Sausage, Spinach, Mushroom Calzones

Do you know the difference between a calzone and a stromboli?  A stromboli has the pizza sauce baked into it, kinda like a Hot Pocket.  A calzone however, only contains the "toppings" minus the sauce.  The sauce is usually served on the side for dipping.

I found a recipe from a FB friend of mine for calzones and they sounded delicious!  Here's her original recipe.  I didn't have quite the same ingredients that she used in my pantry at the time, so I improvised.  I mean, calzones are pretty much the same as pizza in their versatility.  So I used pizza dough that I made previously in the bread maker and frozen.  I also heated up some frozen sausage patties and cut them into chunks, thawed and drained some spinach, and threw in a can of mushrooms, along with some ricotta, mozzarella, and a little fresh Parmesan cheese!

I started by thawing the dough and rolling it out into a big square(ish) shape, haha. I mixed all my toppings together in a bowl and then spooned them onto half of the dough, leaving a few inches on the three sides that will have seams.

I just added sausage, mushrooms, and cheese to the kids' calzones, only because I didn't want Taylor to decide not to eat the whole thing, just because she saw something green inside.  She's going through a phase lately where she doesn't like broccoli or spinach.  Strange, huh? :)  Let's just hope it doesn't last until she's an adult!

After I folded the top over the rest of the dough, I sealed the seams with a fork and poked a few holes in the top to vent.  I also brushed the tops with a little butter before baking.  I think that a little bit of Italian seasoning and/or garlic powder and onion powder would have been great to sprinkle on the top, but alas, I didn't even think about that until just now as I am typing this... :)

They may not be perfectly square, but that's one of the things I like about these.  You can tell they're homemade.  And please disregard the wax paper, apparently I have trouble reading sometimes and instead of using parchment paper, I grabbed wax paper.  Oh well, it didn't catch on fire and it didn't stick to the food, so all's well that ends well. :)

 Here's the final product.  Don't you like the awesome food positioning?  With just a little bit of cheese oozing out of the warm, doughy shell?  Yeah, that was Marcus's idea. Hopefully it makes you hungry and you go try these!! ;)

Easter!

This year the kids were actually old enough to take part in some of the traditional Easter activities like dyeing eggs, Easter egg hunts, and helping me make Easter-themed cupcakes.  Saturday our church had an Easter carnival with puppet shows, bouncy houses, a hot dog lunch, and an egg hunt.  Which turned out to be more like an egg stampede, haha.  There wasn't a whole lotta huntin' goin on. :)

After the kids naps on Saturday, I boiled a dozen eggs and we bravely decided to let the kids help dye them.  Although, we realized that they, especially Hunter, were probably going to make a mess, so we took all our supplies out to the driveway and dyed the eggs there.  They had a blast, until they realized there were no more eggs, so they took to re-dyeing the ones they had already done. :)

Notice there are only 10 "finished" eggs.  I'm sure you can imagine how we managed to have a couple casualties along the way. :)

Once the eggs dried, Marcus took them upstairs to the playroom and we hid them and let the kids hunt them four different times.  Don't worry, we made sure to count the eggs each time so we didn't wind up with a stink bomb in a few days!

After dinner Saturday night, Taylor helped me bake cupcakes and I made a big batch of butter frosting that I  colored four different colors.  

I put the frosting in Ziploc bags and snipped the corner to do the base color.  Then I used alternating colors to draw designs and Easter eggs.  I think they turned out pretty cute (and yummy!).

On Easter Sunday, we got up and the Easter bunny had come to our house to visit!

After breakfast, we got dressed and went to church. 

Don't they look so precious? Little blondies  :)  Here's Marcus with the kids:

So handsome! :)  And here's me with the munchkins:

I hope ya'lls Easter was as fun-filled and blessed as ours! He is risen!

Sidewalk chalk

Last Saturday, Marcus had duty and was gone all day, so I figured I'd get a chance to "practice" what it would be like as a stay at home mom. :)  So I planned our day out, bought some sidewalk chalk, and prayed the weather was nice. 

Once the kids got up and had breakfast, we went outside on the driveway to color up the sidewalk.  I hoped that the drawings would stay there overnight so that Daddy would be able to see them in the mornning when he got home from duty.  (No such luck, it ended up raining that evening.) 

We started out with some Easter decorations:

Then we moved on to our initials and a message for Daddy:  

It says T  H  L  (heart)  M :

Then Taylor decided that she wanted to trace Hunter while he was laying on the ground:

Then it was Tay's turn:

She almost laid still for the whole thing.  Tay then decided that she wanted to draw my outline, so I humored her.  However, the shirt I was wearing was about 10 sizes too big, so I had to draw in my "real" waistline.  Realistic, don't you think?

If only it were that easy in real life... :)

Good Eats!

Good Eats is my new TV obsession.  I love, love this show!  And Marcus just happened to overhear me raving about it and bought me the whole first season!!  I can't wait to watch all of them.  It reminds me of watching Bill Nye as a kid because it was science, but interesting.  This is the same way, but with food science.  Alton Brown has a way of making you think about cooking in a more abstract, fluid way than just following a recipe.  It gets to the bottom of how foods react when heated, why certain cooking methods are preferred to achieve a desired result, and what type of heat to use to attain a specific texture, just to name a few things I've learned.

One of the biggest things I've noticed is that Alton uses the freshest, rawest ingredients possible to get the best flavor.  Which seems obvious when you think about it, but then again, look at how many "convenience" foods you find in the grocery store.  I get it, we're busy.  But seriously people, are we too "busy" to grate our own cheese these days?  (Not to mention the price difference in block cheese and pre-shredded.)  That's just one example off the top of my head, but I agree with Alton, if you want the freshest taste, you gotta use the freshest ingredients. 

Ok, now that I've stepped down off my soapbox, I have recipes! And pictures!  :)

The first thing I made from Good Eats was the Overnight Cinnamon Rolls (yes, from scratch!).  They are delicious.  Please try them because they're not hard to make and who doesn't like to wake up to freshly baked cinnamon rolls on a Saturday morning? Or a Tuesday for that matter? :)  So, here's the recipe from Food Network. 

I started with all my ingredients, since if I ever happen to have my own cooking show, that's how they do it (except I'd have prettier measuring cups on TV):

Cream the butter and sugar with the whisk attachment:

Add the dry ingredients:

Once it forms dough, knead on a floured surface, then cover with plastic wrap in a bowl to rise:

Once it rises, roll it out into a 12 x 18 inch rectangle, brush with melted butter, and add the cinnamon/sugar mixture, leaving the top inch or so empty to help prevent spillage.  I added pecans and raisins to mine:

Slowly roll the dough into a tight cylinder:

Then cut the dough into thirds, then each one of the three in half and then each one of those in half.  That should give you 12 rolls.  Put in a 9x13 pan and chill in the fridge ovenight:

Don't those look yummy?  Good, because that's the last picture I have of them.  The next morning, I got up, put them in the oven and realized when they didn't get big and puffy like the ones on TV that my yeast was probably a little past its prime.  Not a huge deal taste wise, they just stayed about the same size as the previous picture once they were baked.  I drizzled them (or swizzled, if you're my dad) with a powdered sugar/milk icing and we ate them up.  They were really good and I will definitely be making these again (with fresh yeast)!  :)

I am almost 100% positive that the more I watch Good Eats, the more posts you will see with me trying to recreate something I saw on the show.  So stay tuned! :)