Y’know, like people. 

(This person in particular.  He’s my favorite.)

Catch ya later.

Part 3: Dessert

It tastes even better when you’re not the one who made it.

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One of my most favorite things to order for dessert when we’re out is an affogato — which is vanilla ice cream covered in espresso.  It’s basically like having your dessert and after-dinner coffee all in one.  Also, because it’s a whopping two ingredients, it would be easy to make at home.  Use either an espresso machine (here‘s the one I have) or a stove top espresso maker (I have one similar to this) to brew espresso, then pour over a scoop of good vanilla ice cream (I love Three Twins).

I love French macarons, but I highly doubt I’d ever have the patience to make them.  (Much less make an assortment of them.)  I would love for my husband to come home with a bright assortment of these cookies for a date night to have for dessert — they’re almost prettier than flowers, don’t you think?  Miette and La Boulange make good ones.

Sorry, there aren’t too many ideas for dessert on here — but I’m sure you can come up with some good ideas of what to tell your love to pick up on his way home for date night.  These are just two of my favorite things.  (Hint hint, Kace!)

One of the ways to get around the time in the kitchen/I want to eat more than one thing dilemma, is to create an appetizer spread for your date night.  Appetizers are fabulous, because they’re not too big (allowing you to eat a lot of different things without ending up feeling like you’ve swallowed some kind of large sea mammal), and generally don’t require too much prep time.

Here’s a spread I put together for KC’s birthday last year:

It may look impressive and time-consuming, but it’s really just three main things.

1. Cheese Board

I always start off with a cheese board, because a. I love cheese, and b. it requires zero cooking.  My general rules for a cheese board are to display 3-4 cheeses + toppings + pickled item(s) + bread/crackers.

Cheese: I like to have at least one soft/creamy cheese (goat or brie, generally), one hard cheese (like an aged gouda or cheddar), one semi-hard cheese (like a comte or emmentaler), and/or one semi-soft cheese (like havarti or jarlsberg).

Toppings: I’ll generally do at least one type of meat (turkey, salami, and prosciutto are my go-to’s), tomatoes, and condiments (I love honey with goat cheese, grainy mustard adds a nice kick to semi-hard cheeses, jam is wonderful with certain types of brie, and TJ’s just started selling quince paste — I couldn’t pass that up!).  Other things like sliced fruit, nuts, and roasted peppers are also nice additions.

Pickled Items: There’s something about pickled things that I automatically associate with a cheese spread.  Also, things that are pickled last forever in the fridge, making them easy to keep on hand.  I almost always have cornichons (I’m obsessed) and green olives laying around; but you can always include other types of olives and/or pickled veggies as well (carrots, mushrooms, peppers, etc.)

2. Veggies and Dip

I like to include a vegetable-centered appetizer, to provide a little relief (and peace of mind) from the cheese + carb happenings which generally dominate my table.  My favorite one to serve is crudite with green goddess dressing.

Green Goddess Dressing

• 1/2 cup greek yogurt (I like Fage 2%)
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise (I use full-fat mayo)
• juice of 1/2 a lemon
• 1 anchovy filet or 1/2 tsp anchovy paste
• 1/2 tsp minced garlic
• 3 scallions, tops and bottoms removed, then cut into thirds
• 1 cup packed basil leaves (basically a few handfuls)
• 1 tsp salt
• pepper

1. Using a regular or hand blender, combine all ingredients together, then blend until fully combined and pureed.
2. Serve with any combination of sliced: carrots, bell pepper, cucumber, snap peas, zucchini, cherry or grape tomatoes, radishes… whatever you can think of.  It’s not great with celery though, just take my word for it.

3. Something Hot

Obviously none of the above requires any real cooking, so I like to include something warm to balance out the room-temp cheese plate and cold veggies + dip.  To make things easy on yourself, you could prepare a hot dip which could be served with the same bread you’re using for the cheese plate (artichoke dip yummmm).  Here I made ricotta crostini with prosciutto.

Ricotta Crostini with Prosciutto

• 1 baguette, sliced
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1 tub whole milk ricotta (I think it’s generally 12 or 16 oz)
• 1 tbsp grated parmesan cheese
• 1 tsp lemon juice or lemon zest (use zest if you like it more lemony)
• 1 small bunch mint, finely minced
• 3/4 cup peas (fresh or frozen, defrosted)
• prosciutto (thin slices cut into thirds)

1. Preheat oven to 400°.
2. Lay out sliced baguette in a single layer on a baking sheet.  Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper, turning to coat.  Bake 8-12 minutes, until browned and crispy, turning once halfway through.
3. While the bread is baking, stir together ricotta, parmesan, lemon juice or zest, mint, and peas, adding salt and pepper to taste.
4. When bread is done baking, top slices with ricotta mixture, then top with prosciutto.

Because I’m hungry.

Easy recipes that are just a tad indulgent, but don’t take too long to make.  Let’s eat.

1. Caramelized Onion Pizza with Goat Cheese and Prosciutto
2. Copycat Chipotle Burrito Bowls
3. Chili-Rubbed Salmon Tacos with Apple-Cucumber Salsa and Lime Crema
4. Barbeque Chicken Pizza
5. Margherita Pizza
6. Spicy Summer Vegetable Flatbread
7. Steak and Shrimp with Parsley-Smashed Potatoes and Caesar Salad

Part 1: Cocktails

Let’s get liquored up.

1. Mixed Citrus Margaritas
2. Skinny Mojitos: in a highball glass, muddle together the juice of 1/2 a lime + 1 tsp sugar + a few mint leaves.  Add 1 shot vodka (or gin, or rum) and ice.  Top with sparkling water.
3. The Cuke: in a pitcher, combine and muddle 1 English cucumber, sliced + 3 limes, sliced + juice of 2 limes + 1/2 cup sugar + big bunch of mint.  Add 2 cups gin, then let sit for at least 30 minutes.  When ready to serve, pour over ice and top with sparkling water.
4. Blended Strawberry Lemonade Margaritas: in a blender, combine 1 3/4 cups lemonade + 1/2 bag frozen strawberries + 1 cup tequila (silver recommended) + juice of 1 lime + small bunch of mint + squeeze of agave (optional).  Blend and serve.
5. Vodka Lemon Sparkler: to make sparkling lemonade, combine 1 cup freshly-squeezed lemon juice + 1/4 cup sugar + 5 cups sparkling water.  Add 1 shot vodka to a glass with ice, top with lemonade and serve.

I love going out to dinner.  It’s probably one of my most favorite things to do ever, actually.  I love having KC take me out to some fancy joint where you generally have to wait an hour or more for a table (more time for cocktails!)  I mean, I’ll down a $10 cocktail like it’s going out of style, and then spend 2.5 hours lingering over dinner and deciding whether or not I could possibly fit a coffee and dessert into an already-full belly.  (Spoiler alert: I can.)

But, even with only two people eating, that’s quite the pricey evening.  So, what’s a girl to do?  Cancel date night?  Opt for Fresh Choice over Camino?  Nay nay.

Rather than sacrificing romance (or my taste buds), I decided to have date night at home last Friday.  I’m sure I don’t really need to explain what that means, but I’m going to anyway.  Because it’s my blog and I can do what I want on here.

Power!

Our date night was:

A clean house

Getting dressed up

Flowers from KC

A homemade meal

And fancy booze

Surprisingly, staying in was just as fun and romancey as going out usually is.  You should try it!  Here are my tips:

• Get your place cleaned up (you want to feel like you’re escaping, and not be distracted by the pile of laundry that’s been sitting on the floor since Tuesday)
• Treat it like you’re going out — get dressed up (really dressed up!  Fancy shoes!  Lipstick!)
• If you don’t think your honey is going to show up with flowers, ask him to pick up dessert on his way home
• Put on music, dim the lights
• Splurge on drinks (you’d spend way more if you were boozing it up at a restaurant, so feel free to get a nice bottle of champagne, spring for the bottle of red you’ve been eying, or get fancy and make your own cocktails)
• Set the table with your nicest dishes, complete with stemware
• Make something delicious, but not too time-intensive (you probably won’t feel very romantic if you’re spending 3 hours dicing, chopping, and sweating in the kitchen)

I like to have KC pour drinks and hang out in the kitchen with me while I prep dinner — it’s almost as fun as waiting for a table at the bar, with a cocktail in-hand.  Almost.

Let’s talk about how I can’t spell the word “caramelized.”  I only want to spell it “carmelized.”  Unfortunately, “carmelized” is apparently a. not a real word, and b. if it was a real word, would mean “in the way of Carmel.”  Or so I assume.

I guess it’s because I say “car-mel” instead of “cara-mel,” so my brain is like: “Carmel.  Carmelized.”  (It also thinks that maintenance should be spelled “maintainance.”)

How’s that for a crazy intro to this recipe?  I should write a whole book about it, probably.  Things How I Think They Should Be Spelled, by Chelsea.  #1 on the NY Times bestseller list for sure.

This recipe was adapted from an old Giada recipe — she did something similar with bite-size mini pizzas back in, like, 2006.  I saw the episode where she made those and thought the idea of onions + prosciutto + goat cheese sounded delicious, but the idea of stretching 1,000 two-bite-sized pizzas sounded sort of insane.  So, y’know, I just made it into a full-size pizza.

Also, she caramelized her onions for like an hour.  I did mine for about 15 minutes.  (Because I am kind of really against spending more than about 45 minutes on dinner.  It’s just that I’m really busy and important, y’know?)

Anyway, here’s what you need to know about this pizza: it’s easy to make and people freak out over it.  It’s delicious.  Also, it’s not gluten-free, dairy-free, or vegetarian; and really, it would be difficult to make it any of those things.  Unless you have a good recipe for gluten-free pizza dough.

Just for the record, I’m not diet-restricted in any way, it just happens that a lot of the stuff I make is either g-free, d-free and/or veg/vegan (or easily made that way).  It’s mostly because I refuse to spend a lot of money on meat (and refuse to eat cheap meat.  Ew.)  I like to save my $ for important things.  Like the cheese section at Whole Foods.  Or BevMo.

Caramelized Onion Pizza with Goat Cheese and Prosciutto

• 1 lb pizza dough (from your favorite pizzeria, or homemade)
• olive oil
• parmesan cheese
• onions (2-3 large yellow or sweet onions), sliced
• 1 tbsp herbs de provence
• 1 tsp sugar
• salt + pepper
• goat cheese (about 3 oz), crumbled
• prosciutto (3-4 slices), chopped

1. Preheat oven to 475°.
2. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add onions to heated pan, along with herbs de provence, sugar, salt and pepper.  Cook onions slowly, turning occasionally, until very soft and brown, 15-20 minutes.
3. While onions are cooking, turn out pizza dough onto a lightly floured board, turning to coat.  Stretch dough to desired thickness*, and place on greased baking sheet.  Brush dough with olive oil and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.  Bake 10-14 minutes, until dough is just browned and crisp.
4. Spread onions on top of dough in an even layer.  Top with chopped prosciutto and crumbled goat cheese.  Bake another 8-10 minutes, until prosciutto is slightly crispy and cheese is just beginning to brown.

*While I love a thin-crust pizza, you want to make sure that your dough isn’t too thin for this recipe when you stretch it.  The onions bring a lot of moisture with them, so if the dough is very thin, it can get soggy and fall apart when you try to eat it.

The measurements listed above are all approximations — so feel free to just eyeball it (and save yourself a few dishes)!

1. Thick socks on cold mornings.
2. Warm days when you can have a drink outside with a friend.
3. Watching Penny desperately try to befriend Seuss (paws down, tail up).
4. Watching a movie in bed with Seuss and KC.
5. When mine and KC’s life aligns on a random Tuesday so we can have a long dinner in our newly-finished dining room.
6. Realizing that the upside to this fiasco is getting to buy new bedding.
7. Weekday lunch dates with coworker friends.
8. And on that note — the SF Soup Co. truck that comes down to our neck of the woods.
9. Pizza.
10. This cute scene, which now happens just about daily in our house:

Workin’ hard for the money.

Nothing especially tragic has happened (I mean, there has been zero cat pee on my bed this week, so that’s an improvement).  I’ve stuck to the plan I made for myself over the weekend (to workout and what not); but I feel like I’m just in a funk.  Does this ever happen to you?  Do you have those weeks where nothing is really going wrong, but you just feel kind of grumpy anyway?

I think I need to reset.

Luckily, we’ve got no plans this weekend, so I’m looking forward to doing some spring cleaning (clean house, clean mind) and spending time relaxing with my favorite person and the new puppy (and Seuss, if she decides to make an appearance).

Is it embarrassing that I have to make a plan to relax?  Maybe.  But at least I’m making the effort, right?

So here’s what I’m looking forward to doing over the weekend:

• Indoor date night with KC on Friday, complete with homemade pizza (caramelized onion, prosciutto and goat cheese on homemade crust) plus Belgian beer (or the 2 bottles of champagne that have been chilling in the fridge for over a week now… How did that happen?)
• Walks around the neighborhood with the pup (I actually enjoy getting up at 7am on a Saturday now to take care of Penny, because it means we get to walk to coffee and sit in the sun before the hoards of people swarm Piedmont or Lakeshore)
• Clean up the house (I find it much easier to relax when the house is spic-and-span)
• Go through my closet (right now it’s a jumbled mess, which I think is contributing to the dislike I feel for every item of clothing I own)
• Throw out my old makeup and buy some new stuff…  I’ve got my eye on some statement lipsticks — MAC Ruby Woo & NARS Heat Wave — plus some new blush
• Hit at least one yoga class

Spring cleaning for the house and my brain — sounds like a plan.

What are your plans for this weekend?

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Most of last Monday was a bit of a blur.  Alarm went off at 5:10am.  Up at 5:15.  Out of the house before 6:10 and in to work before 7.  Woooooork.  Drive to the city.  Workout.  Drive to Oakland.  Off to Michaels and Target.  Home at 7pm.

Take the dog out — nothing.  Back inside to start dinner.  Prepare and roast a chicken with carrots and potatoes.  This takes more effort than dinner usually does because I’ve only roasted a chicken twice before.  (One of those times I actually roasted the chicken upside down on accident.  I’m a genius.)

Take the dog out again — success!  #2.  (Sorry, I know it’s TMI, but it’s all part of the story.)  Back into the house, where she promptly pees in the kitchen, partially on the rug I’ve JUST washed the day before.  Clean that up, toss the rug downstairs for laundering.

Dishes, more dishes, Windexing countertops because I’m terrified of getting salmonella from the raw chicken.  Two trips downstairs and outside to take the garbage out because it’s garbage day.

Finally a moment to think.  Set up flowers purchased at Michaels around the house.  Try out some of the Target makeup I’ve purchased — the lipstick is hideous and makes me look like a clown.  Sigh.

Clean up the house a bit.  Feed the dog.  Feed the cat (she does not come down from her perch on our bed upstairs).  Fine.

9pm: Chicken’s done.  Dinner in front of the TV as Penny (the dog) whines at me through her crate.

9:30pm: text KC.  He’s working late, won’t be home til probably 11pm.  Pack up the leftovers from dinner.  Deglaze the roasting pan on the stove to make it easier to clean.  Do MORE dishes.  Set up coffee for tomorrow morning.

Finally, it’s time to get ready for bed.  Crate the pup again, she whines.  Set up the dishwasher to run overnight (since it’s portable and hooks up to the kitchen sink.)  Trudge upstairs and hop in the shower.

All showered, I put on PJ’s, plug in my phone, then remember the dishwasher.  Back downstairs to turn it on.  Back upstairs.

10:30pm: “Good for me,” I think, “getting to bed before 11pm.  I’ll get at least 6 hours of sleep tonight.”  I climb into bed.

Not one second after climbing into bed, I realize the sheets are… wet.  I jump out of bed in horror and start peeling back blankets.  Sure enough — CAT PEE.  EVERYWHERE.

Seuss (our cat), who is both pissed at and terrified of the new puppy, has decided to turn our bed into her personal litterbox to express her displeasure at KC and I adopting our newest family member.  OH.  MY.  GOD.  I grab my phone and call KC in a panic.  He’s somewhat sympathetic, but is on his way home from a 15 hour workday in Menlo Park.  There’s nothing he can do; he won’t be home for close to an hour.

Our house is cold at night, so we’ve got sheets, 3 quilts, a comforter, and a top blanket on the bed.  I rip the top blanket and comforter off first — they’ve probably had the worst of it.  I gather the three heavy quilts and take three trips running them down to the basement laundry room, cursing because I JUST washed them.  They only fit one at a time in our washer, so in goes the first one, along with a healthy dose of bleach.  Back upstairs, I pull off the sheets and ball them up.  They’re new, but they’ve started pilling, so whatever, I’ll just toss them.

I feel around on the mattress pad to see if this mess has soaked through.  It has, but just barely.  I rotate the entire mattress pad (it’s made of memory foam and quite heavy, so frankly, it’s a feat for someone of my size), so the offending area is near the bottom of the bed.  Then it’s back down to the basement to retrieve a rag soaked in bleach — I use this to blot the area on the mattress pad in the hopes that whatever insane chemicals make up bleach will kill any memory of what has happened here tonight.

It’s now time to assess the damage.  The comforter is probably salvageable; but it was cheap and it’s not worth cleaning, so I decide it needs to be thrown out.  I can’t tell if the top blanket was affected yet, because it doesn’t cover the whole bed — ugh, yes, it was.  I grab it to take down to the trash, but somehow manage to grab it right in the wrong spot.  Suddenly I’m aware that the side of my hand is touching something that’s… not cat pee.  OMGSHESHITONOURBED.

Cut to me screaming obscenities followed by enough hand washing that I could probably have performed surgery afterward.  Another call to KC to scream about how Seuss has sh** all over our life.  (I’m super calm and rational when I’m pissed.  Clearly.)  He’s still driving, but do I want him to stop and pick up a new comforter on his way home?  Looking back, I see that this is a very nice gesture, given the circumstances.  In the moment, however, it just pushes me further into my cat pee-induced rage.  My head is spinning, “Where the $%#& does he think he’s going to get a comforter at 11 o’clock at night on a Monday?  Is he INSANE?!“

I scream into the phone, “No!  Just get home!  I gotta go deal with this!” and hang up.  (How awesome does being married to me sound right now?  Super awesome.)

I storm back into the bedroom, where I carefully fold up the offending blanket and cart it downstairs and outside to the trash.

“Omgomgomg this is so disgusting.  Thank God we do not have kids yet because I CANNOT deal with anymore sh** tonight!”  <– literally the only thing going through my head besides an unending string of curse words.

Back upstairs to gather the stupid pee comforter.  Back downstairs and outside to the trash.  Back upstairs to gather the sheets now.  “How many times have I been up and down these stairs since I got home?” I think.  “Too godd@#$ many.”  Back downstairs again, sheets in hand, I open the basement door to the outside to find… a giant skunk in our backyard, not 10 feet away.

I slam the door (I mean, obviously), and then wonder momentarily if it will cause the skunk to spray the house.

“That’s JUST WHAT I F$%&ING NEED RIGHT NOW!”

Fine, leave the sheets to be taken out later.  Whatever.  The house already smells like cat pee.  Who cares.

Into the living room to retrieve a set of sheets I had just washed and folded (thank goodness I was at least on top of that).  This, of course, riles up the puppy whose been crated for the night and was calm before this.  Awesome.

Back upstairs to put the sheets on the bed.  A single set of sheets isn’t going to keep us warm, obviously, which means I need to go scrounging for whatever blankets we have around the house.

Back downstairs to the living room — the puppy is whining with fervor now and pawing at her crate, desperate to be a part of what must look like a tornado of fun to her, rather than a sh**storm of anger.  I ignore her and go through the trunks — an old twin quilt with flowers on it, a small Christmas blanket, a small brown blanket, a full-size matelasse quilt — none of it will really fit our queen-size bed, but it’ll have to do.  I rip the Costco blanket off the couch for good measure.

Back upstairs with my haul, it’s like a puzzle, laying out these mini-blankets to ensure we’ll be covered for the night.  After some strategic layering, I throw the pillows on the bed and stand back to take in my handiwork.

11:30pm.  Not a moment after I’ve finally finished cleaning up the pee fiasco, KC walks in.  He can’t understand why I’m so worked up — it’s over now, isn’t it?  I’m regaling him with the story of the last hour, but he’s tired.  He can’t understand why I’m so mad still, and he’s clearly exhausted from his 15 hour day.  “Why don’t you just go to sleep?” he offers.

“I’M NOT MAD AT YOU, OK?!  AND I DON’T NEED YOU TO TELL ME WHAT I SHOULD DO RIGHT NOW, I JUST NEED YOU TO LISTEN BECAUSE CLEANING UP CAT PEE AT 11 O’CLOCK AT NIGHT IS BULLSH**!!!” I screech at him.

There’s something about screaming, “I’M NOT MAD AT YOU!” at someone that just doesn’t really translate the way you want it to, y’know?

_____

And that’s how my Monday went.