The laziest way to celebrate Salami Day? Get a pizza topped with pepperoni. This one happens to be the “Traditional Pizza” from Lodo’s Bar and Grill in downtown Denver, conveniently located about a block from Coors Field. The pizza was a tad greasy (as you can probably see in the picture), but the cheese assortment used on the pizza (not sure what the mix was) had a really nice kick to it. This $8.99 pizza fed Drew and I to the point of satisfaction but not fullness (we let the beer take care of that part). Definitely recommended!

Related posts:

1. Happy Salami Day
2. Salami Day Incoming!
3. Make your own Plush Salami!

Only $1! Being the wuss that I am, I got the mild peppers. As much as I’d really like to be able to handle spicy food, my mouth (and my gastrointestinal system, for that matter) get rather cranky if I go anywhere too far beyond the level of Taco Bell mild sauce. Sad but true. Anyhow, now that I had these peppers, what do I do with them? Put them on burgers, of course!

I figured I’d go with a sort of “Tex-Mex” burger theme, and used some Mexican farmer’s cheese to top the burgers.

Why yes, that *is* a lot of cheese on those patties! This is because my taste buds like supporting the dairy industry.

I love making home-made burgers, the problem is when too many ingredients want to get involved. Tomatoes are a must, and avocado is awesome on a burger as well.

Very tasty! Excellent with BBQ sauce. One important thing to mention: the roasted chili peppers need to be rinsed in cold water, where you then rub their skin off. You can probably eat the skin, but as it’s mostly black and crispy, I’m not sure how good it would actually taste.

*Not to be confused with “Roasted Chile,” which probably happens every winter in the northern areas of the country.

Related posts:

1. Chili, as it’s rather chilly out
2. Miniature Burgers of Joy
3. Chorizo Burgers

It seems there are a range of definitions to “home-made”. I always make my own sauce, but it’s of the “dump out a can of tomato paste and add stuff to it” kind of making. I’m sure that if you stuffed a bunch of tomatoes into a blender along with the appropriate ingredients it would be much more delicious, but then you’ve gotta wash that blender. On a similar vein, home-made dough is awesome, but then you’ve got to set aside a chunk of extra time for the kneading, the rising, the falling, the punching, and the 289372987432 extra dishes that need washing. More often then not, lazy wins out for me in the end. Thus, here are a few ways to make pizza at home that are pretty lazy.

I call this the Biscuit Method. In the section of the grocery store with the tubes of biscuits and cookie dough, you can find tubes of pizza dough. Usually about $2 a tube (less if on sale, more if you don’t get the store brand), it is awesome for squishing all over a 9″ x 13″ cake pan if you want a thick crust pizza. For a thinner crust (like the one pictured above), you squish it even more onto a cookie sheet. Dump the sauce of your choosing on top, add cheese and ingredients, bake according to directions and voila! Pizza is done, man.

The only drawback to this is the fact that your pizza will taste a bit like biscuits. Actually, the first couple times you make this, you’ll be all like “Wowie! My pizza tastes like biscuits!” I’ve found that after several uses, however, the excitement wears off, and you start longing for a crust that is a little less biscuit-tasting. If you are really into biscuits, though, you might want to consider going straight for the biscuit dough and using that as a pizza crust. Bisquick would probably work wonders for you as well.

If you like as much butter as possible in your life, I also recommend crescent roll pizzas. Lay out flat a crescent roll triangle, dump some sauce, cheese, and toppings into the middle, lay another triangle on top, squish the edges together, and bake until delicious.

So if having to roll out a prepared crust is still entirely too much effort, there are plenty of other options. One of my favorites is the “quesadilla pizza.”

The closer half of these guys was made with flour tortillas, and the browner one is made with Flatout flatbread. You lay your tortilla on a pan, dump on some sauce, cheese, and toppings, lay another tortilla on top, and then bake for 10 minutes or so until undercooked < pizza < overcooked. You can probably just microwave it as well, for that matter, as long as you’re not using raw pork or something as a topping. If you are using raw pork, please cook it before topping your pizza with it. Your intestines will thank you!

If you want a more quesadilla-like experience, you can make these without the pizza sauce, just using cheese and toppings (errr, fillings in this case, I guess). Then you can heat up your sauce in a separate bowl, cut the pizza quesadillas into triangles, and dip away.

There’s all sorts of things you can use as a crust if you’re making a homemade pizza, including:

• English Muffins
• Bagels. Those crappy frozen bagel pizzas you can buy have nothing on homemade bagel pizzas.
• Pita Bread
• French bread. Italian bread too. I’m a silly American and get them all confused.
• A grilled cheese sandwich made with mozzarella and dipped in marinara sauce does wonders to get rid of pizza cravings.

There’s probably other things I haven’t thought of that would make excellent pizza crust. Like saltine crackers might work. Or slice a Krispy Kreme donut in half. Try it, and tell me how it tastes!

Related posts:

1. There’s simply not that much point in comparing Little Caesar’s pizza to semi-homemade, but I’ll do it anyway.
2. When I’ve got all the pizza ingredients I need except a crust, I call on my good friend Bread
3. Dairy and Cheese and Constipation, Oh My! (A Pizza Saga)

It must be done. These chocolate chip cookies are just too good to keep a secret any longer. These cookies have been passed down the generations from Drew’s and my grandmother. They’re made with sugar, brown sugar, Crisco, eggs, flour, vanilla, salt, baking soda, oatmeal, chocolate chips, and optional nuts. (not seen here) The oatmeal makes them healthy.

3/4 C sugar
3/4 C brown sugar
1 C Crisco shortening (or one stick, if you can find it in stick form, which I totally recommend- a lot less messy. More packaging however)

Mix together, then mix in 2 eggs.

In a separate bowl, mix the dry ingredients…

1 1/2 C sifted flour (My mom adds 3 TBS)
1 ts soda
1 ts salt
1 ts vanilla (pure, use 1/2 of that)

Combine. Then add 2 C old-fashioned oats (quick also works), 1 C nuts, optional, like your mom, 1 1/2 C or 3/4 package chocolate chips.

Bake at 350 degrees for 8-9 minutes.

*Important Notes*
Be prepared to add more flour than what is given. If cookies come out flat on the first batch, add more flour. “Sifted flour?” hmm… over rated? Or it could be that I just don’t understand how to do it right.

I find it a lot easier just to add the chocolate chips individually to the cookies, everybody seems to want a different proportion of chocolate to cookie, and I end up using way less than what the recipe calls for.

Rumor has it Grandma took the recipe from the back of a bag of flour. I’m salivating just looking at this picture. Must… bake… more…

Related posts:

1. Chocolate Chip Cookies
2. High Altitude Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies
3. It doesn’t get much better then purple chocolate chip cookies

It was glorious to have so much quality fresh fish to work with, particularly the tuna. As there were all sorts of leftover bits, various rolls got bonus toppings. The tuna topping was particularly tasty, consisting of tuna bits, a bit of soy sauce, and green onion. Regarding the krab-topped roll, seems like you can use pretty much anything as a topping as long as you’ve got some sort of sauce to make it not fall off (I ended up using panko crumbs and green onion on other rolls using this strategy).

Mmm, tuna closeup!

My plate presentation isn’t all that hot, so I took this as an opportunity to play around a bit. While I don’t think it’ll be getting me any jobs in a sushi bar anytime soon, it sure was fun to do!

Incidentally, the above plate was the only one used that didn’t have some sort of “I’m at the beach!” dishware theme to it.

There’s always room for nigiri! I’m still rather inaccurate in my omelet-making, the tamago I made ended up having too much wine – and the wrong type too! No rice wine here, just sherry.

I realized something about the nigiri I make – I totally make buffet nigiri. I’ve noticed that, at cheaper buffets at least, there’s generally not a huge piece of fish on the rice balls when they have nigiri, usually about half the quantity of fish you’d get if you got nigiri from a regular sushi bar. Either I’m not all that observant or my wallet is dictating how much fish I should be using, because my nigiri too often has tiny pieces of fish compared to the rice that the fish sits on. No good at all! Must work on that.

Also, sharp knives are really useful. There were no decent sharp knives at the beach house, so we had to make do with what was there. As a result, the rolls where the toppings are laid out on top (like the above roll with the avocado and tuna) are a bit chunkier then I’d like.

There were a few vegetarian types present, so I stuck some of the vegetarian sushi on it’s own plate to make it all fancy (with bonus carrot garnish, even!) That avocado really does not want to stay on those rolls on top, boo to dull knives that sliced the fat avocado slices! The lower one is an egg roll, and the middle one is me sticking every non-meat item into a gigantic delicious roll.

Veggie roll, with beach ambiance.

The lighting outside wasn’t quite as bright as it could have been (partly due to sushi always taking longer to make then I think it will), but it was a lot better then trying to take pictures inside on this fabulous tablecloth:

I think this is the most sushi I’ve ever made before. Luckily, I had help, and did not have to clean up after all of the sushi!

Related posts:

1. Sushi Party Platters! Part I
2. Namiko’s Sushi in Arvada, CO
3. Festive Holiday Sushi using Crab and Other Delicious Items