Tag Archives: marinated olives

Pizza Night

We’re having a girlfriend and her young family over for dinner and I thought it might be cool for the kids to roll out their own pizza dough and top it. Also have them make a new batch and take it home.

I think they’re into dinosaurs so will prep all the toppings including cavolo nero or Dinosaur kale, cheeses, other veg and some pepperoni and prosciutto. Of course parmigiano reggiano on top.

It may be time to go to the Italian food store for 00 flour and a few other things. I believe one child is crazy for olives so I’ll make some for here and some to take home. I simply take the olives (I prefer Kalamata) with little brine, drain and add garlic, crushed red pepper and whatever fresh herbs I have on hand and cover it with olive oil. Marinate at room temp for a couple of days and eat the olives and save the oil for cooking.

We love having kids over! All of us including Zoe the dog. It’ll help that my husband makes balloons. We’ll all have a good time and get them home to bed on time as well. Dee

Party Food

We came out west on a 6-month contract, planned to stay in our current housing for up to three months and just celebrated the beginning of our third year here.

So, some of the neighbors have been very kind to us since we arrived and we wanted to toast them for welcoming us to the neighborhood. We held a brief coctkail hour and I made several hors d’oeuvres.

Spicy hazelnuts and almonds
Marinated Kalamata olives (drain olives, add garlic, rosemary, red pepper flakes and cover with olive oil)
Veggies (celery, carrot, cucumber, cherry tomato) with a dip of 1/2 mayo and 1/2 sour cream with s&p, lemon juice, chives
American cheese platter with Beehive farmhouse cheese, Maytag blue and Seal Bay triple creme, all with assorted crackers

I’d tried to prep our dinner to follow the party so caramelized some onions for an hour. The entire house smelled like onions when we arrived home from lunch so I added an onion dish, pissaladiere, the French onion/anchovy pizza. I just had time to make, rise and bake the dough and we had too much of the onions so that was the dish! That was a hit and a couple of guests want to know how to make pizza dough.

It was a success and it was an honor to thank these neighbors (several couldn’t make it) for welcoming us into the community. I always love making food for family and friends. It’s a lot of work but worth it with good conversation and a fun lunch, dinner, brunch or cocktail party. Cheers! Dee