Monthly Archives: October 2021

Lazy Pizza

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Picture of hot pizza, bread pizza

For whenever you want pizza, but don’t have time or the energy to make sauce or crust. It’s still tastes great!

Lazy Pizza

Cooking time: 30 minutes.

4 servings

  • 1 loaf of nice bread. In this recipe I use garlic bread
  • 1 jar tomato sauce
  • 1/4 cup minced garlic
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 4 sprigs fresh rosemary
  • 1 can sliced olives
  • 1 can sliced mushrooms
  • 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese (minimum, I like cheese)
  • Half jar sundried tomatoes
  • Salt
  • Ground black pepper

The key ingredients in this recipe are: The bread, the sauce, and the cheese. Everything else in this is toppings.

Essential garlic bread. A great brand to use for this recipe. I like to buy 3 and freeze them. 1 can of tomato sauce contains about 3 recipes worth

Step 1: bake your bread.

Note, this is only necessary if using a “take and bake”. Skip if using regular bread. You want your bread to have a large surface for toppings.

Step 2: Toppings

Canned sliced mushrooms, canned sliced olives, jar of sundried tomatoes.
Canned goods ready to go.

This recipe uses (canned) garlic, and fresh rosemary, so you want to cook them first.

How to prepare rosemary. The stem isn’t tasty, and only breaks down with long cooking. Therefore you only want to eat the leaves.

Remove the rosemary leaves by pinching, and slide fingers down. Discard stems.

Add the garlic, olive oil, and rosemary to a small pan. Finish with pinch of salt and a couple grinds black pepper. Simmer on low for 7 minutes. The last photo is what to look for. Drain the cooking oil, and set aside. This is now an infused oil.

Step 3: Assemble

Cut bread in half (if using unsliced bread). Spread tomato sauce in an even layer.

  • 1, without sauce
  • 2, half sauced
  • 3, complete.

Add the cooked garlic and rosemary on top of the sauce layer. Spread evenly. I add this now to ensure consistent flavor.

Add half the cheese, then one at a time layer the olives, mushrooms, and sundried tomatoes to the tomato sauce bread.

Add half the cheese, then one at a time layer the olives, mushrooms, and sundried tomatoes.

Add the rest of the cheese.

Step 4: bake at 375 F for 25 minutes

Or until the internal temperature is 165 degrees F when checked with a thermometer.

The finished pizza.

Allow to cool for 5 minutes… (The hardest part)

Thanks for reading! If you made this, tell me what you think!

Jamaican Jerk Pork in an oven

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Cooked Jamaican Jerk Pork in pyrex pan
This is after the pork cooled, and I forgot to take a picture before shredding it.

Jamaican Jerk Pork

Prep time 10 minutes.

Marinate for at least 1 day. I didn’t have time to wait another day this time, and it was still delicious.

Cooking time 90 minutes.

Jerk Marinade

  • 2.5 pounds pork shoulder

Marinade spices

  • 1/4 cup whole Allspice
  • 1T fresh thyme
  • 2T salt
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1 tsp nutmeg
  • 2 T smoked paprika
  • 1 T black pepper

Add the allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, smoked paprika, and salt into an electric grinder. Remove the thyme leaves from the stems. Toss the stems. Add thyme to grinder. Grind to a fine powder.

Picture of spices in grinder
Before grinding. I added the smoked paprika later in the wet ingredients
Picture of jerk spice mix
After grinding. This is the consistency you want for the jerk seasoning. This is without the smoked paprika.

Marinade liquids:

  • 1 cup apple cider vinegar
  • 1/3 cup minced garlic
  • 1/3 cup minced ginger
  • 1/4 cup habanero hot sauce.
  • *Further hot sauce to your spicy food tolerance. This recipe would be 3/5 stars at a restaurant*
Picture of wet spices for marinade
All 5 of these hot sauces combined to 1/4 cup. 4 of these had habanero pepper as it’s pepper.

Add all the liquids into a quart glass measuring cup, and add the ground spices. Mix together. Next, pour the marinade into a plastic Ziploc bag with the pork. Put that bag into a larger container to prevent spills or cross contamination. Marinate in the fridge for 24 hours minimum.

Jerk Marinade and pork.
Jamaican Jerk pork marinating in a ziplock bag
Jamaican Jerk pork in the marinade before it is cooked.


Pour the marinade and pork into the glass pan. The liquid marinade will reduce as this cooks.

Oven shot of Jamaican Jerk Pork, and baked root vegetables
I suggest moving the rack down one layer. I didn’t check before I turned the oven on. The bottom rack is a future recipe 😉

Turn oven down to 370 F for 60 minutes. Or until the internal temperature reaches 180F. Pork shoulder meat should easily pull apart with forks or melt apart when finished.

Picture of Jamaican Jerk chicken in a pyrex pan
This is after the pork cooled, and I forgot to take a picture before shredding it.

Allow to cool for 10 minutes before eating.

I am totally adding Jerk Pork to my favorites list. Apparently you can use these seasonings with most meat/proteins. Jerk seasonings are versatile.

I only wish I bought more than 2.5 pounds of pork. Oh well, I’ll have to cook it again! 😋

Thanks for reading! Tell me what you think in the comments! I’ve been meaning to post more recipes and I have 9 more left as a goal for October.

Whoops!

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This was the only result for "Whoops" in the pexel free photo feature in WordPress. Bird unrelated to post.
This was the only result for “Whoops” in the pexel free photo feature in WordPress. Bird unrelated to post.

I didn’t realize it’s been 11 days since the last post!

My bad! I didn’t intend for this to happen! Sorry!

Life is moving along, and I feel comfortable in this new life. Been in a loop of work, play, sleep, and visiting with cats… Repeat. I have had blogging at the back of my mind… Wondering if I should write about this or that… No, that doesn’t feel right yet, and so on. Hmm, Anxiety. I still haven’t set up or looking for a therapist, despite needing one, because I’ve been procrastinating about health insurance. I haven’t had any coverage for 40 days now. The problem is that my state health insurance finder website doesn’t accept payments, so I have to call the company during business hours to pay… Because I can’t do it on their website… Which I can’t do because they require a plan number before you can even sign up. Ugh.

I had inspiration from this comment:

Picture of a blog comment.
Hope this is okay to share!

Of course! I can write a recipe post! I haven’t had one in a long time, and it’s something I mentioned in

About Me

Therefore… I got an idea. I’ll do ten recipe posts for the rest of October!

Recipes (Boy, this sure is bare… Time to restock the cupboard!)

Finally a blogging/writing goal that inspires me! I’ll do some usual “Life check-ins with the word” posts sprinkled between. (or maybe another form of self torture…. )

I’ve been in a cooking mood again since I took that break. One of my goals is to eat better; another is to cut my expenses since I’ve gone out too often for lunch in the past three months at my job. I’m apparently in the top tier of weed trimmers at work, and though I haven’t had a review yet, I’ve gotten lots of positive feedback from my boss, and new employees come to me for tips.

The recipes…

So tomorrow, I’ll post the first of three recipes. I cook everything first before I post. I haven’t made the first two recipes before. They will be my meals for dinner/lunch, probably for the next week.

First up: Jamaican Jerk Pork…

Picture of an oven with a pan of simmering Jerk Pork, and 2 other glass pans with chopped root vegetables. All roasting at 450 F
Cooking in the oven right now! (Well, it’ll likely be done by the time you read this 😅) Also pictured, a future recipe: Roasted root vegetables with herbs.

This is the first time to my knowledge that I’ve made Jamaican Jerk Pork Shoulder before. I didn’t buy scotch bonnet peppers because I had several bottles of spicy hot sauce in the cupboard, all with a little bit in each container. I can’t eat much spicy food these days as it burns all the way through, but I believe that I made this hot enough, like Jerk spice seasoning is known for. As I type this at 6:33 pm PST, I hope this turns out delicious!

Thanks for reading! I’m thankful you still follow, even though I’ve been flaky.