It Has To Be The Cheese

One more non-clothes post, then back to my mission (and revealing all the cute looks from Book Club Clothes Exchange!), but I had to post about my latest pizza on the grill. This is really my favorite find of the summer and tonight I made one of my favorite pizza recipes - BBQ Chicken Pizza - on the grill.

Here's what you need:

• Pizza dough (may I suggest the fresh variety from Spinelli's?)
• BBQ sauce (any variety)
• Roasted, shredded chicken (I roasted one on Sunday & shredded some for this recipe!)
• Red onion slices
• Shredded mozzarella cheese

BBQ Chicken Pizza on the grill. YUM!

Now here's the thing. I pretty much always buy the cheapest store-brand cheese when I shop. It's just my nature. But the past few pizzas I've used the fresh shredded mozzarella from Spinelli's and I'm telling you - there's something AMAZINGLY different about that cheese. It's so creamy and gooey and delicious. The flavor is like nothing I've ever tasted! I'm not kidding - it has to be the cheese. I could eat another slice right now just thinking about it...

Not to be forgotten - our garden continues to rock...
We had fresh cherry tomatoes as a garnish to our pizza!

Basic, easy directions for the above: stretch the dough to fit a pizza stone; lay down a thin layer of sauce (I like just a little sauce - you can use as much as you want!); spread chicken and onion around; layer with cheese. I throw the pizza stone onto the hot grill and close the lid for about 10 minutes. You probably want to pull the pizza off the stone when it's done, as the stone gets really hot and the dough will continue to burn cook unless you pull it off. I just use a grill spatula to pull ours onto a cool cookie sheet.

So delicious and easy to clean up! My favorite find of the summer, confirmed!

Fresh Perspective

One thing that hasn't gotten much blog play this summer is my garden. I love my garden - particularly this time of year when it's just churning out delicious things for us to eat! My parents are big gardeners so I always wanted to have one, but became even more passionate about having a garden when I started learning more about the Dirty Dozen fruits and vegetables. While we can't grow all of the dirty dozen at home, it's nice to be able to tackle a few items with homegrown, organic, not to mention DELICIOUS veggies. Here are a few highlights:

Butternut squash - sadly we only got one,
but we're going to enjoy eating it!

Carrots! I made a delicious carrot dish the other night thanks to Cooking Light.
It's amazing what a little maple syrup can do for carrots!

Eggplant - a family favorite! I've tried growing eggplant for several years and
these are the biggest ones I've ever grown, and there are a number of them. Yippee!

Poor rhubarb got a real trim before this photo was taken - but I love rhubarb,
so at least you can see we're putting it to good use...

Tomatoes are my favorite - and apparently F's too, as he's been
stealing them straight off the vine (even the green ones. Ew.)

We have an over abundance of cherry tomatoes this year - but we have some
bigger tomatoes that are getting ready to ripen. Can't wait to eat those up!

Earlier in the season we had lettuce and spinach coming out our ears. I plan to replant some more today. They don't like the heat, but will enjoy the crisp weather we're having (at least this week!) and check one more item off my shopping list at the grocery.

One of the reasons I think our garden has been so successful this year is thanks to our compost. We've been composting for about a year and it's awesome for so many reasons. First - it cuts down a lot on waste that we throw into the garbage or into the disposal. We can compost any fruit or vegetable waste (think peels, stems, pits, etc.) and we throw in grass clippings, leaves, egg shells and coffee grounds, too. Also - we keep a small bin in the house to collect items to go into the composter and it doesn't stink at all. Amazing!  We have so much compost it doesn't all fit in the bin! I think that the compost has really helped enrich the garden this year. Thanks to my hubby for keeping it going!

Our compost over-floweth.

I Love Farmers (Almanac)

Old Farmer's Almanac

I couldn't really say how I became familiar with The Old Farmer's Almanac. It must be attributable to my parents in some way - probably in line with how I came to love A Prairie Home Companion and old time radio shows. I surely skew the demographics on all of these outlets, but I'm proud of it!

I was flipping through our 2011 Farmer's Almanac tonight and thought I just had to share all of the wonderful, random tidbits you can find in this handy little publication:

• The Almanac contains daily history, like on Aug. 2, 1876 Wild Bill Hickock died; and on this date in 1980 Olivia Newton John's "Magic" topped the charts (awesome)
• Wondering what the best fishing days are? Look no further - and don't bother pulling out your fishing pole again until Aug. 28...
• Are you a fan of astronomy? The Almanac will tell you about the phases of the moon, including what time it rises and sets each day.
• If you like to garden, the Almanac even provides you with a customized (by zip code) overview of the best dates to plant various seeds.

Intrigued yet? I gave my husband a copy of the Almanac for Christmas last year and I highly recommend it as a random but useful and entertaining stocking stuffer. Entirely possible he now knows what to expect in his stocking again this year!