pizza // spicy thai

I moved to a new blog!  Head over to The Farmer's Daughter for the full recipe and post!

p.s.  ♥ kelsey 

pizza // the classic

This simple and tasty pizza was inspired by a very good friend of our family, Thabang.  Thabang lives in Lesotho, (a small country surrounded by South Africa) and we had the pleasure of working with him for a year while he was in Canada learning about farming through a volunteer exchange program.  Thabang became part of our family, and would often come over for family dinners.  Whenever we would ask what he wanted to eat, he would almost always request "Homemade Chicken and Mushroom Pizza".

As we continued making pizzas, we started experimenting with more ingredients, adding more veggies, and some feta cheese for an extra kick!  This pizza has something for everyone in our family, caramelized onion and peppers, sauteed chicken and mushrooms, and my personal favourite, spinach!! 

Every time I make homemade pizza I think of Thabang.  I sincerely wish that he could come over to share this pizza with us, and have another family pizza night. 

Feel free to add more or less of any ingredients, leave out the mushrooms, add olives, pile on the spinach.  Make it your own!  And try not to eat the entire thing by yourself, you have to make sure you have leftovers so you can have cold pizza for breakfast the next day!

Classic Pizza

Ingredients:

1 cooked pizza crust (recipe here!)

2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup sweet onion

1 red pepper

5 large mushrooms

2 cloves of garlic

1-2 cups of chopped cooked chicken

1-2 cups of spinach

Cheddar Cheese (approx 4 cups grated)

Feta Cheese (half a cup crumbled)

Pizza sauce

Directions:

1)  Preheat oven to 350 F (or just leave it on if you are making a homemade pizza!)

2)  Heat olive oil on medium/high heat in a large frying pan.

3)  Once hot, add sliced onions, peppers and mushrooms.

4)  After the veggies have been cooking for 5-6 minutes add minced garlic and turn the heat down to medium.  Continue cooking veggies until the onions start to caramelize, this may take about 5-7 more minutes.  

5)  Add chicken to this mixture and stir until chicken is hot.

6)  Turn the burner off, and stir in roughly chopped spinach (this will wilt the spinach, but hopefully not cook it too much.  You don't want to obliterate your spinach, just warm it up).

7)  Spread pizza sauce on your cooked pizza crust, follow with your delicious veggie and chicken mixture, and top it all off with grated cheddar cheese and a bit of crumbled feta.

8)  *Bake in 350 F oven for 8 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and starts bubbling (we like to broil our pizza so the cheese starts browns a bit/gets crunchy!)

*This is our method for baking pizza, it assumes that you just took the hot homemade crust out of the oven, and that your top ingredients (ex. chicken, sauteed veggies) are already hot for the most part.  If you are using a crust that has not just been baked, you may have to adjust the baking time.

This pizza always hits the spot!  Loaded with veggies, chicken, and tons of cheese, there is never a complaint in our house about this pizza.  It is perfect on our homemade pizza crust, but also is really tasty on pita bread if you are in a hurry, or with cauliflower pizza crust for a gluten free alternative!

p.s.  ♥ jordyn & kelsey

back to basics: pizza dough

Who doesn't love pizza?  With a crunchy crust, gooey cheese, and all the toppings you want, who could resist?  

It's like the Leonardo DiCaprio of food.  And like Leo, it will likely never win an Oscar, but it still gets invited to the party.

One of the best things about pizza is that it is so incredibly versatile! You can make practically any kind of pizza you can dream of.  Our go-to pizza is topped with caramelized onions, sauteed red peppers, mushrooms, garlic, spinach and chicken, finished off with feta, mozzarella, and cheddar cheese.  But we also love greek, pepperoni, and we just tried making thai for the first time.  It was the bomb!

This is our tasty recipe for homemade pizza crust.  It takes a bit of time and work, but it is definitely worth it!  The extra spices in the crust add a nice punch of flavour.

Homemade Pizza Dough

Ingredients:

1/2 cup hot water (not boiling, hot tap water is fine)

2 (.25 ounce) packages active dry yeast

1/2 tablespoon sugar

6 cups all-purpose flour

1 tbsp salt

1 1/2 tablespoons white sugar

1 tsp garlic powder

2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp thyme

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/2 cups warm water

Directions:

1) In a medium size bowl dissolve sugar in the hot water, and then mix in yeast.  Let this rise for 15 minutes.

2) In a large bowl, mix together all the dry ingredients.

3) Stir in the risen yeast, the warm water and the oil into the dry ingredients.

4) Mix well.

5) Turn out mixture onto a floured surface and knead until dough has a smooth texture.  About 10 minutes.

6) Place in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and let sit in a warm area for 1 hour.

7) Split dough in half, each will make a large pizza.

8) With a rolling pin, roll out pizza a bit larger than the pan you are using.  I used a large round pizza pan (ours is 14 inches across), and a 10 x 15 square pan.

9) Once the dough has been rolled out, place over well greased pan (I used olive oil) and tuck in the edges to make a crust, poke holes in the crust with a knife or fork (this prevents crust bubbles).

10) Bake pizza at 350 for 20 minutes.

11) Add pizza sauce and desired ingredients.

12) Bake for another 8 minutes, or until the cheese has melted (sometimes we like to broil it).

chicken vegetable soup (aka: clean out the fridge soup)

My family loves soup.  In addition to our "What's new Wednesday" - the day we try out a brand new recipe, "Fish Taco Friday" - the day we have fish tacos (recipe here!), we also have "Soup Saturday".

Yeah we really like alliterations.  And food.

If you haven't figure it out yet, "Soup Saturday" is the day we have soup. It is also bun day, (hmmm do we need an alliteration for that? Wheat Weekend?)  so we often have soup to complement my mother's delicious home made buns.  

We made this recipe when my parents were vacationing in Arizona (with our Grandparents, no fair!), so we didn't have any fresh homemade buns to enjoy.  So, on her way home from work, Kelsey stopped by a local farmer's market and picked up a fresh baked baguette!  It was delicious, and we even added some cheese and broiled it to make some cheesy bread.  It was the best.

skinny fettuccine alfredo

Not all food is photogenic.  That is the lesson of this week. Ha.

#foodphotographerproblems.

Did I just hashtag in a blog post?  Yep.  I do what I want.
Honestly, I'm quite enjoying this new venture into photographing actual meals instead of just sweets, and I can't believe it's taken me so long to get around to it.  Although I must say that this dish was an interesting challenge since I had no idea how to make a pile of noodles look mouthwatering.
Cupcakes or ice cream?  The camera loves them.  Pasta?  Yikes.

Now, Jordyn is the master chef (yet again), and this recipe is her baby.  Our family loves pasta, but we also love trying to make things a bit healthier.  This "skinny" version of uses greek yogurt in place of butter and cream, and it's oh so creamy and delicious!  And it's packed full of protein, so you can easily leave out the chicken if you wish.

Skinny Chicken Alfredo

serves: ~4

recipe by: jordyn

Ingredients:

2 cups broccoli

4 large carrots

1 cup brussel sprouts, halved

assorted spices (salt/seasoning salt, pepper, garlic powder)

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 chicken breasts, cut into bite sized pieces and sauteed

8 ounces fettuccine

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 garlic cloves, minced 

2 tablespoons flour

1 cup chicken broth

1/3 cup plain greek yogurt

black pepper to taste

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese (freshly grated is the best, but whatever you have works!)

superfood salad (with shrimp)

Hold up....this is a post about food, and yet there is no caramel or chocolate in sight.

Jordyn and I have really really been wanting to start sharing our favourite meals (in addition to all the desserts we love) here on the blog, not only to share with all of you, but for ourselves and friends to have easy access to our everyday recipes.  So, be prepared (hopefully) for more legitimate meals to be appearing here.

Don't worry, there will always be a healthy dose of sweets as well!

Anywho....this is superfood salad!  It actually does have superpowers....since I'm not a huge fan of pomegranates or oranges, but since eating this salad I have been converted.  There is so much protein and goodness going on in this salad, that it makes a wonderful lunch or supper, or even a great side dish.

Superfood Salad

(heavily) adapted from: Iowa girl eats

Ingredients:

3 cups quinoa, cooked

1/2 white onion, diced finely

2 oranges, chopped into bite-sized pieces

1 to 2 avocados, chopped

1 can black beans, rinsed and drained

1 pomegranate (seeded)

1 3/4 cup frozen corn, thawed

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped