For dinner last night, we threw together a plain old spaghetti. Then my girlfriend Shannon finally arrived around 11 p.m. With everyone else in bed, we shared glasses of Chartreuse (which she thought tasted heavily and solely like pine) and had our own private Christmas. It was lovely.
This morning, my daughter went with my other friend Gayle to a Christmas tree composting event. They had a great time and got hot chocolate, hot dogs and lunch at Panera Bread. Shannon had suggested pizza for dinner, and offered to treat.
We're in the middle of a mild storm (though the roads have frozen) and Shann has gone to visit her grandmother. I figure since she's out visiting family, the least I can do is cook a meal. We'll save the pizza for a day when we're cavorting and shopping all day. But pizza remains the inspiration. I took a loaf of my homemade French bread from the freezer and plan to make garlic bread vegetable pizzas.
Today's ranch-cream sauce started with a tablespoon or so of butter, a couple tablespoons of light cream, a handful of fresh parsley, a couple tablespoons of olive oil, basil, Italian seasoning, about 1/4 cup of grated parmesan, some sprinkles of organic ranch mix and sliced garlic. I cooked all the vegetables in this sauce and spooned them onto the bread. Topped with cheddar. The garlic bread on the bottom, the vegetables in ranch-cream sauce in the middle and grated cheddar melted to join them. Shannon enjoyed and appreciated the complexity of flavors.
What makes this extra exciting is that I took Gayle's advice and started saving a baggy in the freezer for breadcrumbs.
Oh, and tonight I plan on making a garlic-ranch-cream sauce for the pizzas. That's different from the previous ones... Click on the pizza link below for more details.
No comments:
Post a Comment