Two-Ingredient Pizza Dough

One of the easiest things I can make is homemade pizza. I use Naan bread as crust and just pile it with toppings, throw it in the oven, and voila! A meal. Jeff thinks it’s criminal that I put pineapple on my pizza while I think his love of Sriracha is mouth suicide.

About six months ago, Jeff told me he was bored of homemade pizza, probably because I made it so often, but I was willing to bet homemade crust would change his mind.

The recipe
Two-Ingredient Pizza Dough from allrecipes.com.

Ingredient changes
The title is not a trick, there’s literally two ingredients so I made no changes. I might have used a bit more flour than it calls for trying to get it to stop sticking to my hands.

Our choice of toppings were pepperoni, all colours of peppers, pineapple for me, green olives for Jeff, and mozzarella cheese. Jeff topped his off with some BBQ sauce and Sriracha.

Ease (or not) of prep
Welcome to a mini segment of, “You know what I hate?” You know what I hate? Kneading dough! I don’t have a lot of strength in my hands and I also do a lot of knitting/crochet so I have a bit of RSI in both wrists. Kneading dough was a serious work-out, especially considering I made a pizza for each of us. I hurt my friggin’ back! I tap out when cooking starts to cause physical pain. This concludes a mini segment of, “You know what I hate?”

I was a bit worried that so many toppings would leave us with soggy dough in the middle so I put both plain crusts in the oven for five minutes on fancy pizza platters lent to me by a neighbour who actually enjoys cooking (seriously, who are these people?). Once I dressed them, I put them back in for another eight minutes.

Boyfriend Test: Pass
It’s hard to really screw up pizza and you really can’t go wrong when the ingredients are this simple. Jeff said it was really good and agreed that he would enjoy it again, so it seems pizza is back on the menu.

Picky Eater Test: Soft pass
I love thick crust pizza so I really enjoyed this. It was soft and chewy on the inside with a nice crispness on the outside. The crust itself didn’t have a lot flavour so I could really taste the toppings. The only reason I give it a soft pass is because I’m not keen to go to bed with a heating pad on my back every time I want to have pizza for dinner. The next time we make this, Jeff can do the manual labour.

Baked Potato Soup

Jeff and I have been talking about making soups and stews because they’re easy to make, easy to store, and easy to prepare on a day I don’t want to cook, so I was looking for a hearty soup to enjoy.

The Recipe
Baked Potato Soup from allrecipes.com. It’s a sizeable recipe so I made half of a batch.

As I scrolled through the instructions, my eyes landed on the nutritional facts. 49.3 GRAMS OF FAT! 1335 MG OF SODIUM?! Holy crap. I’m not worried about weight but I am worried about heart disease! I decided to use low-sodium versions of ingredients wherever possible.

Ingredient changes
– Low-sodium bacon
– Unsalted butter (instead of margarine)
– Skim milk
– Low-fat sour cream

Ease (or not) of prep
I might have made a mistake here. The recipe calls for baked potatoes so I actually rubbed the potatoes in olive oil, put them in tin foil, and baked them in the oven for an hour. When I looked at the recipe again, the instructions didn’t include this, nor was it factored into the time needed to prepare the dish. I think I did the right thing though because I imagine the potatoes would have been hard and uncooked if I hadn’t.

Other than that, this recipe was pretty straight forward. Making and chopping the baked potatoes was the most time-consuming part of prep but otherwise you just have to dump stuff in a pot, and that’s my kind of cooking.

Boyfriend Test: Pass
Jeff walked in the door from work just as I was finishing the soup, and I immediately stuffed a spoonful in his mouth. He has a full beard so sometimes it can be difficult to gage his reaction, but he couldn’t hide that smile from me. As he ate, he repeatedly said it was “really good” and “delicious.” He later said that he wished he hadn’t eaten so much because it’s quite heavy but otherwise, this dish gets a solid pass.

Overall…
I’ll make this again. It was really yummy and relatively simple. I put the leftover soup in a mason jar, which Jeff took to work for lunch. The next time I make it, I’ll store a portion to see how it survives the freezer.

What’s your favourite soup? I want to do one in the slow cooker soon so I’m open to recommendations!