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!