adventures in cooking: scones, english muffins, pesto and homemade pizza

Yesterday I spent the afternoon baking and cooking all sorts of things. It was pretty relaxing; not to mention tasting all of my food was delicious.

First up: Lemon blueberry scones!


Andrew made me that latte with our new espresso machine. The scones turned out pretty delicious with one exception: they've got a bit of a salty aftertaste. Why? Oh, maybe because I put in two tsps instead of 1/2 tsp. Way to misread the recipe, me. After I realized what happened, I tried to dig some of the salt out and counteract it with sugar, but there's only so much you can do without starting all over again. All in all, pretty good with the exception of a bit of saltiness.

Next: English muffins!


I had made some of these last week and they turned out really well so I thought I'd try it again. Made for a yummy breakfast sandwich this morning. My only difficulty is transferring the muffin from the pan to the skillet without completely deflating the muffin. I'm trying to get better at that, but I can be clumsy.

Next: Pesto!


Used a bunch of our window sill basil for pesto, but substituted walnuts for pine nuts. You could definitely taste the difference. Jury's still out on if I like the walnuts better than pine nuts. One thing I did before putting everything in the food processor was bruise the basil leaves.


I put the basil leaves in a plastic bag and rolled/crunched over it with a glass (I don't have a rolling pin... sad). It's supposed to bring out the flavor and juices more than just cutting it up with food processor blades.

Finally: Homemade pizza!

We used the pesto as sauce on the pizza. It definitely added an extra zing! We also put Italian sausage, mushrooms, peppers, tomatoes and more basil leaves on as toppings. The pizza recipe is an old family one and usually it's just Italian sausage with a chunked tomato/basil sauce mix. We've been experimenting with extra toppings the more we make it.

See our new espresso machine and magnetic knife strip in the background? Woo! Love the knife strip.

Also, you should be proud that I was hands-off with assembling the pizza and let Andrew do it. I believe at one point someone got angry that I was making frequent suggestions and hovering and just let me do it. But she's in Honduras now. So there.


So good! We ate pizza and watched season 8 of Scrubs. I haven't seen too many of the episodes and as usual, I was laughing my ass off. It's by far one of my favorite TV shows. Always a solid choice, in my opinion. Anyway, there's leftovers so I know what I'm having for lunch - pizza!

Now time to go tackle that sink full of dishes. Pizza mess, you know.