Homemade Pizza Sauce

Homemade pizza sauce is one of those things that is so easy to make that it makes you wonder why you ever defaulted to jar sauce.  While I may not be cooking full-time, I think I'm inching my way into making more things from scratch.  Particularly when I run out of a store-bought version of something and decide to whip up something on the spot.

This recipe is a modified version of one that I found on Allrecipes.com. I made changes based on the recommendations that other people had made in their comments, plus what I had on hand in my cupboards.

1 (15 8 ounce) can tomato sauce (I liked the thicker consistency using just one can of tomato sauce)

1 (6 ounce) can tomato paste
1 tablespoon ground oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons dried minced garlic (I used jarred minced garlic)
1 teaspoon ground paprika
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1 teaspoon dried onion flakes

As for the directions? Basically just mix the tomato sauce and paste together, and then add all the seasonings. Voila! Delicious looking and tasting pizza sauce:

Throw that on some storebought fresh pizza dough and cover with mozzarella, parmesan and feta cheeses and some bacon for good measure, and you've got Andrew's favorite meal. I swear he would eat this for all three meals, seven days a week if he could.

Boys Will Have Their Toys

The alternate title for this post was, "Look Ma, I have all my fingers". 

Andrew just finished putting together a wedding gift from his brother Adam:

As he described it, "I put together my....um....our miter saw."  I was fine with this description as I kept making the same mistake when describing all our new kitchen appliances.  And let's face it, it's not really my miter saw. Although I'm reaping its benefits already, as Andrew used it to cut down a piece of wood to use as insulation on our garage door.   I'm still not thrilled at how safe it is as a tool, which is why I had Andrew pose with both of his hands next to it as a reminder of how nice it is to have all fingers and thumbs intact.

Spotted...

on Newbury Street - the second Pinkberry location in MA:

Also spotted at this location - extremely high prices (It ws $7+ for a large with toppings, which I believe is a full $2 more than Hingham or any other location I've been at in NYC). But same good frozen yogurt. I think we'll stick with the Hingham location from here on out.

Freestone's City Grill

Following up on yesterday's post, while North Dartmouth has tons of chain restaurants that are close to campus, we decided to be adventurous and headed into New Bedford to find our dinner.  Andrew used to work in New Bedford, and had a hunch we'd be able to find a good place in New Bedford's charming downtown area - we're talking historical buildings and cobblestone streets.

We ended up trying Freestone's City Grill - there was a public parking lot around the corner, and thanks to some friendly locals, we realized you didn't have to pay for parking on Saturday (I'll admit to being skeptical of this but as the rest of the group accurately pointed out, none of the other cars had payment papers on their dash).

You can't see it very well from this angle, but Freestone's is actually in an old bank whose name is still carved in the front of the building:

In my hunger, I forgot to take a nice clear shot of the tables in Freestone's, but I liked how the standard wooden tables were dressed up with floral patterened inserts (if you squint at the picture below, you might be able to make out the floral pattern). What I liked even more was the French Onion soup that I got as part of my meal - nice flavor, ooey-gooey cheese on top, and a good amount of onions. I've never been a fan of the whole soggy bread in the soup thing, but for all you traditionalists, it did come with large round of bread on the bottom (which was oddly described as croutons on the menu):

Having hearty appetites, the five of us were able demolish a large dish of perfectly fried calamari:

As well as the wonderful creation called the Fried Cheese combo - fried raviolis, fried mozarella cheese and cream cheese jalapaneo poppers. I've seriously never had poppers that have had a fresh cream cheese filling squeeze out:

Amy went with the Freestone's Pasta - with a name like that and ingredients like shrimp, artichokes, onions, peppers, diced tomatoes, spinach, feta, parmesan cheese and ziti in a light garlic white wine sauce: 

My cousin Andrew picked the Oriental Stir-Fry with chicken:

Phu ordered the Buffalo Chicken Sandwich:

A typical Andrew order - Fried seafood platter including fried scallops and clams:

As for me, I was pretty full at this point but I can always do with more cheese. Especially when it comes in fondue form:

Can you say melty cheesy goodness? It came with a side of baguette bread, which is traditional, but the only thing that could've made it better was if it was toasted:

So why the rave reviews? I thought Freestone's offered a great selection of traditional bar fare, and did it well. Plus, I think their overall menu had a creative selection of sandwiches and entrees. I don't venture into New Bedford very often, but I think we'll need to visit my cousin Andrew at UMass-Dartmouth more often and make eating at Freestone's a tradition! Especially if there is fondue involved.

Going Back To College

Andrew and I had a chance to relive our glory days... well, at least the carefree feeling of being back at school when we visited my cousin Andrew at UMass-Dartmouth.  Sidenote: Oddly enough, both of the Andrews in my life have always been called just that, no Andy or Drew's for them. However, my cousin Andrew told us that somehow, he has been given the nickname of Andy at school, so I'm going to refer to him as that because 1) this post is all about Andy at school and 2) it will differentiate him from my husband Andrew.

Joining us for the ride down were my lovely sister Amy and our friend Phu, although both were in the process of recovering from colds and coughed the whole way there and back again. I guess I can't complain too much because Amy drove us in her sweet ride and we didn't end up getting sick after the weekend, haha.

Back to UMass-Dartmouth, the first thing we noticed when we arrived on campus is that it's very gray. It could've been the overcast weather, but really, all the buildings are the same monotone shade of gray. It was nice to see a pop of color from the welcome banner.

 

Andy met us in the parking lot and walked us to his dorm, which you guessed it, is gray as well.

Here's the freshman himself, opening the door to his room. I had to get a picture with the door because 1) doesn't the themed name sign totally remind you of your own college days (some things never change) and 2) I had to laugh because I went to school sooooo long ago, it was before iPhones existed so it was funny to see them being used as the theme for Andrew's floor: 

A look inside Andrew's room. I have to point out, at the risk of embarassing Andy, that it definitely smelled like a boy's room. Not like a really stinky smell that made you think it was time to do laundry, but just the moment you walked in, if you were blindfolded, you could tell it was a guy's room. We were amazed at how spacious it was, even more so because Andy doesn't have a roommate at the moment:

What you see Amy and Andy munching on in the picture was my "visit from home" gift for him - a tin filled with homemade chocolate chip cookies. Nothing fancy (besides a pinch of sea salt) and I thought it would be the perfect comfort food for him to share with friends (if he were so inclined):

Touring the rest of campus, I was struck by the simple layout of the campus. All the classrooms, dining halls and the student center are located in the middle of campus, which is surrounded by one loop of a road and offshoots for all the different parking lots and dorms. The most striking part of campus is the radio tower next to the student center. And, it even has bells that ring every 15 minutes!

My favorite part of campus, and the only area that had a lot of color was the outdoor ampitheatre - I think it resembles a labyrinth and I can imagine how cool it would be to listen to outdoor concerts here:

Clearly, the rest of the group was as enthralled as I was by the grass:

Finally, responding to Andy's pleas to spare him from dining hall food, we whisked him off campus and began our search for a good restaurant.

One Month Mark

Lots of posts that I need to catch up with, including a recap of the Mystery Meet dinner we attended tonight but I wanted to give a quick shout-out to my wonderful husband of one month today!

I know we'll be having just as much fun with each other, even into our nineties!

My Heart Is Not In November

On cold, rainy days like this, I think fondly back to only three (3!) months ago to a beautiful summer day spent at the beach in Gloucester with Amy.

It's going to be a long winter, especially since I'm complaining already and we're still in Fall!

Leftover Halloween Candy Blondies

I seriously misjudged the amount of trick-or-treaters we would get this year.  Having lived in a house that was tucked behind another house, which were both on a little sidestreet with a small amount of families, I was used to getting four or five kids, total on Halloween. With this being our first year in the new house, and seeing plenty of kids running around the neighborhood, I thought to myself, "Finally. This is the year we get a serious amount of trick or treaters."  So I bought enough candy for the imagined hordes of kids I thought would be knocking on our door.  We ended up getting a respectable amount but there will still tons of leftover candy. Not wanting Andrew and I to take care of the problem by eating it all ourselves, I split the leftovers into two piles for each of us to take into the office. However, I did set aside a small amount of candy bars to try with a new recipe. I just can't believe I didn't think of doing this with Halloween candy before.  (And as I announced to my coworkers, the real Joyce is officially back. As in, the calm, relaxed Joyce that now has time to bake with the stress of wedding planning behind her).  Anyway, enough of the third person, onto the recipe!

This is based on the Candy Recycler Blondies posted on Salon.com. While I was intrigued by the salty component of it (pretzels and chips), I sadly didn't have any pretzels on hand so I decided to stick with just the standard blondie portion of the recipe. Which is why I ended up remaining them as well, since I didn't my version justified the "Recycler" title.

Ingredients















•2¼ cups all purpose flour
•1 teaspoon baking soda
•1 teaspoon salt (I used kosher salt for an extra boost of saltiness to compensate for the missing chips and pretzels)
•2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
•¾ cup granulated sugar
•¾ cup light brown sugar
•2 large eggs
•1 teaspoon vanilla extract
•1 cup coarsely chopped Halloween chocolate candy (I used 5 Milky Ways, 3 Snickers, 1 bag of M&Ms, 1/4 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips and 1/8 cup of peanut butter chips that I had leftover from another baking project)
•2 tablespoons coffee grounds, for the true spirit of compost
•¾ cup salty snacks, coarsely crushed (I used equal parts potato chips and pretzels)

Directions

1.Preheat oven to 375° F and grease a 15 x 10 baking pan.
2.Sift together flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
3.In another bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
4.Add in eggs one at a time. Beat until very well combined and light.
5.Add vanilla.
6.Slowly mix dry ingredients with the wet until completely combined (I chopped the fun size candy bars into six chunks and had a whole pile of chocolatey goodness waiting to be mixed in).


7.With a wooden spoon, slowly mix in your crushed Halloween candy.

8.Swirl in coffee grounds. (I'm not a coffee drinker and the thought of the texture of the coffee grounds in the bars scared me off from using them).

9.Very gently add the crushed chips and pretzels. Don't overstir or they'll break into crumbs.

10.Spread batter evenly into the greased baking pan.

11.Bake at 375° for 30-35 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean and edges are golden.

12.Cool completely before cutting.

I suspect that I may have overbaked mine, but they were still too wet in the center at 30 minutes, so I ended up baking them for an extra five minutes.  These came out to have more of a buttery, crispy texture like shortbread.  My coworkers liked them, but I don't think I consider this a special enough recipe to make again until I have another overload of Halloween candy next year. I'd love to try Reese's peanut butter cups in them as well, but will be smart enough to set some of those aside before my coworkers can get them (which happened this year).

Wedding Details

It feels a little silly to be posting a post about a post, but this is definitely worth sharing.

Our awesome photographers (Ciras Photograpy) created a neat little collage post to bring together some of the smaller details of the day:

I laugh looking at this because I was clearly in denial all through the wedding planning process. I kept telling people that our wedding colors were gray and purple with bright green as an accent.  Purple and gray just seemed perfect for fall without being too stuffy. In actuality, I gave into my love of green and we had a green and purple wedding with some minor gray accents. Anyway, it's all good in the end!

Wii Would Like To Play

Happy Halloween from your friends Luigi and Toadstool:

You'll have to cut us some slack, we had absolutely no time to think of something creative for costumes this year so we went with convenient and fun.  My costume is actually a kid's costume that came with the hat and vest, which allowed me to buy regular sized clothing for the rest of the outfit. Andrew's mustache listed less than a minute before he abandoned it, since it was impossible to drink anything (or see his smile for that matter) with it on!

I told Andrew we'll have to make up for these storebought outfits with something super creative next year.  Some of the interesting homemade costumes we saw at my sister Amy's annual Halloween party were a cactus (it included marshmallows and toothpicks), a Chilean miner and a homemade Viking costume (complete with a beard expertly made from a spool of yarn), as well as my cousin Andrea's authentic appearance as - you guessed it:

Snooki!!

Foley's Backstreet Grille

October was a big month for birthdays - while we ended up celebrating Andrew's birthday on our cruise in Turkey, we missed our friend Phu's big 3-0 celebration while we were gone.  However, we did make it in time to celebrate Andrew's mom's birthday.  Through her selection, we were able to try a new restaurant - Foley's Backstreet Grille in Stoughton!

As I'm easing back into food blogging, you'll have to forgive me for my forgetfulness. For once, I was concentrating on eating food more than I was on taking pictures of it! I think it was all the meals on the cruise that made me lazy, since I got out of the practice of taking pictures of meals (you didn't think I would subject you to pictures of cruise food, did you?)  Anyway, I did take a few pictures, but this recap is going to be more on the overall impressions we got from the place.

Starters - I forgot to take a picture, but they serve these awesome homemade potato chips as a free starter at the table. Very salty but tasty.

For apps, we went with the calamari - nicely crisp without being too greasy, but missing some sort of dipping sauce:

And a gigando, I mean REALLY big, appetizer combo featuring boneless chicken wings, potato skins, onion things (that's what they call them) and ribs:

This was a great way to try four different menu items but I felt a little gross after eating it. As in way too much food, and the four of us couldn't even finish it.

For our entrees, we all went with choices of the specials menu.  Andrew and Tom went with the Seafood Angela (if I recall the name correctly) which was a seafood medley served over angel hair pasta.  They were both so stuffed at this point that they focused on eating the seafood, and pretty much left the pasta untouched on their plates:

Charlotte and I both enjoy a good slab of meat now and then, so we opted for the prime rib. I ended up having a small portion of this, and had enough left over for two more meals. That's right, two more!

Overall Impressions:

• Foley's is really on a back street - kind of tucked away on a side street and you would have to be looking for it to run across it. I think if you lived in Stoughton, you'd be going by it all the time but I have a feeling people aren't going out of their way to find this place
• The place was packed with families and old people. As in enough senior citizens that Andrew told me he thought that there was an assisted living facility nearby. To me, that suggested that Foley's was known as a family friendly place with reasonably priced meals.
• They had a cute theme going on with movie posters on the walls, which was echoed in the menu. Each section of the menu was named after a movie, so for example, Garden State listed their salads, Ocean's Eleven had seafood, etc.
• Homemade potato chips definitely a highlight
• Nice variety of menu options, all reasonably priced, but I didn't find any of the food to be stellar. It was definitely more homey, comfort food style
• They don't have a lot of choices in the way of beverages. Basically some wines, a few beers and a trio of malternative drinks (I think Mike's Hard Lemonade). Also, the birthday girl Charlotte who is a proud GRIT, didn't get to order her beloved Coke since it is a Pepsi establishment (full disclosure, I prefer Pepsi products, so this wasn't a bad thing in my eyes)
• They did take reservations (which probably saved us a 10 minute wait on a Friday evening) and I appreciated the fact that table had an actual "RESERVED" sign and was waiting for us when we arrived

Overall, I think it's not a bad place to stop by when you're in the area, especially if you're accompanied by kids and/or the grandparents, but I don't think Andrew and I will be going back on our own.

Sidenote: I should've taken a picture of Charlotte's birthday gift from us but it was a neat cartouche pendant that we picked up in Egypt with her name spelled out in heiroglyphics. It's going to be hard to top that for Christmas!

After Wedding Chop

One of the first things on my to-do list when we came back from the honeymoon? Getting a haircut.

I couldn't find a good solo picture of myself with my hair down, a clear sign that it was getting too long and unruly and that my only way to cope was to wear it up in a bun. The picture above is from our honeymoon, showing how long my hair had grown in the past year as I grew it out for the wedding.

So maybe I should phrase it this way - one of my first acts as a married woman was to chop my hair off to a more manageable length.  This picture isn't the best but I swear both my hair and I were bouncing down the street after I walked out of the salon. It feels liberating.

Just Call Me Mrs.

I know it's been ages and ages since I've posted.

It's been a crazy month and half and it included a little thing called our wedding. And a blissfully relaxing two week honeymoon in the Mediterranean.

It's going to take some time to get up and running again, and I have to warn my readers that it will be heavily focused on wedding recap for the next months. But hopefully more baking will creep in as we enter the holidays.

I leave you with one of the wonderful professional pictures from our wedding - husband and wife, and delightfully so!

Guess Who's On The Road Now?

Amy in her stylin' new car!

*Apologies on the quality of the photo, I took a quick pic with Andrew's iPhone and clearly do not know how to get a good picture out of it! Or show most of the car in it. :)

Latest Etsy Find

During this whole wedding planning process, I've spent many an hour looking over all sorts of random stuff on Etsy. For those of you who have never heard of Etsy, it's a website (similar to Ebay but without the bidding) where people sell their handcrafted items and skills. You can find anything from graphic design service to jewelry to food to art, basically anything you can imagine.

My latest purchase was thank you cards for my bridal shower. I ended up going with simple white cards with a letterpressed "thank you" on top (I'm currently addicted to letterpressing):

This may seem a little boring for someone that loves color (lots of it and in bright shades!) but I literally searched two weeks for the right card before I settled on these.  The selling point? The envelopes!

The envelopes are recycled and made from pages of actual wedding magazines, which I thought was visually neat while being environmentally friendly. It was fun to see the assortment of ads (which appeared to come from an issue of Martha Stewart Weddings) that came in my order, and the envelopes themselves had been cut by a machine and formed into actual envelopes down to the glue on the flap.  A sign that this order was meant to be, one of the envelopes detailed a wedding with Korean bride (complete with pictures of hanboks, traditional Korean dresses) so that was the obviously the one I used for my sister's thank you note. 

I have a strong feeling this addiction to Etsy will continue after I'm married, although I hopefully won't be spending as much money on things (and not as frequently!)

Keeping My Fingers Crossed...

...that the fall foliage is going to change colors drastically within a month!

Andrew forwarded me an article from Boston.com that's predicting that the leaves will change a week sooner than they usually do due to the extremely hot summer.

What I'm hoping is that this area (picture taken Friday at our venue) will look less like summer and more like fall by the time our wedding takes place:

A glimmer of hope - while the trees look stubbornly green, there were signs of colored leaves on the ground:

Foliage and weather stalking have officially been added to my list of things to do for the month.

"Tri"-ing Your Hardest

Andrew's sister Amanda just completed her THIRD triathlon of the year this weekend at the Nation's Triathlon in Washington, D.C. (Picture swiped from Amanda's Facebook page):

While Andrew and I were unable to make it down to cheer her on, it did remind me that I had a long overdue post to get up regarding her second triathlon at the end of July. which we did have the pleasure of attending. I think it was one of the hottest weekends of the summer, and Andrew's parents, Andrew and I all traveled down to the Princeton, NJ area to watch Amanda compete in the New Jersey State Triathlon.

This is Amanda and Andrew posing before the start of the triathlon. Yes, Amanda looked that calm and collected while knowing that she was going to start an Olympic triathlon, which means swimming 1500 meters, biking 25.5 miles, and running 6.2 miles - YIKES!

This is the chaos that marks a triathlon, but I have to say that everything was well organized:

Amanda's group in the water, waiting for their start. Bonus points to anyone that can pick Amanda out in the picture (I have a rough sense for what area she's in, but all those gray caps look alike to me!):

I love this shot - I call this the "Brotherly Love" photo. Andrew proudly held that sign up high and was yelling his heart out, cheering Amanda on although I doubt she was able to see us or hear us while racing in the water:

And they're off! These ladies don't mess around in the water. In fact, Amanda's training groups all practiced swimming together in one lane so they would get used to the crowding/elbows everywhere/getting kicked sensation from a triathlon:

Out of the water and heading for the bikes, Amanda doesn't even look winded as she spots us on the sidelines:

In transition with her bike, she ready to start the almost 26 mile long cycling portion of the triathlon. This was the one part of the triathlon where we couldn't actually see her competing:

Final triathlon phase is the running portion. Let me tell you, it would be hard for me to run six miles on a normal day and yet Amanda is still smiling while running in extreme heat (we're talking mid-90's at least) and after swimming and biking. Triathletes are truly incredible!

It was incredibly exciting to watch Amanda cross the finish line and we were all cheering her on as she received her medal for completing the triathlon:

After a quick walk through the water tent (I don't know what these are really called but what a neat concept):

We posed for own shot with Amanda. It is one thing to see all the things that triathletes do in competition, and marvel over the distances but quite another to see a triathlon in action. Needless to say, we were incredibly proud of Amanda:

So while we didn't get to see her this weekend, and I heard that the triathletes competed in the rain, I have no doubts that Amanda did well. In fact, I've heard rumblings about Amanda beating her best personal time so major kudos to her!