Experimentation and a Pizza Party Weekend

Some time ago I saw on Naomi's blog something that I recall was like roasted chick peas with pumpkin pie spice, so this may or may not have been what she did, but thought this sounded good...so I gave it a try.

Drained off some garbanzos, AKA chick peas.

Then I coated them with pumpkin pie spice.

Baked them in the oven for somewhere between 15-20 minutes, yes I am not 100% sure because I sorta forgot about them while I was busy with other kitchen things.  Here is what they looked like at the end.  They tasted great.  I think they would be delicious on top of a salad.

The reason I almost lost track of time was a direct result of extreme experimentation with a black bean side dish.  I am the guest chef for the base health and wellness center (HAWC) as this is National Nutrition Month and the theme is from the ground up.  We thought a vegetarian meal was in order, so I am making a nice Mexican-ish meal, and I thought black beans would be a nice compliment.

While in the store I was searching out quick and easy, but also healthy.  I noticed many of the canned Mexican style tomatoes were also high in sodium, so I found the low sodium canned tomatoes and then these green chiles.  Instead of almost 400 mg sodium for a serving, it came out to just about 200 mg, although I may need to check that again because I am not 100% sure on the serving size from the chiles.  Oh well, either way, it cut a big chunk of sodium out.

First I put the mostly drained beans in my pan and heated those up.

Then I added half the can tomatoes, mostly drained(so 1/2 can per 1 can beans)...

and then the green chiles, again mostly drained, and then covered and simmered for about 8-10 minutes.  After that I removed it from the heat, kept covered and allowed it to thicken up.

This came out perfectly and I am happy to say I will be doing this in my class.  Of course, the same dish can be made from all fresh and not canned products. 

Boy was I glad my kitchen adventures were successes.

On to the pizza party weekend...

Pizza delivery on the island?  Really?

That's right!  Welcome to Pizza Grill.  We have been meaning to try this forever.  Since we had never tried this, we went there instead, but they confirmed they will deliver to our house.  As far as I know this is the only pizza delivery on the island, other than on the base.

They have a screen showing the menu in the front of their building, so you can walk by and read the menu.

A delivery van...

and delivery motorcycles.  These are my favorite.  This was how Papa John's in Shanghai did it and I thought it was so funny.

Here is the front of the building.

How could I resist snapping a pic of the inside wine display.  Pizza delivery that sells bottles of wine.  We're not in the US anymore!  Oh, and I should mention, the name Pizza Grill is that way for a reason.  The pizza is actually cooked on a grill.

They should really get some designs on their boxes.

We drove it home ourselves.  Open it up...and here is our pineapple pizza, which is my favorite pizza topping.

Up close and personal.  They make the dough longer than the pan and then wrap it up over to form the crust.

That was it for last nights dinner.  Today while we were out, Ryan decided he wanted A Porta, which is, you guessed it, a pizzeria.  It is right off base, so we stopped there after running all our errands.  Here was our starter for the meal, to be consumed with the bread.

Up close...how interesting is this.  It totally tasted like gefilte fish, which is a Jewish dish.

I think this is ham pate, amybe.

Spreadable cheese, gooey and yummy.

The bread.

Ryan really was craving pepperoni, and since I don't eat meat, this was the perfect chance for him to get a small pizza and I could order something other than pizza since I was all pizza'd out.  The black things are olives, I notice it is hard to tell in the picture.

I ordered a salad.  I was able to tell the server in Portuguese that I did not want the onion, and asked for olives instead.  I think it worked!

Then I ordered a cheese omelete.  This sucker was HUGE, and I could only eat half.  Can you believe this was only 2.50 euro, which is about $3.40.

That was a fantastic meal and I am still stuffed from it.  To finish the meal, we had meia da leite, which is like a cappucino type drink.

Two fantastic pizza meals in a row, and we have left overs.  I will say, our plans for from scratch weekends do not include pizza, haha!

Have a great weekend!

QUESTIONS:  What is your favorite kind of pizza?  What is your favorite way to prepare black beans?