Pizza crust is one of those things that most people totally cop out on and buy a store-bought. I was, and occasionally still am one of those people. I think by whipping up this simple recipe and getting such a lovely result, I’m one step further from those dark days.

Pizza was requested by the Mister, and I had zero desire to leave the house to pick up a pre-baked crust. I did have a few packages of yeast in the cupboard and come on, it was Sunday afternoon…I had no reason not to spend a little time kneading and rising a ball o’dough.

I found this recipe, which is super simple, and went straight to work. This is a classic, chewy crust, that pleased my white-bread-only-eatin’ man and me. Crispy, soft, with a hint of sweet. Perfecto!

Pizza Dough

From: Cooking is Easy

2 cups flour (I used unbleached)
1.5 tsp instant yeast
1 cup warm water
2 tsp sugar or honey
1/2 tsp sea salt
1 tsp olive oil or melted butter

How I make
Measure 2 cups of flour into a bowl and add 1/2 tsp salt. Mix with a spoon. In a separate bowl, mix warm water, yeast, and honey or sugar.

Make a well in the middle of the flour and pour  liquid into it, mix with a spoon. If the dough comes together, great! If not, add water, little by little until it comes into a sticky ball.

Now time to bring out your hands….take 1 of oil or melted butter and form the dough into a ball. Knead for 2 or 3 minutes, and set it back into the bowl. Now set aside in a warm, clean space. I put mine in my oven (NOT ON! haha) and just let the little light be the warmth. Leave it for at least an hour, two if you can.

Take it out of the oven, and spread it out on to your greased pan or pizza stone. Should make one 9 x 13 rectangular pie or a couple smaller circles.

Top with your favourite stuff!

I baked my topped ‘za for somewhere between 15-18 minutes at 375C….I think? These details are escaping me at the moment, they’re being overshadowed with my recollections of Sunday-night pizza deliciousness.

Enjoy!

Please bookmark this recipe if you fall within the following categories:

• You have a potluck/girls night/game night coming up and you don’t have hours to spend on your contribution
• You often have unexpected guests pop in and need a quick little dish to nosh on
• You bought dried figs at the grocery store because they had a pink sticker (woo! 50% off!) and now need something to do with those figs. Me.
• You have a pulse

The last one’s just me being a joker….insinuating that this stuff is so good that you’d have to be off your rocker not to love it. It’s a garlicy, salty-sweet spread that is veggie-dipable, great smeared over a baguette, or even tossed in a cold pasta salad.

And a bonus; it looks and sounds sophisticated (to me, at least) and takes zero time or skill to prepare.

I used black canned olives because I didn’t have kalamata, and it was still terrific. My roomie made this a while back using dried dates instead of figs, and yep, you got it. It was still friggin delicious. If you’re not a huge garlic person, I’d pare the amount down to 1 clove, as with two, it’s got a pretty serious kick!

Fantastic 5 Minute Tapenade

From Allrecipes.com

• 1 cup chopped dried figs (or dates)
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
• 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2/3 cup olives, pitted
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• salt and pepper to taste

Combine figs (or dates) and water in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil, and cook until tender, and liquid has reduced. Remove from heat, put into food processor, and add olive oil, balsamic vinegar, rosemary, thyme, and cayenne. Add olives and garlic, and mix well. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Keep it in the fridge to cool, the flavours really pop if you can let it chill for a few hours!

Bring out the fat pants, lock your doors, and close the blinds people…because you’ll have a really, really hard time sharing this with anyone. But you should share, if you don’t want to throw yourself into a downward spiral of dessert regret. This stuff is serious, it ain’t playin around.

For those of you who putter the world of food blogging, you know all too well that trends sweep through like wildfire. Cue bacon.

Bacon tore the food blogosphere a new one and refuses to back off (sorry Kelly, aka @baconandbaileys, you’re not going to like what I’m about to say). I’m over it. Mostly because I’m a vegetarian and have forgotten how delightful a sizzling slice of bacon can be; regardless of my bacon apathy, it’s been claimed as the key to world peace and the cure for just about any ailment, maybe except fatness. Ahem*baconator*

Other trendy foods/flavours of late are s’mores, doughnuts, salted caramel and chocolate, browned butter, all of which have been blown into food celebrity for good reason. They’re friggin delicious, and many of them are classic novelties reincarnated from the past into fun new modes of eating. This recipe is a prime example of taking a rampant food trend, and finding an innovative way of stuffing it in your face so it can promptly deposit itself on your rear end.

Cookie dough dip. Every little baker’s favourite finger-food, sans salmonella. Happiness.

My sister made this for my other sister’s baby shower this weekend, so I did have to share. Thank god.

We served this up with graham crackers and it was amazing. Little chocolate wafers would be definitely delicious.

I know tomorrow’s the first of May, but I am still feeling the need to curl up with a bowl of soup once in a while! April’s been pretty chilly here in Nova Scotia, and carrots, spuds, and onions are still the main event at my beautiful local Farmer’s Market.

Carrot ginger is like the little black dress of soup recipes, isn’t it? A fave on so many resto menus and food blogs, it’s pretty much always a safe bet! There are loads of variations out there, and I’m sure they’re all just dandy…but this one is better than dandy. It’s the best. It’s creamy, rich, decadent carrot soup. I deviated a wee bit from the original, I used some lovely NS-grown sweet potatoes from Keddy Farms instead of regular spuds, and topped it with cilantro instead of the called for green onions. It’s great both ways, folks!

It’s a recipe that I am borrowing from my boyfriend’s dad, who’s a fantastic cook and entertainer. Bob isn’t scared of a little butter and cream, as is evident here, but let me tell ya. It is worth it. A bowl of this soup, with a dollop of sour cream and a few sliced of green onion, paired with a slice of crusty bread? A full-on cure for those April showers chills.

This week has been bonkers busy. I work in the environmental field and the week leading into EarthDay is always pretty hectic with public engagement events and whatnot!

Work hasn’t been the only thing keeping me busy, though.

My friend Kathy and I have been busting our asses the past few months to make a brainchild of ours come to fruition; we’re starting a business making healthy, mega-delicious granola bars from as many locally-sourced ingredients as we can get our hands on. It’s exciting, and has been really well received by everyone we’ve involved at this point. Our business plan is almost done, I think we’ve done a really good job at dotting ‘I’s and crossing dem ‘T’s!

We’ve been given a huge opportunity to trial our products at an upcoming Yelp! event. All details about it are top secret until after it is said and done but we will have the chance to get some invaluable feedback and networking experience with a crowd of Elite Yelpers. I’m pretty stoked! I will fill you guys in on more details about our biz in posts to come. For now, if you want to check us out, we’ve got a twitter handle @madewithlocal and a Facebook page www.facebook.com/madewithlocal ! You can probably guess our name then, yep, Made with Local. Like, ‘made with love’ but with local. Ahhh?!?! Ya see what we did there? Our branding is rad, and I’m just tickled at how well things are going so far!

So we’ve been juggling prep for this event while working our full-time gov’t gigs, it makes for some exciting, yet stressful times. What is a good way to remedy that stress-case feeling? Wine. Lots of wine. Every-second-night-this-week-a-bottle-of-wine. To myself. Not consumed alone, mind you, but still. A lot more than I’m used to.

My workout routine has taken a bit of a blow in result of all this baking, brainstorming, organizing, and wine-drinking. But today’s a new day! The start of a new week, and this morning when I work up, my body was just dying for some fruits and veggies.

You’ve probably already looked at the picture of this cup o’nutrition and have drawn your own conclusions. Don’t fear the green. It’s a smoothie, with spinach, and it tastes fantastic. Now you know. You can’t taste the spinach, at all. Not even a little bit. But it adds a fantastic nutritional boost, and just makes you feel like you did a good thing for the ‘ol bod.  What you do need is a blender with some guts. It will pulverize the hell out of those little leaves and whip you up a concoction that’ll replenish all the nutrients and self-esteem lost after an evening of indulgence.

Sometimes come supper I feel like I could eat myself out of house and home. Regardless of how much I ate that day, the odd evening I am so friggin ravenous I want nothing more than to just sit down to a big huge meal!

This dish is a perfect one to quash that kind of hanger. It makes an enormous pile of food, but is really just veggies, mixed with veggie sauce, served atop veggies. I love it, because it tastes amazing, is bursting with flavour and feels like a massive pig out. It’s not! Spaghetti squash is super low-cal and serves as an amazing foundation for whatever sauce, veggies, protein you want to fancy it up with.

If you’ve never had spaghetti squash before, I urge you to spend the $2 at the grocery store and try it. It doesn’t taste like any other squash, really. To be honest, it doesn’t have a ton of flavour on its own, but with spices and sauces it is wonderful. It’s super easy to prepare, too. I often make mine in the microwave because I have zero patience for baking them for 45+ minutes in the oven (it’s a great method, if you have the time).  But I cut mine in half, length-wise, and put one half ( which is about one big fat serving) cut side down in a microwave-safe dish with an inch or two of water. Microwave on high for about 10 minutes. When it’s done, you should be able to pierce through the rounded side’s skin pretty easily. Take it out of the microwave carefully! Turn over the squash, dry it out a bit inside, and scrape the flesh out with a fork. It should get all stringy and spaghetti-like! Success! It will weep a bit of water at first, I usually just take some paper towel and dab it off. No prob. Then it’s ready to be topped, or tossed with sauce!

I love my local bulk store. I can spend an embarrassing amount of time perusing the aisles, taking little baggies of this and that; it’s a great way to try out new spices, grains, flours etc in small quantities until you decide they’re not for you, or that you love them! In which case you can come back and fill your boots for a price that’s usually way better than at the grocery store. You guys know I am a shameless bargain hunter!

The hazard of shopping like this though, is that my very deep kitchen cupboards make it easy to unintentionally  hoard odds-and-ends baggies of nuts, seeds, and other baking supplies. I’ve had a pile building up for a couple of months now, it was time for these misfits to have their turn in my belly.

These little treats take zero time to whip up and have a fluffy yet hearty vibe. They’re completely sans grain, so eat your heart out GF and Paleo folks! Super yummy with tea in the evenings, or even as a pre-workout energy boost!

This post is keeping me occupied while I ride out a minor bought of flight anxiety…it was major for the first hour but I’ve managed to chill out, open my eyes and begin to move around…yeah. I have a ridiculous fear of flying; not so bad that it stops me from going anywhere, but bad enough that I usually calm myself with a cocktail of mild sedatives and a glass or two of wine each flight. It sucks. I fly at least a few times a year, 2011 was a huge travel year for me, where I was lucky enough to hop the pond to Europe on two separate occasions. Big planes, small planes, puddle-hops and trans-atlantics, doesn’t matter. They still make me feel like a complete basketcase in the beginning and a sloppy Desperate Housewife of NS by the time we touch down. Good times.

Right now I’m flying over NY, so about half way home to beautiful Halifax from Orlando. Andrew and I spent 4 days on the gulf coast of Florida and it was an awesome time. The beaches there were fantastic and I ate my weight in fresh seafood and ice cream, and I have a tan, to boot. Mega-successful trip.

In order to get that tan, it meant I had to be in a bikini, aka the most humbling and horrifying piece of material that exists in my wardrobe. For about a week before heading south, I did my best to eat super clean, totally cutting out sugar and being more mindful of getting lots of proteins and fresh veggies every single day. Making a few small changes to my already-pretty-tidy diet can knock off a few bumps and lumps prior to an event that I want to look, and feel really good at.

So the last couple of weeks for me has been a lot of pretty plain foods, foods that are so simple they’re really not worth blogging about. A day in the life of Sheena trying to lose a lb or two in prep for Florida/Wedding/High School Reunion/ etc might look like this:

 Breakfast

½ cup plain rolled oats cooked with water, with flaxseed, chia seed, and cinnamon

3 egg whites

 Snack

1 apple

½ can tuna

Lunch

Spinach salad with assorted veggies, ½ sweet potato and chickpeas

 Snack

½ cup plain greek yogurt with blueberries

Supper

1 serving stir-fried tofu, 1 roasted sweet potato, steamed broccoli.

Yeah…I’m practically about to nod off reading that. Eating clean, whole foods with a good dose of protein at each meal and cutting sugar out entirely really is the healthiest, most sustainable way for me to drop a lump or two! But I might also lose more than a few B vs. B fans if I was posting meals about snacking on a half can of tuna. Ha!

One way for me to spice up suppers after a day of uber-healthy, regimented eating is to jazz up the veggies or protein a bit by playing with spices and cooking methods. I had a little brainstorm to turn that sad little spring turnip from the Seaport Halifax Market into more than just a plate filler. Turnip fries! A mound of turnip fries will have less than half the calories of the same amount of traditional potato ones. They’re a great substitute for the real deal when you’re in the mood for a starchy side!

I whipped up a tasty little dipping sauce inspire by my roommate’s take-out sushi feast that was haunting me on this last day before bikiki-trip take off. A sriracha aioli, made with a dollop of each plain greek yogurt and light hellmans mayo. Yum central.

Thanks you all for keeping me company, we just flew over all of New England together and are now approaching the Bay of Fundy – home to the world’s most powerful tides! Florida was an amazing time and there’s nothing that makes me happier than spending time with my man, but there is certainly no place like beautiful Nova Scotia.

May I please have a moment to gush over a lovely lady that’s in my life? I will stop short of writing a full blown girl-crush confessional on here, but hot damn Tara MacDonald you are a wonder of a woman.

My friend Tara moved here to Dartmouth, NS a few years ago and is half of the dynamic duo that started my neighbourhood cafe, Two if By Sea, just a few streets from my house. This cafe has completely revitalized an otherwise sleepy, and often scoffed-at part of town; by way of coffee that’s in a league of its own and decadent, buttery croissants that deserve their own postal code. Coffee and jumbo croissants are the edible by-products of TIBS, but you can’t put a price, or even a descriptive finger on the feeling of community that Tara, Zane, and their team have fostered in this area.

So in addition to being boss-lady at the raddest cafe, east of anywhere, Tara has been busting her skinny ass over the last year or so in prep to run some serious miles this summer (and bike, and swim…girl’s got a 1/2 marathon and two triathalons coming up!). She is training like a madwoman and is a full-fledged athlete, all in the name of a cause that is seriously close to her heart.

First up for her is the Bluenose 1/2 Marathon in May in support of cancer research, as part of  Team in Training. She’s seen some indescribably strong girlfriends of hers face a cancer diagnosis, and they have whooped ass and beat it. These friends of hers are young, strong, spunky, amazing women that have no idea that they’re an inspiration to every woman I know, and whether they can swallow that pill or not…it’s true. I’ve never met either of the ladies that Tara’s running in honour of, but I have heard their stories and feel privileged to have a friend in common with them. We are all going to be touched by cancer in some way, and Tara is just throwing her big heart full-throttle into the fight against it. So awesome. She’s got $5,000 to raise in the next few months. I don’t have a shrivel of doubt that she’ll get there, but our community is phenomenal and I have a feeling her most recent fundraising endeavour won’t be a hard sell…

One Friday a month, the TIBS crew + local chef/foodie personality Renée Lavallée (aka Feisty Chef) host a gorgeous, yet casual meal at the cafe after it closes in the evening. The setting is intimate and laid-back, simple, yet delightfully detailed, right down to the menu designs and vintage modern table decor. I’ve been fortunate enough to snag tickets to several of the TIBS Family Dinners, each one being an amazingly memorable experience meeting new friends and flavours. Wine is shared with people you’ve never met, as are collective moans of  ’ohhhhh my godddd. This is so. good.’

Am I painting a picture for you here, folks? I hope so.

The next TIBS Family Dinner, held on April 20th, is a special one; all proceeds are going to Tara’s Team in Training fund. It’s $100 a seat, BYOB, 4 courses of amazing food and what I can only imagine will be an space electric with good vibes.

Ladies and gents of Halifax/Dartmouth, open your hearts and bellies to this amazing cause and you will be oh so thankful you did!

For more info or to reserve your seat, get ahold of the lovely lady herself, at:

tara@twoifbyseacafe.ca

xo

So many things have come from me finally jumping into the world of twitter (@B_versus_B). I have gained a whole gaggle of local foodie lady-friends, have had the opportunity to chat with lots of local restauranteurs, chefs, and farmers, and most importantly, have a new venue to share pictures of my painfully adorable pets.

I connected with my new friend Neil Bailey through the twitter and we met up for a coffee to talk business ventures (we’re both in the event planning/outreach/sustainability field) and food. He loaned me his copy of a cookbook that’s been on my library list for a long time – Quinoa, The Everyday Superfood. This book is a mega-score for me! I really do eat quinoa almost every day, so some inspiration on new ways to work it into meals where it might initially seem a little out-of-place is pretty exciting (for me, at least…it doesn’t take much).

This is the first recipe that I tried from the book. I did change the original one quite a lot, out of necessity though, not just for the sake of screwing with it. The original calls for 3/4 cup (presumably uncooked) quinoa and only 4 cups of liquid altogether, yet claims to have 4-6 servings. Hmmm….that math doesn’t really work out. Quinoa usually absorbs about twice its volume of water. I had to add about double the volume of liquid to make this soup the consistency I wanted. Other than that, the flavour and consistency was really great. And, obviously it’s the sexiest bowl of soup you could ever lay your eyes on! Mega nutritious and pretty-as-a-picture. Man, you B vs B readers are really getting me to up my game!