About every other week I head down to Union Square to Trader Joe's to buy all of our favorite things and a few new items we haven't tried before. For $9.95 I have them deliver all of the groceries (gallons of antibiotic free milk and all) to our 4th floor walk-up apartment. It is about the same cost as a cab ride but I don't have to carry all the bags up the stairs with the baby attached too. I figure it is a pretty good deal--good groceries at a good price, delivered right into my kitchen. And since Trader Joe's is near Union Square Park I always make sure I go on a day when the Greenmarket is there and pick up tons of wonderful, fresh, local produce. Yesterday was one of those fun, shopping days.
For dinner I got a bunch of stuff at TJ's. I hadn't tried their premade pizza dough; so I picked that up, some fresh mozzarella and some fresh pesto. Then at the Greenmarket I picked up a couple of beautiful heirloom tomatoes. (I picked up a lot more stuff at each stop, but I'm just talking about dinner here.)
The directions on the dough said to let it sit out of the fridge for 20 minutes before rolling out. I should have let it sit out longer. Even with it being so hot yesterday the dough was still chilly and difficult to roll out after a half hour of sitting out. But I didn't want to wait much longer since the oven was already preheated to 500 degrees. (We had a HOT house!) After rolling out the dough and placing it on the pizza peel I put olive oil on the edges and sprinkled the dough with salt and pepper. For toppings I put a layer of thinly sliced heirloom tomatoes, shredded fresh basil and sliced fresh mozzarella. Originally, I was going to put dollops of pesto instead of basil, but the pesto tasted a little stronger than I wanted with the more subtle flavors of the fresh mozz and tomatoes. (I'm growing a large pot of basil on our fire escape outside our bedroom window. We also have rosemary, parsley, and thyme on the fire escape. It is very fun.)
The pizza was good! Okay, the toppings were excellent! The dough was comparable to Domino's; in other words, it was awful ("hurt your jaw" chewy and flavorless)! I can make much better pizza dough, but it takes time and effort. The toppings of the heirloom tomatoes, fresh basil and fresh mozz were wonderful. I cut up little squares of pizza for Isabella. When I cleaned her up after dinner there were all the little squares of pizza crust hidden in her chair--toppings removed and eaten. So I think she agrees.
We had a side salad of mixed baby greens with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper, and some goat cheese. I really liked it, but Brian isn't a fan of balsamic vinegar.
Then for dessert I served up some fresh peaches (that I had picked up at the Greenmarket) and cream. It was so good!
Pizza Rating: 10 (toppings); 3 (dough)
Salad Rating: 7
Dessert Rating: 9
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment