There's pizza in them there scones.

I’m not sure that’s it’s completely socially acceptable to eat pizza for breakfast. I mean… I do it. You do it. Everyone does it, but if you saw someone walking down the street at 8AM with a slice of pepperoni, you might think, “Wow. That person needs help.” Or you might just be jealous.

But did you know you can have your pizza and maintain all semblances of a normal social creature? All you have to do is hide the pizza a bit.

You see, if people see you walking down the street with a lovely, flakey homemade scone they will immediately think, “That person has their act together!” People who eat scones get raises and are almost always dateable. Scones mean you have it going on.

In reality though, you’re just eating pizza. Buttery, flakey pizza.

Pizza Scones

Yield: 8 large scones

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 Cup cornmeal
1 Tablespoon baking powder
2 Tablespoons fresh basil, minced
1 Teaspoon dried oregano
1 Large pinch of salt
1/2 Cup sun-dried tomatoes, minced
1 Cup mozzarella cheese, grated
1/2 Cup pepperoni, minced (opt.)
1/2 Cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cubed
2 Eggs
3/4 Cups buttermilk

Helpful Equipment:
Biscuit Cutters

Directions:

1) Mix flour, cornmeal, baking powder, fresh basil, and oregano in a large bowl.

2) Mix mozzarella cheese, minced sun-dried tomatoes, and pepperoni in a separate bowl. If you're using dried sun-dried tomatoes, reconstitute them in boiling water for 30 seconds before using. If you're using tomatoes in oil, you can just add them in.

3) Cube butter and cut it into the flour mixture using your fingers until it resembles pea-sized pieces.

4) Stir mozzarella mixture into flour mixture.

5) In a separate bowl, mix together buttermilk and eggs and then stir that into the flour mixture. Mix until it forms a loose dough.

6) Turn dough out onto a well-floured surface and knead a few times. The dough should be about 3/4-1 inch thick.

7) Cut out 8 large scones from the dough. You may need to re-roll the dough. Add cut scones to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

8) Bake scones in a preheated 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes until they are golden brown. Let cool briefly before serving.

Adapted from a Family Fun recipe.

The Scone Base

This is a really standard scone base except for a few add-ins that give the scones a bit of pizza flare. Namely, cornmeal, fresh basil, and oregano.

Scone basics!

Mix all this together with some baking powder, salt, and flour and your dry ingredients are pretty much ready to go.

The basil is key.

As with any scone worth its flakes, these guys have a fair amount of butter in them. I’m sure they exist, but it’s pretty hard to make a great scone without butter.

So cube up some cold butter and add it to your dry ingredients.

Gotta have butter in scones.

I find that it’s easiest to just use my fingers to mash up the butter with the dry stuff until it’s in pea-sized bits. It should resemble a really coarse meal basically.

Bring on the pizza!

Now that we have a scone base, we need to add in some good pizza flavors. I did some mozzarella, pepperoni, and sun-dried tomatoes. Honestly, I think the sun-dried tomatoes are the most important part. They really give the scones a classic pizza taste. If you’re using sun-dried tomatoes in oil, you can just dice them up, but if you’re using dried, be sure to reconstitute them in boiling water for 30 seconds or so.

The real pizza flavors.

Mix these pizza toppings straight in with your scone base. This bowl will already be smelling good.

This already smelled good.

As a final step, mix in your eggs and buttermilk to the dry ingredients. This will bring your scone dough together.

Nice action shot.

Shaping and Baking

Once your buttermilk and eggs are mixed in, try not to over-mix the dough. Just mix it enough to pull everything together and then turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface.

Knead the dough a few times and then use a biscuit cutter to start popping out large rounds. As an alternative, you could make a large circle with your dough and then slice it up into triangles.

This would, of course, look like pizza!

I went with rounds though.

Big scones.

Lay these guys out as you make them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. You should get about 8 large scones out of a batch and you’ll probably need to re-roll your dough once to get full use of it.

These are huge.

Pop these guys in a 375 degree oven for about 20-25 minutes until the scones are lightly browned and flakey.

This might be no surprise to you, but your kitchen will smell like pizza while making these. Exactly like pizza.

Like a pizza pie.

You’ll want to let these cool for a few minutes, but you want to eat them while warm also.

I was pretty happy with these guys after my first big bite.

CHOMP!

So, fool all those people who you encounter on any given day. They will think you’re high class and sophisticated. Heck. They might even think your British!

But, really, you’re just a pizza sneak.

Who doesn't like brussel sprouts?!

I’ve never really had a problem eating vegetables. In fact, I can’t think of a vegetable that I don’t like. I’m sure they are out there (durian fruit probably – but that’s a fruit!), but I’m usually pretty happy with almost any vegetable dish.

I’m not a normal eater really though. Most people have a problem with at least a few veggies and it seems like, to me, that most people have a problem with brussel sprouts!

Honestly, I think this is due to two causes:

1) Sprouts have some weird cultural stigmas and are frequently mentioned as the hard-to-eat veggie.

2) Most people have no earthly idea how to prepare them.

So this is the brussel sprout recipe for people who don’t like brussel sprouts. Think of it as an intro to the sprout. Because what could be a better way to eat something than to put it on a pizza?

Brussel Sprout Pizza

Yield: 2 Pizzas

Prep Time: 20 minutes plus time for dough

Total Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

2 pizza doughs (homemade is good)
1 Cup pizza sauce, below
10 ounces low moisture mozzarella cheese, grated
10 brussel sprouts, sliced thinly
8 ounces bacon, crispy
6 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
Fresh basil, chopped
Salt and pepper
Cornmeal, for peel

Homemade Pizza Sauce (adapted from American Pie)
1 (28 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 Cup water
1/4 Cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons garlic powder
1 Tablespoon dried oregano
2 Teaspoons dried basil
1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes (opt.)
Salt and pepper

Homemade Napoletana Dough (Again from American Pie)
5 Cups (22.5 ounces) bread flour
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 Teaspoon instant yeast
2 Cups (scant) cool water

Helpful Equipment:
- Stand mixer (for dough), but you can make it easily without
- Pizza Peel
- Pizza stone

Directions:

1) To make dough, combine water, oil, salt, and yeast in a mixing bowl. Stir together and let sit for 5 minutes to make sure yeast is active. It should bubble.

2) Stir in flour until it’s well-incorporated and forms a ball. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Then mix either with your hands or with a stand mixer. If using hands, repeatedly dip one hand in water and work the dough vigorously until it’s smooth, about 8 minutes. If using a mixer, mix with dough hook until smooth, about 6 minutes. If at any point, the dough is very sticky, mix in more flour.

3) Cut dough into 6 even pieces, coat with olive oil and add to a large plastic bag. Let rest for 20-30 minutes.

4) Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, but ideally overnight.

5) Remove from fridge at least 90 minutes before making pizza.

6) For sauce, mix together ingredients and set aside until needed.

7) Grate cheese, cook bacon, and roughly chop sprouts.

8) Preheat oven to 550 degrees with pizza stone for at least 20 minutes.

9) Roll out dough to form a 12 inch pizza. Place dough on a pizza peel lightly dusted with cornmeal. Add sauce and spread it smoothly over pie. Top with mozzarella, sprouts, bacon, blue cheese.

10) Slide pizza onto stone and let cook for 10 minutes.

11) Take out pizza and top immediately with fresh basil.

12) Slice and serve!

Making the Dough

I’ve talked a lot about making homemade pizza dough, so I’m going to do the abbreviated version in this post. If you want a full run down, this post has a great run down on the method that I used for this dough.

I really like making pizza dough. It’s actually one of the easier doughs to make in my opinion. It’s very wet so it’s actually pretty easy to work with once you get the hang of it.

The key thing to remember about homemade dough is that you want to give it at least 4 hours to rise in the fridge (overnight is great) and then you want to take it out at least 90 minutes before baking your pizza.

Beautiful things.

But there are a good number of store-bought doughs out there if you want to make this recipe even easier.

The Toppings

There’s really only a few toppings for this pie, but each of them is packing a lot of flavor.

Mini cabbages really...

This a great beginner brussel sprout recipe because you don’t need to know how to prepare them perfectly. Basically just chop off the stem-end of the sprout and then dice up the sprouts.

I sliced each sprout in half and then just sliced the sprouts roughly.

Get it?

Besides the bacon, sprouts, and blue cheese, you need a good sauce and mozzarella as well.

One thing I’m not a fan of is most store-bought sauces. Similar to my homemade trial with pasta sauce, pizza sauce tends to be pretty flavorless and too salty. So take the time to stir a few spices into normal tomato sauce. You don’t need to cook it or anything. You’ll end up with a much better sauce. Trust me.

Essentials.

Making the Pizza

Assuming you have a pizza peel and stone, making homemade pizza becomes pretty straightforward. Just make sure you heat your stone up as much as you can. I crank my oven up to 550 and let it preheat with the stone in the oven for at least 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, roll out your dough into a rough circle. Mine usually ends up slightly more rectangle in shape, but whatever. If you use the homemade dough recipe in this post, you should get about a 12 inch pizza out of each dough ball.

Than transfer the dough to your pizza peel that’s been dusted with cornmeal and ladle on a bit of sauce. I don’t like a lot of sauce on my pizzas. About half a cup per pizza is usually enough for me.

No need to over-sauce.

Spread out the sauce, then top with mozzarella cheese. Follow that with your bacon, sprouts, and blue cheese layers.

This guy is ready for the oven!

High and deep!

Slide the pizza right onto your hot stone and let it cook for about 10 minutes.

The crust should get nice and crispy and the cheese should be bubbling hot.

I snuck a peek at mine at about minute nine.

Bubble Bubble.

When you pull the pizza out, immediately top it with some fresh basil. You wouldn’t want to bake the pizza with the basil on it because it would just shrivel up and lose a lot of flavor. Fresh is best when it comes to basil.

Fresh basil. Key.

Let the pizza cool for a minute or so and then slice it up!

It's really good, people.

I usually judge most pizzas by crust alone, but I have to say that toppings on this guy surprised me. They were really flavorful. The brussel sprouts just give a light veggie flavor to the pizza. It’s really not an intense flavor and I think most people would like it.

Homemade pizza is one of my absolute favorite things to make and this recipe is a keeper for me.

Doesn't get fresher than this!

This is what I refer to as a Flavor Bible salad which is something that happens frequently at the Macheesmo household. Usually, it means that I have one ingredient that I want to throw in a salad… say… peaches. I flip open my Flavor Bible to the peach section and pick four or five other things that go with it.

Toss them in a bowl with some dressing and it’s almost guaranteed to be delicious.

To kick this salad up a notch, I also passed on the store bought dressings and shook up some homemade lemon-tarragon dressing.

Summer Peach Salad

Yield: Serves 4 as an app.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 large peach, pitted and diced
1/4 red onion, sliced thinly
1/2 cucumber, seeded and sliced thin
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
Arugula or a mix of greens
Handful of fresh basil

Lemon-Tarragon Dressing:
1/3 Cup oil (I like a mix of light olive oil and canola oil)
1 lemon, juice only
1/4 Cup tarragon vinegar
1 small shallot, diced
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Teaspoon kosher salt
1 Teaspoon fresh cracked pepper

Directions:

1) Take your time dicing up the veggies. Slice the red onions thinly, Seed the cucumber and slice it thin. Pit the peach and roughly chop it.

2) Add greens to a large bowl and add crumbled feta. Then top with veggies and peaches. Dice basil and add to top of salad.

3) Whisk or shake dressing ingredients together.

4) Let people dress their own salad.

The Veggies

The veggies for this salad are nothing exotic, but all the flavors work really well together. So just go with it.

Salad Basics.

The hardest thing to dice up is actually the peach. I’ve seen people absolutely mutilate peaches when trying to get the pit out. Assuming you are working with a ripe peach, it’s a fairly straightforward operation though.

Start by finding the small crease in the top of the peach next to where the peach was connected to the tree. This crease shows you the direction that the pit is facing. If you don’t cut along the crease you’ll have a hard time getting the pit out.

Just follow the crease and run your knife all around the peach.

There's a science to the peach.

Then just as if you were cutting an avocado, lightly twist the two peach halves and they should easily pop apart. Once half will be ready to dice up and one half will have the pesky pit in it still.

Perfect!

You could use your knife to pry the pit out of the peach half, but honestly, I find it easiest just to grab the edge of it where it meets the peach skin and lightly pry it out of the peach. If your peach is ripe, it should pop right out!

Then you can just dice up the peaches. For this recipe, I recommend leaving the skin on so don’t worry about peeling them.

For the onions and cucumbers, just slice them up pretty thinly.

Big pieces are good.

Add all the veggies and peaches to a large bowl with the crumbled feta and greens.

This is a very colorful and pretty salad.

Almost done...

As a final touch, chop up some fresh basil and sprinkle it on top of the salad. Don’t skimp on the basil either. It’s an awesome flavor when paired with the peaches.

Don't skimp on the basil!

The Dressing

I originally just wanted to make a lemon dressing for this salad, but it wasn’t quite flavorful enough for my liking so I added some tarragon vinegar to kick it up a notch.

Store bought dressing sucks.

If you’re a longtime Macheesmo reader, you might remember that tarragon vinegar is my secret ingredient in my house salad dressing!

This stuff is really flavorful and perfect for salad dressings.

Secret salad dressing ingredient!

When serving this salad up just make sure to get a bit of everything in each bowl and I recommend letting people dress their own salads.

Delicious.

For a salad with only a few ingredients, it has a lot of flavor and you can really taste summer in it. The peaches are obviously the star, but they have a pretty awesome supporting cast also.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for a main course for peach week. There will be pork involved. And bourbon.

A lot going on in there...

I’ve been on sort of a never-ending quest to find the perfect lunch salad. It’s tricky business because you want something that had plenty of filling ingredients so you can make it through the afternoon. Ideally, it would also keep really well so you can take it for an entire week.

Oh. It also needs to taste really, really good so you don’t get bored with it.

You can see a lot of my previous lunch salad attempts in the Macheesmo salads category. I try a bunch out that I don’t always post as well. I try to only post the really outstanding ones.

Which would easily include this one.

In fact, this one might have been my favorite to-date. The funny part is that it was inspired largely on a pre-made salad that Betsy grabbed at a local grocery store one day when I completely failed at making a lunch salad. It was so good that she asked me to try to re-do it. I added a bunch more veggies and stuff to it, but the idea is basically the same.

Asian Quinoa Salad

Yield: Serves 4-6.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups uncooked quinoa, cooked according to package
1 red pepper, diced
1/2 cucumber, seeded and diced
1/2 cup shredded carrots
2 scallions, minced
4-5 radishes, sliced thin
1/3 Cup soy sauce (dressing)
1 Tablespoon mirin rice wine vinegar (dressing)
1 Teaspoon spicy sesame oil (optional for dressing)
Chopped peanuts
Chopped fresh basil
Toasted sesame seeds

Directions:

1) Cook quinoa according to package.

2) Chop veggies finely and stir in with cooked quinoa.

3) Drizzle in dressing a bit at a time. Taste and adjust with more dressing if necessary. You might not need all of it.

4) Toast sesame seeds in a dry pan for a few minutes on medium heat until the seeds are lightly browned and fragrant.

5) Stir in peanuts, seeds, and basil.

Making the Quinoa

Quinoa sounds all fancy (and can sometimes come with a fancy price tag), but it’s surprisingly easy to make. You should read the instructions on the package since there are a few different varieties of quinoa. In general though, rinse the quinoa with cold water and then get some water simmering in a large pot. Usually you want a 2-to-1 ratio, water-to-quinoa.

Once the water is simmering pour in the rinsed quinoa, cover it, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Then kill the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes. Then lightly fluff it up and you’ll have a really delicious quinoa!

quin-wow.

Prepping Other Ingredients

The list of veggies you could toss in this salad is pretty endless. I’d recommending using whatever you have in your fridge that might go well in it. For me this included some cucumber, red pepper, onions, and shredded carrots. I also picked up some really beautiful radishes at the market on this given week and I figured they would give the salad a nice crunch also.

One thing I wouldn’t add to this salad is any kind of cheese like feta. Sometimes I like adding cheeses to salads like this, but in this case I think it would be too much.

Colorful stuff!

As far as prepping the veggies go, just try to get them sliced up pretty finely. You don’t want any huge chunks of any one thing. For the cucumber, I would remove the seeds, but you can leave on the skin if you want.

These were my radishes after a quick dice.

Go pretty thin on everything.

Once everything is in the bowl with the quinoa it’s a really pretty mix.

Hard to get healthier than this!

The Dressing

I kept the dressing pretty simple for this salad. You could fancy it up a bit with some fresh ginger and/or garlic, but I this was a quick and easy dressing that definitely go the job done.

You can definitely leave out the sesame chili oil or sub it with normal sesame oil, but I do think it’s a really nice touch.

Peanut are optional... only if you're allergic.

Just mix up the soy sauce, mirin and sesame oil and drizzle it over the salad. Depending on your tastes you might not need all the dressing so I would add about half of it and then adjust the flavor.

It’s pretty hard to remove soy sauce from a salad like this so start slow.

Add a bit at a time.

Once you add some dressing, stir it all together and then taste it. Just adjust it to your tastes at that point!

The Bonus Items

There’s a few bonus items that I think kick this salad up a notch. I added a few handfuls of chopped peanuts, a big handful of fresh basil which I just diced up and a few Tablespoons of sesame seeds.

Sesame seeds can be a tiny bit bland straight out of the box, but if you toast them for a few minutes in a dry pan, they become lightly browned and really fragrant.

So I recommend toasting them.

Love the smell of these guys.

You could add the garnishes to the top if you want, but I just stirred everything together.

This is supposed to be a low maintenance dish after all.

Lunch every day!

Honestly, this is about as healthy as a salad can get in my opinion. It’s got tons of veggies and flavor to get you going. If you wanted to add even more protein to it you could add some chicken or tofu, but I didn’t even think it needed it.

It’s a great change from the standard deli bar salad or whatever.

About as healthy as it gets!

After a week of vacation eating mainly seafood and butter, Betsy and I were in the mood for some healthy stuff when we got home.

I wondered through the produce section and picked out a few things that looked particularly good (green beans/corn). To make a meal out of them, I tossed them with some spicy sesame soba noodles.

Turned out to be really flavorful and one of my favorite healthy dishes in a while.

Summer Soba

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

1 9.5 ounce package of soba, cooked according to package
1-2 Cups green beans
2 ears corn
1 red pepper, diced
1/2 Cup carrots, shredded
2 scallions, only greens
1-2 Tablespoons sesame oil (or chili sesame oil), for soba
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil (for cooking)
Fresh basil (garnish)
Chopped peanuts (garnish)

Sauce:
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon mirin
- 1 Serrano pepper, diced with seeds
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 inches fresh ginger, grated

Directions:

1) Prep all veggies and set them aside.

2) Cook soba according to package then drain and toss with sesame oil.

3) Mix sauce ingredients being sure to mince ginger/garlic/pepper well.

4) In a large skillet, add oil and then all the veggies except carrots and scallions.

5) Cook veggies on high heat for a few minutes until hot, but still a bit crunchy.

6) Add sauce to pan and cook for another minute or two until sauce is fragrant.

7) Add soba to pan and stir together well. Then stir in carrots and scallions.

8) Serve with chopped basil and peanuts.

Prepping the Ingredients

The veggies that I used for this are by no means the only ones you could use. Almost any fresh summer veggie would be great tossed in with this dish, so don’t feel limited by what I included.

Good summer stuff.

Assuming you do use some of the veggies I used though, prepping them is pretty straightforward. Dice up the red pepper, snap off the ends of the green beans and chop them in half. Cut the corn off the cob.

Pretty easy prep.

In essence, this is a stir-fry recipe, so I mixed up a very quick and simple sauce for it. Nothing too heavy, but just to give the dish some flavor.

Not pictured: Serrano pepper

Mince up the garlic, pepper, and ginger really finely and then stir it together with the soy sauce and mirin.

Seriously awesome sauce.

Cooking the Soba

If you aren’t familiar with soba, don’t fret. It’s basically pasta except made with buckwheat. This gives it a really unique flavor (almost nutty). It also takes no time to cook. Most soba cooks in just a few minutes.

Pretty things.

The thing about soba is that it’s a really sticky pasta. After you cook it and drain it, you’ll want to toss it with some oil or you’ll end up with one big block of pasta that will be pretty hard to work with.

But if you pour over a few tablespoons of sesame oil then it will flavor the pasta and also keep it from sticking. If you want to add some heat do the dish, you can use sesame chili oil!

Oil is key.

Finishing the Dish

Once your veggies are prepped and your pasta is cooked, this is a pretty straightforward dish to make.

Add a few tablespoons of oil to a large skillet and toss in all your veggies (except carrots and scallions) over high heat. Cook these for just a few minutes. You want to make sure that they still have a bit of crunch to them.

Don't over-cook this!

Then stir in the sauce and let it heat up and get fragrant for a minute or two.

Finally, add in all the soba and stir the whole thing together. As a final step, stir in the carrots and scallions and you’re all set!

Yum.

Serve the soba immediately with fresh basil and peanuts on top.

Very colorful and healthy dish.

Health in a bowl.

One of my favorite things about soba is that unlike some other pastas, it maybe tastes even better cold. So leftovers are perfect for a weekday lunch or something.

Summer soba was a total hit at my house. It’s a perfect use for some of the delicious veggies available these days.

Very fresh and delicious.

I hereby proclaim it officially tomato season. It’s possible that it has been tomato season for a week or two now in some areas of the country, but we are just now in full swing here. I know this because my tomato plants are exploding with real tomatoes! None of them are ripe yet unfortunately, but soon!

Of course, real tomato farmers are much better at growing things than I am so their tomatoes are looking really good these days.

And so I wanted to use some of these bad boys in a pasta dish. Here’s the fun part about this dish. The sauce isn’t cooked at all. Unlike this cherry tomato pasta dish which has really deep, rich tomato flavors, this dish is nice and light and fresh.

Perfect for a hot a summer day which a good number of people are experiencing these days!

Summer Tomato Pasta

Yield: Serves 4-6.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound angel hair pasta
3 Cups cherry tomatos (about a pound), halved and squeezed
2 Tablespoons fresh basil, minced
1 Tablespoon fresh marjoram, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/2 Cup olive oil
1/2 Cup kalamata olives, diced
Salt and pepper
Parmesan Cheese for topping

Directions:

1) Wash cherry tomatoes and cut them in half.

2) Squeeze each half into a large bowl.

3) Add olive oil, vinegar, chopped herbs, minced garlic, and diced olives to bowl. Stir to combine.

4) Let sit for 10 minutes, then taste for salt and pepper.

5) Cook pasta according to package. Be sure not to overcook it. It'll cook fast!

6) Drain pasta and toss it in with tomatoes. Toss well to combine.

7) Serve immediately with Parmesan cheese!

Adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe.

Making the sauce

This is honestly one of my favorite pasta sauces I’ve made recently. I’m not even sure if you can call it a sauce. It’s more of a mix-in. But it’s delicious so just go with it.

Before we get to that though, I have to show off.

Check out my exploding basil plants! I’m really proud of them because I’ve always had a hard time getting basil to really take off.

Explosion!

These guys should last me all summer!

The real star of this recipe isn’t the basil though, it’s the cherry tomatoes. Be sure to find the ripest ones you can.

The stars.

Wash these guys and cut each tomato in half. Then give each half a little squeeze and toss it in a large bowl.

This will squirt out some of the ripe tomato juices and also bruise the fruit a bit which is good for a dish like this.

If you happen to have children, I’m sure they would love squirting tomato halves into a bowl so recruit the kids to help. The reason I know this is because I really enjoyed it and I’m basically a big old kid.

Get the kids to help...

When all your tomatoes are squashed you’ll have a big bowl of, well, squashed tomatoes.

There's good juice in there.

This isn’t much now, but we are gonna turn it into something awesome.

You’ll need this stuff to start.

Good stuff.

And because I have a hard time getting everything together for one family photo, you’ll also need these things.

Go light on these...

Mince the herbs and garlic really fine and don’t use more than a clove of garlic. One clove is more than enough because the flavors are pretty subtle here. Garlic can over-power pretty easily.

Add these things along with the chopped olives, olive oil, and vinegar. The vinegar is very important. Definitely not optional, but you could use white wine vinegar. I wouldn’t use balsamic. It’s too heavy.

A great no cook sauce!

Mix this all together and, here’s the important part, let it sit for 10 minutes.

That ten minutes will give all the flavors a chance to really meld together.

If you notice that there’s a cup or two of liquid at the bottom of your bowl, don’t worry. That’s good. That will all be soaked up by the pasta and turn into a delicious sauce. Just let it be. Do taste the “sauce” though for salt and pepper. It’ll probably need a good pinch of both.

Finishing the Dish

You could use a lot of different pastas for this dish but I went with angel hair because it’s nice and light. It also happens to be my wife’s favorite pasta so sometimes I have to let her get her way!

The hair on an angel...

Angel hair is a great pasta for the summer because it cooks in, like, 4 minutes. Done deal and then you can turn the stove off!

Once it’s done, drain it and toss it right in the bowl with all the tomatoes while it’s still steaming hot. The heat from the pasta will soften the tomatoes a bit and just make everything work.

Tongs are helpful.

Use tongs to really mix the pasta together with the tomatoes to make sure that everything is tossed together well.

Then just serve up a big helping of it with some parmesan cheese on top!

One more shot...

For my money, there’s not much better than a dish like this in the summer time. It uses really fresh ingredients, doesn’t require a lot of stove time, and takes just a few minutes to toss together.

It’s healthy and light, but still flavorful enough to be filling.

So what I’m saying is… you should make this dish.

Like tonight.

Serious balls of meat.

I think when most people picture spaghetti and meatballs they envision a gigantic pot of red sauce with drowning meatballs dunked in it.

Because that’s what most people do when they make meatballs. It’s pretty easy to make decent meatballs and sauce if you do it this way, BUT… we can do better.

Especially in the summer, I’m just not in the mood for a thick sauce piled on my pasta. And that’s when this recipe saves the day. The meatballs, made of buffalo because of last week’s poll, are light and super-flavorful. Serving them over buttered egg noodles instead of sauced spaghetti makes this a great hearty summer dinner.

Buffalo Meatballs

Yield: 12 meatballs, serves 4.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound ground buffalo
4 ounces (about 1/2 Cup) frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1/2 Cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1 large egg
1/4 Cup bread crumbs (plus more for coating meatballs)
1 Tablespoon fresh basil
1 Tablespoon fresh parsley
1 Teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 Teaspoon red pepper flakes
Pinch of salt and pepper

Helpful Equipment:
Mini muffin tin (yea you read that right)

Directions:

1) Thaw spinach and press out as much moisture as possible with a few paper towels.

2) Chop spinach and fresh herbs very finely.

3) Mix ground buffalo and other ingredients in a large bowl. This can be done in advance.

4) Form meatballs with 1.5-2 ounces of meat. Keep the mixture nice and light.

5) Once the meatball is formed, toss it around in bread crumbs until completely covered.

6) Set meatballs in a mini muffin tin (or on a sheet pan if you don't have one)

7) Bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes. Turn once halfway through.

8) Serve meatballs over buttered noodles with Parmesan cheese and parsley.

Very adapted from an Alton Brown recipe.

Making the Meatballs

The problem with some meatballs is that they tend to either A) fall apart or B) be completely dry. These guys have neither problem. They have plenty of moisture and texture and stay together really nicely.

You could use dried herbs if you wanted (use 1 1/2 Teaspoons instead of a full tablespoon), but I think fresh works great.

Basic stuff.

While I think it’s good to use fresh herbs, I don’t think it’s important at all to use fresh spinach. I just used the frozen stuff, thawed it out and pressed out as much liquid as possible with a few paper towels.

Then just chop it up!

Squeeze it out good.

Add all your meatball ingredients to a large bowl and start stirring!

Ready for a good mixin'

The key when making meatballs is to keep the mixture nice and light. You don’t want to be pressing down really hard on the meat. Just stir it until the ingredients are mostly combined and think light thoughts!

You could make this up to 24 hours in advance if you wanted. Not that it takes long to make.

Try to keep it nice and light.

Forming the balls

I like to weigh my meatballs to make sure they are all pretty much the same size. This isn’t completely necessary though. You are basically looking for a 1.5-2 ounce meatball. It should be the size of a small golf ball basically.

Just roll the meat gently between your hands until it forms a ball. Again, keep it nice and light.

A scant two ounces is good.

Then add the ball to a bowl full of bread crumbs and roll it around a bit until it’s completely covered.

Repeat until all the balls are formed!

Breadcrumb bath.

Cooking the meatballs

There are a ton of ways to cook meatballs. Actually, pretty much any way you can cook stuff, you can cook meatballs. You could fry them, cook them on the stove, roast them… the options are pretty endless.

Alton came up with a great technique on his meatballs episode that I just had to try.

You cook the meatballs in a mini muffin pan!

Thanks Alton!

The benefits of doing this are two fold. First, since the meatballs are gently held above the bottom of the pan, the fat can drain away. Second, the even heating ensures that they get nice and browed all around while still keeping their shape.

I baked mine for 25 minutes at 400 degrees and turned the meatballs once halfway through. These are ready to go!

After 25 minutes...

Serving Options

Options are pretty limitless when it comes to serving. You could stick them on toothpicks, toss them in some red sauce at this point, or go the way I chose.

Cook up some egg noodles, drain them, and then toss in a few tablespoons of butter. Once the noodles are well buttered, serve the meatballs on top with some fresh Parmesan cheese and parsley.

This really lets the meatball flavor shine.

Butter noodles are the way to go!

These were really fun to make and took me only about 35 minutes start to finish. That’s not too bad for a really nice dinner.

Leftovers are great on a hoagie with provolone cheese!

Meatballs in a mini muffin tin. Go figure.

I can do romantic sometimes!

Betsy and I had a whirlwind month over the last four or fives weeks. We were both out of town a lot, but not traveling together. When we are in town together, we’ve both had really busy work schedules.

So it kind of felt like we were two ships passing in the night.

We decided to right the problem a few weeks ago by having a dedicated date night. No movies or dinner out though because that’s exactly what we had been doing too much of over the last few weeks. So we stayed at home, came up with a fun menu together, and just relaxed.

I thought I’d share some of the stuff we ate on our very fun date night!

It Was Betsy’s Idea

Betsy came up with a great idea for a date night menu. Instead of having one big meal, she wanted to have a bunch of smaller plates. Kind of like tapas I guess, but mostly appetizers that we could just kind of snack on all night long.

This sounded like a great idea to me! We went to a few stores together during the day and shopped for fun snacks that we would eat later in the night. Betsy never goes grocery shopping with me so it was a nice change to shop together.

For kind of a starter dish to our meal of starters, I set out some olives, roasted, marinated garlic cloves, a wedge of soft truffle cheese (Betsy loves truffles), and some crackers.

Basic starters

I also prepped one of my favorite appetizers: Radishes and butter.

It might sound strange, but it’s really good. Make sure to use a really good European style salted butter. It’s an awesome dish.

Simple but good.

The Mosto Cotto

One of the fun things you can do if you want to plan a night like this is pull out special foods that you might have from trips. We pulled out a small bottle of this stuff called “Mosto cotto” from our honeymoon to Italy.

From what I could tell, to make this stuff they just take a bunch of Sangiovese wine and slowly simmer it down for about 18 hours. The result is a thin syrup that’s sweet and tangy at the same time.

Hard to find... sorry.

You could pour this stuff on your shoe and eat it, but it’s really tasty on cheese.

I cubed up some romano cheese and drizzled the mosto cotto over the top. Tasted just like it did in Italy!

One of my favorite things!

The Crostini

The most substantial parts of our date night meal was a bunch of different crostini that I made. I pretty much took most of these ideas from the most recent Bon Appétit issue which gave six or seven really great crostini ideas.

One of the most important parts of making good crostini is to make sure the bread is cooked well.

Ideally, you want a very crusty exterior and a soft interior. The best way to do this, that I’ve found, is actually on the grill.

Just get your grill super-hot, rub the grates with some olive oil, and toss on the sliced bread. Any baguette will work great for this.

Important!

I made three different kinds of crostini. The nice thing about these is that they all took just a few minutes to prepare once the bread was ready.

The first was a Mexican inspired crostini with Mexican crema (basically sour cream except a bit lighter), grilled corn, and fresh cilantro.

The second one was a standard caprese style crostini with mozzarella, basil, and tomatoes.

Light and tasty!

The most ambitious one that I made had fresh ricotta cheese, ripe peaches, prosciutto, and honey.

It was pretty amazing.

Set all these plates out with some fresh cherries and a big bottle of red wine and date night is served!

Quite the spread!

I was worried that I wouldn’t be full after this, but it worked out fine. The crostini were all pretty filling and since we had been snacking all afternoon on cheese and olives and stuff, it was the perfect amount of food.

The nicest thing about doing a date night like this is that all of the dishes were really quick to make (and clean up). I wasn’t toiling away in the kitchen for hours or anything.

Hopefully, this gave you all some ideas that you can use for a date night or just as a fun appetizer for a party or something!

Fresh and delicious!

I’m rapidly becoming a huge fan of tempeh. I think I might like it better than tofu when it comes to soy products. It has a lot more texture and is honestly a lot easier to cook.

When meat eaters ask me what vegetarian options taste most like meat, the answer is tempeh. It’s just very hearty and flavorful.

Plus you can grill it!

This salad took me just a few minutes to toss together and it fed me and Betsy for a few days. It’s very healthy and perfect for the summer!

Grilled Tempeh Salad

Yield: Serves 6.

Ingredients:

1 block of tempeh, 12-16 ounces is good
3 ears fresh sweet corn
1 can black beans (15 ounces)
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced (optional)
1/4 Cup basil, minced
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper

Yogurt Sauce:
1 Cup yogurt
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 lemon, juice only
1-2 Teaspoons hot sauce
1 Tablespoon fresh dill, minced

Directions:

1) For sauce, mince garlic and dill and stir with other ingredients. Let chill until needed.

2) Rub corn and tempeh with a bit of olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

3) Grill corn over medium-high heat for about 12 minutes until there are light grill marks on each side.

4) Grill tempeh over medium-high heat for about 8 minutes until it has a crispy exterior.

5) Cut corn off the cob and cube tempeh. Mix with rinsed black beans and minced basil. Stir in a bit of olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Serve warm or cold!

The Sauce

I’m not even sure that you entirely need a sauce for this salad. It’s pretty good without it, but I decided to whip one up just to try it and I really liked it with the sauce.

So you can take it or leave it.

If you take it though, you’ll need these things.

Impromptu sauce.

See that dill? From my garden. No big deal. I just grew it from THE EARTH.

Anyway, dice up the garlic and dill really finely and stir everything together. Add as much hot sauce as you want really, but start with a tiny amount.

Mine kind of took on a light pink hue.

Pretty tasty!

Grilling Things

It’s not really necessary to grill the things in this recipe, but I like the slightly charred flavor. If you don’t have access to a grill, you could roast the corn for a few minutes and sear the tempeh in a hot pan.

Same results.

This time of year, use fresh corn if you can find it!

Gotta love summer.

Rub the corn and tempeh with a light coat of olive oil and season them with salt and pepper.

I used a garden veggie tempeh, but use whatever flavor you want!

Weird looking, but good!

Heat your grill up to medium-high and toss on your corn and tempeh. I’d recommend starting the corn about 5 minutes before the tempeh.

The tempeh will need maybe 4 minutes per side. It’s already cooked so you really just want to crisp up the outside a bit and give it some nice char.

Turn the corn every few minutes and you should be getting a few light grill marks on them.

My grill almost revolted RE: tempeh.

When everything is done on the grill, cut the kernels off the cob and mix it with some black beans. I used canned beans that I drained and rinsed really well.

Cube up the tempeh and mince a jalapeno and some basil. The jalapeno is optional, but I like the heat.

Then just stir everything together and drizzle in a tiny amount of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper and you’re all set!

Tasty!

This is great as-is, but like I said, I think it’s fun to serve a bowl of the sauce on the side.

Really good!

This was one of those meals that’s not only filling and tasty, but leaves you feeling very healthy when you finish it.

It works great as a side, as a main dish, or as a lunch.

I’m telling you, as a pretty solid carnivore, I can’t get enough tempeh these days.

Bang!

Betsy and I are always on the hunt for a quick treat that’s easy to make, somewhat healthy, and very flavorful. It’s a struggle to not just reach for a bag of chips every single time.

Recently though, I was walking through the store and there were some pretty good looking strawberries and right next to them were these big bunches of basil.

I picked some up and the next time we were hunting for a treat, this idea just popped in my head. It’s a really simple dish that’s just some marinated strawberries and fresh basil on an English muffin with a good schmear of cream cheese.

It’s so easy that I almost didn’t post on it, but it turned out to be so good that I figured everyone should know about it.

Strawberry Basil Snacks

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

2 English muffins, toasted
1 1/2 - 2 Cups strawberries, diced (8-10)
2 Tablespoons fresh basil, chopped
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
Pinch of salt
Pinch of sugar
4 ounces cream cheese

Directions:

1) Cut off strawberry stems and dice. Add to a bowl with balsamic vinegar and a pinch of salt and sugar. Stir and set aside for a few minutes.

2) Chop basil and toast english muffins until well-toasted.

3) Add cream cheese to each half of the muffins.

4) Top with strawberry mixture and fresh basil!

Marinating the strawberries

It’s not even clear if you can call this a recipe really. It’s about as easy as recipes get if it is one. In any event, I took some photos because strawberries are fun to photograph.

Keep it simple.

Chop off the stems and dice up the strawberries. Then mix them with a good drizzle of balsamic vinegar and a pinch of salt and sugar.

Let this sit for a few minutes while you prep the other ingredients.

Plus a drizzle of balsamic.

Making the treat

Chop up some basil. Not rocket science.

A little goes a long way.

Slice up a few English Muffins. I used store bought, but if you’re feeling ambitious you could try making your own English Muffins.

The nooks and crannies!

I like my English muffins really toasted and I’ve found that the best way to get them there is actually in the broiler. I crank it up to high and lay them out on a baking sheet.

After 4-5 minutes, they are perfectly toasted. You could, of course, just use a toaster though.

I like using a broiler, but a toaster works also.

Take each half of the muffin and add a good schmear of cream cheese to it.

Technically a schmear.

Then top each half with a good heap of the marinated strawberries and sprinkle on some basil!

Pretty things. Delicious also!

This is a record short post for me, but it’s just that easy.

The flavors are fantastic though.

If you make it once for friends or family, they will definitely be asking for “that strawberry thing” all the time.

The cool gun napkin in this post was nicely provided by Oh Little Rabbit, one of Betsy’s favorite Etsy stores.