Coffee and Cannolis

So, I have my homepage set up to iGoogle and one of my tabs is a cooking tab.... I customized the tab to have my google reader, daily recipes, etc. and one of the daily recipes a few weeks ago was "Beer Pizza". I like beer, I like pizza, so I was intrigued. It essentially sounded like instead of layering the sauce, toppings and cheese, you just made a sauce with the toppings in it and then still topped with cheese. Sounded easy enough - and it was until I took it out of the oven. I was having a hard time rolling out the dough and apparently it was a little thiner in the middle that I thought so I had a heck of a time getting the pizza off the pan. This was definitely an "eat with fork" pizza but considering how simple it was I loved it. I'll definitely make again but I'll pay more attention to how thin I'm rolling the dough. Beer Pizza adapted from: http://www.allrecipes.com/ * I halved everything since I was only making one pizza but below is the fu

Let me start out my prefacing how excited I was for dinner last night..... SUPER EXCITED. I've been battling a cold so even though it was hot out I still felt like I wanted some comfort food. My husband wouldn't want soup so I thought chili. Well, 90 degree temps and my chili recipe didn't sound appealing and I started craving Panera Bread's/Saint Louis Bread Co.'s Turkey Chickpea Chili. The turkey and lighter broth make it more summer appealing. I love this soup/chili so I'd already looked up a copy-cat recipe online so all I had to do was get the ingredients! Well, in retrospect I should have just stopped by Bread Co. and picked up two bowls, or a bowl for me and an Asiago Roast Beef sandwich for my husband. This recipe was really easy to prepare and looked amazing! It wasn't. The only similarities to the Panera soup and this one is the look. After I let it simmer about 30 minutes I wanted to taste it... there was WAY too much chili powder so it had a ro

Melissa over at Made By Melissa has tagged me! Check out Melissa's blog - she has some fantastic looking cakes in there, and lots of delicious looking pastas (one of my many weaknesses!!) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Here are the rules: Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer. What was I doing ten years ago? I was 16 years old so undoubtley I was driving as much as possible. Amazing how things change in 10 years as now I hate driving if I don't need to! Anyway, I digress. It was the Summer between sophomore and Junior year in high school, I had my first job at The Magic House, St. Louis Children's Museum and boy was I shocked at how many children were in St. L

Well, it's not like this was difficult at all, but it certainly was tasty. I don't even really have a recipe for it, I just winged it but I'll post anyway. French Bread Pizza Source: myself - and I'm sure 1000s of others - it's pretty basic but yummy! Ingredients French Baguette, sized to desire (store bought, homemade, whatever - I used a Pillsbury Frech Loaf canister and it was surprisingly good.) 1 clove garlic, cut in half Pizza Sauce - to taste (I don't like a lot of sauce on pizza) Toppings as desired. I used: Pepperoni and leftover Canneloni filling from the weekend Mixed Italian Cheese blend (I used MOzzarella, Provelone, Asiago and Fontina) A little Italian Seasoning to sprinkle on top Directions - Bake bread according to directions - Allow baked bread to cool a little so you don't burn your hand like I almost did! - Split baguette in half - width wise/long wise - rub some garlic on each baguette half - top with desired amount of che

A few weeks ago my husband found out he got the promotion he'd been interviewing for so naturally we chose to celebrate with an awesome dinner out. He chose to go to his favorite steak place - Sam's Steakhouse. The vegetable of the day was Amaretto Carrots. I opted to have a baked potato because I'm not a huge cooked carrots fan but he did get the carrots. Oh.my.God were they amazing. Even I liked them, and as I just mentioned - not a huge cooked carrots fan. I decided to replicate the carrots at home and pair them up with our favorite steak recipe - Steak Mudega. Steak Mudega is a St. Louis style Italian steak that can be found on numerous restaurant menu's around town (as well as Chicken Mudega - same concept but with chicken, duh!,) It's basically steak on steroids - coated with breadcrumbs, a savory wine sauce and melted cheese. If you're ever in St. Louis I recommend you try it (especially if you go to the Hill - the St. Louis Italian neighborhood I will

So, there is a little Italian market & delicatessen near my parents house that makes the most amazing hot roast beef sandwiches that both my husband and I love. When I still lived with the rents they would go there about once a month to get a quick dinner so I would always make sure to be home that night! Not only is the food amazing, I love the market as well. There are a lot of Italian Markets in St. Louis but they're all on the Hill (an Italian area of town) which is fine but they're open shorter hours so I can't make it often. I love to go there though because it reminds me of hanging out with my nonno and going down to the Hill for Salami and Proscuitto and to turn in our recycling! Anyway -the food - sorry! So, anyway, my husband and I love their Roast Beef Sandwiches - Festa Italiano sandwiches to be exact. They use Boar's Head Roast Beef and I'm sure they have it simmering in a thin garlicy gravy or something. Then they use a moist focaccia round and p