Texas Toast Pizza

Justin and I saw an ad for Pizza Hut's new garlic bread pizza, and the ingredients to make it at home immediately went on our grocery list. For toppings, I went with crumbled, all-chicken Italian sausage, and Justin chose crumbled chorizo. We also used slices of fresh mozzarella, my absolute favorite thing to put on pizza.

This is an extremely quick and easy weeknight meal, especially if you go with toppings that don't need to be cooked separately. All you have to do is cook the Texas toast, top with sauce, cheese, and whatever other toppings you desire, and pop them back in the oven until the cheese melts. Aside from cooking the sausage, this took literally all of 10-15 minutes to make.

Shrimp & Grits

One of my goals in life is to find the absolute perfect shrimp and grits recipe. Everyone makes it a little differently, so it's hard for me to even say if I've ever had perfect shrimp and grits at a restaurant. I think the perfect recipe, for me, has super creamy cheese grits, some sort of creamy, non-tomato-based sauce (though it can have tomatoes in it), and obnoxiously large shrimp. The non-tomato-based sauce is what disqualifies a lot of recipes and restaurant dishes from contention because that's apparently pretty common, but it still just isn't what I prefer. I would have to say that probably the closest I've had to perfection is the shrimp and grits at the Maker's Mark Bourbon House and Lounge in Louisville, KY. (We went for Justin's birthday last year, and everything is made with bourbon and was, of course, amazing.)

This recipe, however, is nothing like that one. Sorry. Like I said, I'm on a quest to find the perfect recipe--I didn't say I'd found it already. This recipe has two good things going for it though. 1) It's ridiculously simple. 2) It contains life's greatest gift, bacon, which I think means I need to add another requirement to my perfect recipe quest. Must. Have. Bacon. I'm not talking about just any bacon here either. Justin and I found the most ridiculously awesome bacon ever. It's called steak bacon. The slices were as thick as my pinky finger. It was almost $6 for a 20 oz package containing just 6 slices, but it was so worth it. You can make it with regular bacon if you prefer, but it just won't be the same. Steak bacon will change your life if you let it.

Chopped Challenge #1: Sausage & Herbed Polenta Cakes with Citrus-Tequila Rosé Sauce

Justin and I spent a lot of time watching Chopped on Food Network when we were living in Indiana. At some point, we decided that we should give it a try ourselves, but we never actually got around to it for whatever reason. We thought about it again recently and decided to actually try it this time. Our plan is to alternate who cooks and to do this once per grocery list (every two weeks or so).

For the challenge, one of us selects four ingredients that the other must use to cook dinner. We can use whatever other ingredients we want, and because right now we're telling the cook what the ingredients will be when we're making our grocery list, we can buy whatever extra supplies we need while we're at the store. (We don't have a lot of pantry space here, so we don't have a ton of extra, basic ingredients on hand usually.) The only two guidelines we really set up are that the four ingredients all have to be something we both eat--I can't make him cook with peas, and he can't make me cook with pumpkin--and they can't all four be super calorific, meaning we can't pick butter, bacon, heavy cream, and maple syrup. Lol.

Easy, Light Alfredo Sauce

My mom used to make her own version of Alfredo by tossing pasta with heavy whipping cream, butter, garlic, and Parmesan cheese (the powdery kind from a can, like you put on pizza or spaghetti). She didn't make it into an actual sauce first--she'd just toss it all into a pot together and give it a quick stir. It wasn't true Alfredo, but it was still delicious.

I've made Alfredo sauce from scratch before, and while it isn't particularly difficult, it's sometimes just more work than I want to put in and/or more calories than I want to eat. On those days, I make this sauce, an amalgamation of my mom's Alfredo and from-scratch Alfredo. Instead of making a roux of butter and flour, adding milk or cream, letting it cook until thickened, and then adding cheese, this recipe mixes the butter and cheese (with just a bit of flour) to make a roux. Then all you have to do is add the milk and seasonings. It's super easy. Justin and I like to pour this over baked potatoes with broccoli (and sometimes chicken, too), as well as on pasta.

Cheesy Macaroni Salad

I'm not a big fan of "salads" that don't actually involve lettuce. I've never found an egg salad that I like. I will try a bite or two of potato salad on occasion. I never even wanted to try macaroni salad. (However, I love pasta salad, but they are two totally separate things.) Have you seen that stuff in the grocery store deli cases? Sometimes it's pink. Sometimes it's neon yellow. Sometimes it's unnaturally white. No matter what, it's always unappealingly moist and contains unidentifiable chunks of... something. Nothing about it ever seemed appetizing to me, and I was content in my macaroni salad-free life. Then I found this recipe.

Fiesta Chicken Bread

Justin was browsing through the Chive one day last month and found this food post. When we saw number 20, we decided we had to know A) what exactly it was, B) how to make it, and C) how awesome it would taste. Analyzing the photo, I decided that it obviously included bread of some sort, bacon, cheese, and what I thought might be some sort of ranch dressing. I googled bread bacon cheese ranch, and voila, I found myself at the recipe for Cheddar Bacon Ranch Pulls on Plain Chicken.

Chicken & Sausage Jambalaya

When Justin and I got married, we had a small, intimate ceremony and reception with our families and close friends. We didn't have a lot of money to spend, but we still wanted it to reflect who we are and the things we love. One way we did that was through food. We went with a New Orleans-inspired menu, and my grandparents and my Aunt Jean cooked it for us (with a couple contributions from me and from Justin's mom). We had a hard time deciding on the menu because there are just so many great Cajun dishes that we love, but we wanted to choose things that would appeal not only to my Louisiana family but also to Justin's Indiana family. Something that we thought would bridge that gap well was jambalaya. It's chicken, smoked sausage, and rice with some seasoning--what's not to like?

Carnitas

Justin and I both love burritos. When his boss asked where he wanted to go for lunch for his birthday, he picked a burrito bar a few miles from the university. Qdoba might be my biggest fast food weakness, especially their breakfast burritos. Ask them to grill it a little bit after they've wrapped it up in foil, and it makes it even better. The outside gets a tad crispy like a quesadilla, and the cheese starts to melt. Mmmm... It'll change your life.

The beauty of burritos is that you can pack pretty much whatever you want in to them. Don't like beans? Leave them out. Want more cheese? Add it in. As long as it's in a tortilla, it's still technically a burrito, and the burrito police won't stop you. In my opinion, putting just about anything in a tortilla makes it infinitely better. That being said, pork is probably my favorite burrito filling. (Justin, on the other hand, would argue for chorizo.)

Boozy Wedding Cake Ice Cream

A while back Justin found an article about how Valerie Lum and Jenise Addison had come up with a way to make alcoholic ice cream. Not ice cream with a flavor similar to your favorite alcohol. Not ice cream with a hint of your favorite alcohol in it. We're talking about ice cream that can contain a cup of hard liquor, coming in around 13-proof, which makes its alcoholic content approximately equal to wine. What a genius idea!

Cilantro-Lime Rice

Cilantro is an herb that divides people. There are people who love it and can't live without it. Then there are people who think it tastes like soap. I fall somewhere between those two camps, I guess; I like cilantro in moderation. I enjoy the fresh flavor that a small bit lends to Mexican food, but too much of it makes me feel like I've swallowed a mouthful of Dawn. This cilantro-lime rice was made with that in mind, so the lime is intentionally a more prominent flavor than the cilantro. If you love cilantro, by all means add more.