Pizza - so simple, so good

The best thing about pizza is that you can use pretty much what you have at home. If you don't have pizza dough (I buy mine pre-made for $1.29, much easier than having to make it), you can use a tortilla or a piece of bread.

While mozzarella is the best cheese, I've used cheddar cheese, feta cheese and various Mexican cheeses - sometimes a combination of all of them.

For sauce, I usually throw on a couple of spoonfuls of whatever open jar of pasta sauce I have in the fridge, but sometimes I'll end up with just a can of crushed tomatoes.

For other toppings I use whatever vegetables I have at home, although I sometimes put some ham and pineapple on it.

Today's pizza consists of a Stop & Shop dough with red peppers, onions, fresh tomatoes, feta cheese, mozz, parmesan, Classico sauce and some oregano. Time to dig in!

A weekend in the kitchen

This entire weekend was spent cooking and baking. First, I made myself a birthday cake - prinsesstårta. Then I spent hours cooking up the best pot of chili I've ever made. For dessert - I figured we should have a backup in case the cake didn't come out well - I made a banana split pie.

I made up the recipe based on a free recipe I had picked up at Big Y. Graham cracker crust, layer of ice cream (recipe called for cream cheese, which I didn't have), layer of bananas, topped with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles (recipe called for pineapple, which I don't like, and Cool Whip, which is pretty artificial).

I threw together some scones with buttermilk, something I never knew existed until about a month ago when a fellow baker in Sweden enlightened me. Still not great - I have to work on my recipe a bit and find out what I'm doing wrong. So this morning I decided to make some "food bread" instead, which are the rolls you see in the picture above.

And since this weekend was Lucia and third of Advent, I figured I had to make lussebullar, so I made a big batch of them as well. Seriously, I spent the entire weekend in the kitchen! But now the house smells really nice...

The toaster oven

A toaster oven is a commonly used item in American households. It is bigger than a regular toaster, but smaller than an oven. Pieces of bread or bagels are placed horizontally (like in an oven), which means you can cook things with toppings on them.

I’ve never really understood the beauty of a toaster over, however. If the bread fits in a toaster, put it in a toaster. Otherwise, use the oven.

Perhaps I’m just not cooking enough frozen pizza or pre-made “bagel bites,” where the toaster oven may come in handy for quickly heating up a small quantity of food. The few times I have used a toaster oven, however, I find that it cooks things very unevenly.

I might also be spoiled with a good-quality gas stove and oven, which heats up within a few minutes and doesn’t waste much energy doing so.

To me, a toaster oven just takes up space on your kitchen counter. A tiny toaster can be tucked away, if you don’t have enough space. And the real oven is already there, built into your kitchen. Why bring another item into the household that you don’t need?

Perhaps you have to be American to understand the toaster oven. My American readers are welcome to post enlightening comments explaining this phenomenon.