW), with the idea of doing some sort of caprese chicken burger. With my general lack of burger-making knowledge, I hunted up this recipe from Domestic Fits, that stuffed the middle with the usual caprese ingredients. I just added some extra seasonings to the meat, et voila. Fancy stuffed chicken burgers ready in under 20 minutes.

The original recipe also gave a tip to simmer the burger in some chicken broth for the last few minutes of cooking to prevent the burger from drying out. I skipped it, because I was lazy, but my burger was plenty moist. I think this can mostly be attributed to the fact that I'm pretty sure the ground chicken I used was dark meat (or a dark/white mix). If you're using white meat, you may want to try the simmer method.

These burgers are tasty and super filling (you're basically getting two burgers in one). I didn't flatten the patties as much as I should have, so I wasn't able to add as much filling as I would have liked, but overall I was very pleased with them. I actually liked them better the next day-- the seasonings in the meat were a little more prominent. You could be totally Italian and serve these with drizzle of aged balsamic or a little tomato sauce, but I liked them with a good dollop of bbq sauce (I've been obsessed with Sweet Baby Ray's lately) on a toasted bun.

For a side dish, I just tossed a little pasta with the leftover filling, some olive oil, garlic powder, and oregano. Then I had to maneuver around a very large, purring furball to take pictures

Caprese Stuffed Chicken Burgers
Yield: 4 burgers

Ingredients
About 1/2 cup diced tomatoes (I used grape tomatoes, but any kind works, or used well-drained canned tomatoes)
Half of a sweet onion, minced
4-6 fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
1 tsp. salt, divided
1 lb. ground chicken
1/2 cup bread crumbs (I used unseasoned panko)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. dried parsley flakes
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
Pinch crushed red pepper
About 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella
Olive oil, for the pan

Directions
In a small bowl, mix together the tomatoes, basil, about 2 tsp. minced onion, and 1/2 tsp. salt.

In a large bowl, add the ground chicken, remaining salt and onion, bread crumbs, minced garlic, oregano, garlic powder, parsley, black pepper, and crushed red pepper. Mix until well incorporated (don't overmix or the meat will be tough).

Divide the meat mixture into 8 equal sections and form into patties. On 4 of the patties, create a depression in the middle and add about 1 tbsp. of cheese and about 1/4 of the tomato mixture (eyeball it so you don't overfill it. Top with one of the remaining patties, and pinch the edges to seal it.

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the burgers (don't crowd the pan-- work in batches if necessary) and cook about 4-6 minutes per side, until each side is golden brown, and the chicken is cooked through. Serve hot.

Recipe adapted from Domestic Fits

Mmm, melty good stuff

Pepperoni Pizza Waffles

So, remember how I told you that I've had waffles on the brain lately? And how I'd been playing around with the idea of making a pizza waffle?

I found a recipe.

You guys, this is ground breaking. This means that someone else in the world has a brain that works like mine.

I mean, I've seen plenty of people who make actual pizza in the waffle maker. But that's still pizza. I wanted a pizza flavored waffle. And that's what I got.

These waffles are a fun alternative to garlic bread or breadsticks. Serve them with prepared tomato sauce (I happened to have a pot of gravy in the fridge) for dipping. Best part is, they're super quick to make. They just use pancake mix, grated parmesan, shredded mozzarella, diced pepperoni, and seasoning. Mix it all up with some water and olive oil and slap it into your waffle maker. Ta da, pizza waffles.

I added extra oregano and garlic to mine, since that's how I like my pizza. Feel free to jazz it up however you like.

I actually like these better after they've cooled; all the flavors are more prominent.

Pepperoni Pizza Waffles
Yield: 4 waffles

Ingredients
2½ cups pancake mix (I used Krusteaz Heart Healthy)
1½ tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. dried oregano
½ tsp. dried basil
½ tsp. dried parsley
1½ cups cold water
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 cup shredded mozzarella
¾ cup finely grated parmesan cheese
¾ cup diced pepperoni
Nonstick cooking spray, or more olive oil, for greasing
Prepared tomato sauce, for dipping

Directions
In a large mixing bowl, mix the pancake mix and spices. Add the water and olive oil and mix until combined (some lumps are fine). Add the cheeses and pepperoni, mixing until well incorporated; the batter will be very thick. Grease your waffle maker well and cook according to the manufacturer's instructions. Serve with prepared tomato sauce.

Tip: The batter is very thick, so spread it out a bit before closing the waffle maker. Grease the waffle maker well between waffles to prevent the cheese from sticking if it melts out.

Recipe adapted from Mrs. Fields Secrets

Spaghetti Squash with Browned Butter and Goat Cheese

I think people expect receptionists to have secret, exciting lives. I got back to work this week and people kept asking me if I did anything cool or went anywhere exciting.

The real answer of cooking food and chasing down the cat so he doesn't try to make friends with the contractors' power tools did not seem to satisfy them.

So I told it in a different manner. I went to this super cute place, totally my style. It was under construction, which kind of sucked, but it was pet friendly and really comfortable. There are plenty of places to read and relax, lots of shopping, and there was a gourmet cook that was out of this world.

People were rather more impressed with that and asked me where I went.

Chez Kim, of course.

See, I don't really have any coworkers, other than G who I do security with, and who was the receptionist before me. I'm pretty much by myself all day, everyday. And while I know pretty much everyone, and everyone knows me, no one really knows me, if you catch my drift. I don't have water cooler chats or get to talk to people that sit near me. Maybe that's why people assume that I have a secret life. Shh, I'm Batman

G tries to convince people I'm funny, but no one believes her. I told her I don't believe her, either. She laughed.

Anyway, back to my original point. When I said that there was a gourmet cook, G laughed, but everyone else was curious.

Who's doing the cooking? they asked. I could almost see the gears turning in their heads. Boyfriend? Does she have a boyfriend? Would we know if she had a boyfriend? She's not married is she?

Me. I'm doing the cooking.

And then I got weird looks because you're apparently not supposed to cook for yourself when you're on vacation. But a) I like cooking, and b) I wouldn't have gotten this spaghetti squash, because no one else had the recipe. I didn't even have the recipe until I finished cooking it. Because that's how I roll.

Creamy and cheesy and buttery and ooey-gooey goodness. Browned butter and goat cheese and garlic get mixed to make a super creamy, decadent sauce. You've got the natural sweetness of the squash, then I added some fresh basil, some crumbled bacon, and some seasonings. I added some mozz on top for extra gooey melty-ness. And it was good.

I took healthy stuff and I drowned it in the thoroughly unhealthy to make it some nummy, nummy goodness. That fact is not lost on me.

And if I may suggest-- keep a bodybuilder on call to help you cut open the squash. That sucker was not giving it up. I had to break out the big knife, and klutzy me is normally kept far away from such sharp implements of doom. (oddly, I did not cut myself. But I did burn my thumb pretty badly.)


Spaghetti Squash with Browned Butter and Goat Cheese {Printable Version}
Yield: 4-6 serving

Ingredients
1 large spaghetti squash
¾ cup unsalted butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 oz. goat cheese
4 strips cooked bacon, crumbled
¼ cup roughly chopped fresh basil
½ tsp. sea salt
¼ tsp. freshly cracked black pepper
Pinch dried sage
Shredded mozzarella, for sprinkling

Directions
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Cut the squash in half lengthwise, scrape out the seeds, and place flesh side
down on a baking sheet. Bake 30-50 minutes, until the skin can be pricked with a fork. Using a fork,
scrape the flesh away from the skin into long “noodles.” Discard the skin.

While the squash is cooking, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the minced garlic
and continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the butter turns a light golden brown. Remove from heat
and let cool slightly.

Mix together the cooked squash, browned butter, and all remaining ingredients except the mozzarella,
until well combined and creamy. Add to a baking dish (a 9-inch pie plate should work, depending on the
size of your squash), sprinkle with mozzarella, and bake 5-10 minutes, until the cheese is melted. Let
cool slightly before serving.

Recipe by Kim