weekly wishes #12

happy monday everyone! and i truly mean that from the bottom of my heart, because im feeling really good about today/this upcoming week. 

why? well, mainly because last night i made pizza and it didnt taste like dirt and i got full after two pieces so theres still more pizza in my fridge to eat for dinner tonight. if youre familiar with gluten-free baking at all youd know that bready (as opposed to cakey) things tend to come out really brittle and flakey, and it makes everything super disappointing. well bobs red mill makes a pizza crust mix that makes a normal thickness (though not quite normal tasting) pizza:

AND it doesnt cost a million dollars (you can get it here on amazon for only  $4). so since pizza is basically my #1 motivation in day-to-day life, id say that this week has definitely gotten off on the right foot. 

so with that said, lets get on with weekly wishes shall we? starting with last weeks, of course:

1. catch up on emails and spend more time on my sponsors. sort of. yes i did catch up on emails and yes i did spend more time on my sponsors but i dont really feel like i did enough because it was still a pretty busy and crazy week. 

2. finish decembers blogging calendar. done! AND i even made sure to schedule in a post-christmas break so that i dont get myself burnt out again. 

3. finish the christmas gift list. the list is done AND about 90% of the shoppings done too (just need to pick up the easier gifts for my brother, brother in law and a couple cousins). 

4. pull out the christmas decorations. this one ended up being a bit more difficult than id anticipated, but in the best way possible, because my mom got us an actual christmas tree:

which on one hand is wonderful because we totally dont have money for a christmas tree and i was just going to make do with the little plush christmas tree jamess mom gave us when we first got married, but on the other hand it kind of caused some problems with alice, who simply could not comprehend why christmas tree ornaments are not new toys for her to play with (though she eventually did come around and is finally leaving the tree alone, and now that shes not crying about the ornaments anymore, thanks mom, the christmas tree is great!).

and since i did so well on last weeks wishes, im totally pumped to get going with this weeks, which are:

1. address/send the christmas cards. our christmas cards actually got here last week, but i hate, hate, hate addressing envelopes so ive been ignoring them. so tonight after alice goes to bed we really need to get started on them (and i have to not forget stamps next time i buy groceries). 

2. respond to comments/comment on other blogs every day. if youve been following along with my weekly wishes lately, you know that things have been really difficult and stressful lately, and ive REALLY been sucking at comments. but comments are really important so i NEED to get back on track. 

3. start seriously working on cleaning out my closet. honestly im about a year overdue on this and need to just do it. also my sister told me about selling clothes on vinted, so i think i want to try that out since a lot of what im getting rid of is decently cute and in good shape, it just doesnt fit me anymore. 

so those are my wishes for the week, what are yours?

new foods. my first attempt at gluten-free pizza.

just like any other human worth talking to, i really, really love pizza (you can read more about my love of pizza here). unfortunately, since being diagnosed with celiac disease, the only pizza ive had since april has been eggplant pizza. now not that theres anything wrong with eggplant pizza, its just that sometimes i get really bummed out that i cant just go over to little ceasars and eat an entire $5 pizza by myself (something i did somewhat regularly while pregnant with alice). so obviously i was pretty stoked when i saw this in the clearance bin at vons a couple weeks ago:

i dont know if you can see it in the picture, but the regular price for this mix is $6.99, which normally is WAAY out of our reach for a single ingredient, but that was a particularly light week grocery-wise, so i figured i could spare $3.50 to FINALLY GET TO EAT SOME REAL PIZZA. unfortunately this was right before our apartment flooded and i had to wait until last night to try it out. 

now upon closer inspection of the bag, the instructions looked really weird and it seemed to require way too m any extra ingredients for a mix, but if theres one thing ive learned about gluten free baking, its that its always super weird and you just have to trust the instructions.  which i did, but despite following every single step to the letter, this dough was BY FAR the most unpleasant baking experience ive ever had. first off there was having to deal with the multitude of extra ingredients and blending them into the mix in the correct order (which is a real pain since im used to making dough out of just flour, yeast, and water), but that was nothing compared to the "dough" itself. 

i put the word "dough" in quotes because this mix doesnt actually make a pizza dough, but rather an extremely sticky and weird pizza batter, the consistency of which i would describe as something like merengue, but if you had tried to make merengue out of glue. this weird gluey mess then had to be dumped directly onto a (very well greased) pizza pan and oh so gently rolled flat into a pizza-sized circle. i followed the "thick crust" directions partly because we only have one pizza pan, but also because i knew that gluten free people tend to grossly exaggerate the breadiness of their products, and im glad i did, because apparently "16 inch thick crust pizza" means a 16 inch circle of pizza dough barely a quarter inch thick. 

anyways, i pushed through and parbaked the crust before adding the sauce, cheese and artichoke hearts and very impatiently awaited the moment of truth. while it was in the oven the second time i really started to worry about how this was going to turn out and how upset i was going to be if it turned out bad because it had used up the last of our cheese and i didnt have anything to serve as a replacement dinner. but much to my surprise, the pizza came out of the oven looking totally normal:

and tasting almost exactly like when something goes wrong with the normal pizza dough and its all flat and flaky and kind of chewy. which, given that i havent had pizza in a completely ungodly amount of time, was good enough for me. i definitely dont think this will be going on our regular rotation, but ill definitely keep it in mind for birthdays and special occasions. 

studio dinners. a lesson in flexibility.

if you dont know me in real life, i feel like i should tell you that im a little OCD and have a tendency to be kind of uptight. and if you do know me in real life you know that what i said was so much of an understatement that it was pretty much an outright lie. i feel like most of the time i do a really good job at hiding this particular flaw of mine (unless, of course youve been in the car with me when ive gotten lost or forgotten something) by doing my best to channel it into something productive. like to-do lists. and schedules. and groceries. 

and if you havent noticed, weve had a rather, well unusual couple weeks (read more here and  here) and this has been a bit more of a challenge than usual. especially in the food department. see, i make my weekly meal plan and buy our groceries on wednesdays, and our apartment flooded on friday. meaning that meals were already planned and groceries were already purchased, and now i had to spend the week in an apartment with an even smaller and less functional kitchen without access to all the supplies id need to prepare said meals (not to mention, several of them were very labor/equipment intensive). and now i had to re-plan almost everything while still using up as much of our existing groceries as possible (especially since the studio didnt have any pantry space). honestly i was more upset about that than i was about spending nine nights sleeping on our crappy futon. 

i seriously contemplated just going to fresh & easy and getting like 700 frozen dinners and just eating those all week, but i knew i could do better than that. instead i challenged myself to make real dinners, good dinners, every night that we were home (which ended up not being that many). i had two main challenges: 1. obviously one big weekly grocery trip wasnt going to work, so i had to resign myself to going to the store  as needed for just a few things (which is terribly inefficient but i just had to get over that) and 2. the physical limitations of the studio kitchen meant that all meals had to use as few dishes as possible, since the sink/counter area was tiny and all dishes had to be washed and dried immediately after using them. 

and now i am very, very proud to announce that i did it! i present to you, for your viewing pleasure, our "real dinners" for the week:

hash brown potatoes with vegetarian chili

salmon with rice and roasted broccoli

mini pizzas with yellow squash

tuna melts with roasted broccoli

so it turns out, the world will not fall apart if i have to re-arrange my meal plan a bit and skip the grocery schedule for a week. who knew?

eggplant pizza recipe.

i love pizza. i mean i really, really love pizza. when we moved to california the first job james got was at a brand new pizza parlor that opened up near my moms house. and even though the pay, hours, and management were all terrible, i secretly loved that job because it came with unlimited free pizza. i probably ate pizza three or more days a week while he worked there and i am not embarrassed about it at all. 

anyways, homemade pizza used to be on our regular dinner rotation, its really cheap (if you make your own dough), acceptably healthy (as long as you use real ingredients), and everyone loves it. except now i have celiac disease and we can never have pizza as a family again. unless i buy a nine dollar frozen pizza or a seven dollar bag of pizza dough mix, both of which are probably never going to happen.

so i was really, really depressed about not being able to eat pizza. really depressed. like, trying to figure out how bad it would be if i ate an entire real pizza just once a year, i mean, it couldnt be that bad for me right? but then i saw a picture somewhere on the internet of eggplant pizzas and thought this could really work. eggplants are WAY cheaper than gluten free pizza dough (i got them for 88 cents each at sprouts), and theres no way this could taste bad, since its mostly the same ingredients as eggplant parmesan and ratatouille, which are both delicious. since i didnt remember where i saw the picture, i checked allrecipes.com for "eggplant pizza" and apparently this is a real thing. 

i tried it last week, and it was great. so great, in fact, that i bought more eggplant so we could have it again tonight (in case you missed it, i do my meal plans weekly). i had to modify the recipes i found a bit since most of them breaded the eggplant, so heres what i did:

eggplant pizzas:
(serves 2-4)

ingredients:
2 large eggplants 
olive oil
lemon pepper
1/2 cup or so of pasta sauce
1 cup or so of mozzarella or cheese of your fancy
pepperoni or whatever toppings your heart desires

preheat oven to 400 degrees. start by slicing your eggplant into patties at least 1/2 inch thick (i made the mistake of cutting mine to thin last time because i didnt know they would shrink so much and they ended up falling apart a little), then brown both sides in a cast iron pan in a little olive oil and lemon pepper. arrange your slices on a cookie sheet lined with foil and top each slice with sauce, cheese, and toppings (no exact measurements here, just whatever you feel like). bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes or until cheese is melted and browned (i like to leave mine in for a little longer so the cheese gets nice and crispy, but thats just me). serve immediately. 

(i served ours with a sad little crouton-less caesar salad):

and thats it! making pizza this way is actually significantly faster (and if your watching carbs, healthier) than regular pizza, and i think i can confidently put pizza back on our dinner rotation. 

so what are you having for dinner tonight?