Leftovers

"The most remarkable thing about my mother is that

for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers.

The original meal has never been found."

-- Calvin Trillin

Leftover beef stew 10-13-14

"Laura liked it hot, and she liked it cold,

and it was always good as long as it lasted.

But it never really lasted nine days.

They ate it up before that."

-- Laura Ingalls Wilder,
Little House on the Prairie

"I'm the leftover turkey for 

the world's mayonnaisey."

-- Train, "All American Girl"

Thick, savory beef stew.

Hot, bubbly macaroni and cheese.

I made lots of both over the weekend, intentionally cooking up enough to provide plenty of delicious leftovers.

Then, while football and baseball were on, I didn't have to get up and cook. Sunday dinner was already made and I was free to sink into the sofa and watch football and baseball.

Now that's what I call comfort food.

Homemade Pizza Dough

"Ideas are like pizza dough,

made to be tossed around."

-- Anna Quindlen

Self portrait with pizza dough 3-4-14

Seriously, guys.

Homemade pizza dough is not even that hard. It's actually fun to make, and it is so much better.

You don't even want to know what Domino's puts in theirs. But here's the list of ingredients in their "handmade pan" crust anyway:

Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Niacin, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Butter Flavored White Shortening Flake (Palm Oil, Natural Butter Flavor, and Soy Lecithin), Vegetable Oil (Soybean Oil, Citric Acid), Sugar, Salt, Less than 1% Dough Conditioners (Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Whey, Enzyme [with Wheat Starch], Ascorbic Acid, L-cysteine, with Silicon Dioxide added as processing aids), Yeast (Yeast, Sorbitan Monostearate, Ascorbic Acid)

Gross.

At least they don't use high fructose corn syrup and corn syrup solids, like Pizza Hut.

Shrimp, chicken and olive pizza 3-4-14

Wanna know what's in my pizza dough? Flour, yeast, sugar, salt, water, olive oil. That's it. About 50 cents worth of ingredients that are always in my kitchen anyway. Might as well use 'em, right?

And homemade pizza is a delicious way to use up leftovers that would otherwise undergo a slow, languishing death at the back of the fridge.

I made some dough yesterday, rolled it out and topped it with leftover shrimp and chicken wings, black olives, cheddar, mozzarella, dill, basil and olive oil. It looked like this (right).

Leftovers never tasted so good. They're more like "left-oh!-vers."

Seriously, guys.

Google yourself a simple recipe for homemade pizza dough and make that shit happen already. Let the delivery guy make tips off some other chump.