Category Archives: Dinner

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.

Chicken Adobo for the soul

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Chicken Adobo with sauteed Bok Choy and Jasmine rice.

Last week I wrote how I felt burned out, despite my life being really privileged and easy compared to others. Coming into 2020, my goals were to continue my journey of personal transformation into the person I want to be. It’s been a difficult year for all of us in the world. Corona virus or not, that is life. I am discovering the things I need to work on, and building on my strengths. This doesn’t end for any of us. So, in order to continue to grow, I’m going back to what I am good at, which is cooking. Like walking, everyone has to learn how to cook. Despite growing up in a family of cooks, I wasn’t interested in it until after high school. Until I was 19, all I knew with cooking was: baking cookies, and making chili. Chicken Adobo was one of the first things I learned in college from my fellow Filipino classmates. This recipe is a comfort food, and delicious any time of the year. Without further ado, here is my recipe for Chicken Adobo (because I know I’m annoyed when people have a personal story before a recipe) :

Chicken Adobo:

Six Servings, Cooking time: 90 minutes.

  • (Metric to imperial notes: 2oz is 1/4 cup; 8oz is 1 cup; 15ml is 1 tablespoon)
  • 3 pounds chicken thighs, skin on;
  • 2oz sunflower oil;
  • 2 large onions, about 1 pound weight, sliced;
  • 2oz grated ginger
  • 2oz minced garlic
  • 8oz soy sauce
  • 8oz apple cider vinegar
  • 4oz apple cider vinegar (Added at the end to hit the right sour notes)
  • 1 quart chicken stock
  • 4oz water
  • 15ml Sriacha hot sauce
  • 15ml chili paste
  • 30 ml fresh ground black pepper
  • 30ml kosher salt
  • 30ml black peppercorns
  • 3oz packed brown sugar
  • 2 bay leaves
  • The juice and flesh of 1/2 lime. (Added in at the end with the 4oz apple cider vinegar)

Nutrition facts label

Source

Start by sprinkling the kosher salt and ground black pepper on one side of the chicken thighs. In a large pot pour in the oil, and set the heat to high.

In the middle of sprinkling the kosher salt on the chicken thighs.
The chicken thighs seasoned on one side. I find it useful to do this while they’re in the package.

Place the seasoned Chicken thighs side down into the hot pan. Carefully place each thigh in the pan with tongs. You want to leave a little space between as seen below so the facedown side is browned. This step is to build flavor from the browned skin.

You want the cooking oil to be so hot that smoke rises. This is what you want to see in the pan after carefully placing the seasoned Chicken in. Note if you place the chicken in with your hands, wash them!

Once the chicken is in the pot, season the other side with the kosher salt and ground black pepper. Cook on high for 8-10 minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, cut the vegetables.

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