Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Onion focaccia and a DELISH simple salad

The idea for this dish began when I opened my fridge and saw this:


"Oh my!" Said I, "That is a very sad looking fridge"!
"We REALLY need to go to the grocery or win the lottery or rob a bank or sell the Monster to Angelina and Brad. What shall I make with errr, nothing?"
As most of you know, I DESPISE raw onion. I don't mind it sauteed and brown and caramelized...but raw is instant repulsion. To cheer up the sad K8 at the state of her barren fridge D takes a big ole bite of raw onion and then kisses her.
Isn't he sweet?
No, he was icky at that moment.
This caused D to have a hysterical fit of laughter and I refused to kiss him for like 6 seconds.

So I had an idea.
An onion themed dinner.
The garden is still producing like mad sooo...who cares if the fridge is bare?

I headed to the garden and pulled a rather HUGE onion and sliced it up...




I was at Target the other day and they had big packs of mushrooms for a dollar each.
I bought all of them.
Needless to say, we've had rice and mushrooms with peas, stuffed mushrooms, mushroom egg breakfast burritos, mushroom risotto, mushroom Swiss quiche, and now....
onion focaccia and mushroom and sun-dried tomato flat bread.
I added a side salad... due to the stupid amount of tomatoes that I now have. Not to mention my peppers and my lettuce.

I then sliced up more and more mushrooms and sauteed them up...




Earlier in the day, I had started the dough recipe in the bread machine.
It's a classic, normal, ole, pizza bread machine dough.
BUT.
I use beer instead of water, and I added oregano, basil, and thyme from the garden as well as some garlic...
mmmm.....
I then rolled it out on the AWESOME bread stone from binl and sinl, M and J....
luuurve said baking stone.
mwah!



After putting the dough in the oven for a quick pre-bake I turn around to grab the wet laundry and head to hang them out on the line.
I then see this...
camera still in hand, how can I resist??

Those be some snazzy looking gams...




After a slight pre-bake of about 10 minutes I load up the two doughs.
mushrooms (duh) and sun dried tomato.
At this point, 3 Forks Ranch smells amazing...
This is the point in the story when I discover my high heeled Monster removing all the ornaments from the tree and "cweaning" them in the tree water.
But, hey~ at least the house smells good.
And then I went and put the Monster up for sale on Craigslist.



Following my Craigslist post of "offer: free holy living terror that loves chicken nuggets, popcorn, Cinderella, Buzz Light Year, and doing everything he shouldn't all while being stupidly adorable and insanely hysterical".... I topped the second dough with the onions and sprinkled with course salt and Parmesan cheese.



Then I popped back in the oven.
And popped a bottle of wine.
And made a sippy cup.
And gave the holy living terror a chicken nugget.
His reply:
"Oh mommmy, is sooo beautiful".



Next up, assemble salad.
Easy peasy
(get it?...peasy...peas?...there are peas on the salad.)
hehehehehe!
I crack myself up.


As I heard D's car roar into the drive I topped the salad with his favorite ranch dressing and some of Little O's croutons. I swear I picked the ones that hadn't be half chewed on.
Took the laundry off the line, swept the kitchen, picked up 396736745867 million blocks.
(btw, WHY! WHY! do people invent REALLY painful and annoying toys for children?)
Is a mystery.
Then I remembered the focaccia!
Oh Blast! (that is probably a nice version of what I actually said).
For those of you that know me...I have kinda a bad mouth.
oops.



Luckily...
It was perfect, crunchy, and tasty.
I drizzled a tad of the AMAZING Olive Oil my parents got me from California when they went on vaca. It is similar to an olive oil of the month club.
I LOVE it.
If you've never had a REALLY great (and often expensive) bottle of olive oil then you are greatly missing out. It's so spicy and smooth you can literally drink it.


Buzz says "Hey Daddy, those my cwackers (croutons)! You shware now! I said now!"
Buzz then used his karate chop action in order to attempt to take Daddy out.
Needless to say it ended in the appearance of the tickle monster who got the best of Buzz.



The End.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

So, I need a baking stone!

Anonymous said...

Awwww!

Can I admit that I don't really know what to DO with foccacia? Do you just eat it like a roll?

So jealous of your garden! We've been wanting to plant one, well...forever, but haven't. Yet.

Elsa said...

That's how our fridge was yesterday. I sent hubs a grocery list while he was at work and his response was, "WOW. Really???" hehe
So what's living in the glass jar with the black liquid????
And the dough sounds yummy. I always try to add different things to the dough, but my family doesn't seem to care for it so I usually just add it to the toppings.

Elsa said...

And did you pop the bottle of wine to make the sippy because it doesn't sound like that.... haha

Elsa said...

*does

Kate said...

I get super creative with my doughs. Sometimes it works...others not so much.

Pop the wine: It's mommy juice and a banana smoothie for Oliver juice. hahaha! We're both happy.

The big glass jar is D's endless supply of unsweet sun-tea. It would be the only thing ever in the fridge.

Miss Tangled in Texas: foccacia is great! It's a flatbread (similar to pizza dough) and you can top it with just about anything you want. It makes a great side dish to a salad and you can use it as a scoop (so to speak ) with rice dishes or even make croutons with it.