Pizza and breadsticks- I used Judy's recipe from Judy's Kitchen this time. Judy is going to be competing in a recipe contest this weekend so keep her in your thoughts and prayers as she makes her way to Branson, MO.
Earlier, I did some posts about whether garlic will inhibit the yeast action when added to pizza dough, here and here. I did add four cloves of minced garlic, and substituted 1/2 cup of semolina and a 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour for 1 cup of the bread flour. I saw in the comment section of her blog that someone had suggested replacing 1/2 cup of the bread flour with semolina flour.
As you can see from this photo taken of the dough after the second rise, I got an excellent rise with the addition of the garlic.
I used half the dough to make a pizza the other half I made breadsticks out of using the method that Rosie Hawthorne had suggested in one of her posts on homemade pizza
I topped the pizza with pepperoni and some breakfast sausage that I browned up earlier and packaged for the freezer. I want to try this again without the whole wheat flour and see how that comes out. Mr. Hairball liked this a lot.
Cola-Braised Pot Roast- The recipe calls for fresh rosemary but, I didn't have that so I substituted some fresh basil from our aerogarden.
I keep forgetting to talk about the aerogarden. We currently have nothing but basil growing as Mr. Hairball is looking forward to fresh pesto and emjoys adding fresh basil leaves to his salads.
Then I peeled a head of garlic and put the cloves, the basil, salt, and some olive oil in my mini chopper and buzzed it up until the garlic was finely minced and inserted this mixture INto the slits in the roasts. I used two smaller roasts because it's just the two of us and that way I have another roast for another day. After the second roast was cooked, and had cooled for an hour, I packaged it up and put it INto the freezer.
Garlic basil mixture stuffed INTo the slits. It's hard to not get the mixture on the surface while doing the stuffing.
The recipe calls for a dutch oven which I don't have so I used my cast iron skillet for browning the meat and making the gravy and cooked the roasts in the oven in a 9x13 Pyrex dish.
Browning the roasts before they go INto the oven
Making the gravy
If you are a diehard foodie you probably shouldn't read this next bit.
*spoiler space*
Last time I made mashed potatoes I based them on Anne Burrell's recipe. I had some leftover from that meal, so I froze them for another day. Now, when you defrost mashed potatoes they are going to be a bit watery so, I mixed in some instant potato flakes to thicken them back up. Instant potato flakes are a good thickener for stuff like that so I like to keep some on hand.
About to mix in the instant potatoes...
Mr. Hairball really liked this and talked about it for days. He even said he liked it better than his Grandmother's pot roast which is very high praise as she is an excellent cook.
