Pickled Pepper and Pepperoni Pizza (Pizza Night!)

"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers and placed them properly on a pizza."   --my daughter

I love pickled peppers on submarine sandwiches.  They add just a little pop of zing which really perks up even the plainest meal.  It never occurred to me to put peppers on a pizza, however.  I can credit that to Jodi at the thrift shop where I spend money volunteer.  I really don't know if the banana peppers on the pizza we ordered were pickled or not.  I just knew after having a single bite that I had to try my pickled peppers on a pepperoni pizza.

The members of my family are not huge hot pepper eaters, and when a hot pepper plant is producing, it's going crazy.  In most of the farm shares I've joined, we either got no hot peppers or a pint a week.  I used to use a few fresh farm share hot peppers in salsa and donate the rest of the week's haul to the food bank.  Then I tried pickling my own hot peppers.  My spouse took a jar in to work, and I was rewarded with even more hot peppers to pickle!

This summer, when your garden, your CSA farm share, or your spouse's coworker give you even a quart of hot peppers, I recommend checking out Food in Jars.  Marisa's blog really de-mystified small batch canning and encouraged me to try just a give it a try and see how it went.  I used to check the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving out of my local library until I found it red-stickered at a Target clearance end cap.  Score!

Back to the pickled peppers for tonight's pizza.  If you haven't put up pickled peppers, pick up a jar at the store--or maybe there's one on the door of your fridge?  Go see!

Because I loved that pepperoni and pepper pizza, I figured I'd try and make it at home.  I kept it simple with respect to the dough, sauce, and cheese.  This time, at least.  I just let the pickled peppers give that little pop of zing which did really perk up the slice.  A perky poppy pickled pepper and pepperoni pizza.

Five Food Photography Lessons I Learned/Sunny Hello Dolly Bars

Subtitle:  What I've been doing for the past 30 days

Sub-Subtitle:  There is a recipe, too, so if you just want to know how to make these yummy treats scroll down to the end since I'm going to be chatty for a while

taken on the floor of my mother-in-law's dining room

If you, like my mom and a few friends, have been reading this blog since I started last fall you may notice something different in today's post--the pictures. (And dessert, that's a rare thing, too).  Today the choice of recipe is less about using the abundance from my CSA farm share and more about a journey of self-improvement I started on April Fool's Day.

If you're going to improve something about yourself, why not start on April Fool's?

In March, my friend Alanna sent me a link for an upcoming 30 Days to Better Food Photography challenge. Since it started after a visit from my folks' and ended before my spouse's departure, I decided to go for it.  And it was free, so I had nothing to lose by signing up.

I should pause here and comment that in our family my spouse is the photographer.  When he's away I am capable of recording our family's events, but I don't envision the photographs then take them like he does.  See that photo across the banner?  His.  Where I see a droopy sunflower that needs to be thrown out onto the compost heap, he sees a photo opportunity, grabs the camera, and snaps away.

Even though my spouse is the photographer, unless you see me in the photo and/or I mention otherwise, I've taken the photos on this blog.  When I asked him once to take photos he got all George Costanza* on me and shouted "worlds collide".  Okay then.  I would dream up the recipes, make the food, take the photos, and write the post.   I'd then hand the camera to my spouse who would get my pictures into the computer via some mysterious magical process that made the photos I'd taken look as good as he could make them.  Since he's deploying soon I knew that mysterious process would fall to me, and that brings me to my first lesson learned.

dishes don't have to be white for food photos

Lesson 1:  People learn better when they are motivated and the timing is right.

Fish Taco Enchiladas

My dining room table is a battlefield.

I don't mean the battle over homework, though that also occurs at the dining room table, the breakfast nook table, and the Lego table.  I also don't mean the battle for Europe, or orange train cars, or vending cart cards, or goats for women.

Though as an aside, if you want to add more board games to your Game Nights I highly recommend the Board Game Family's recommendations. My spouse, with that site's advice, kickstarted our twice weekly FGNs after years of trying and failing to get a FGN routine going. And these games we play?  Great for adults without kids, too--they are just plain fun, unless you're malicious like my daughter playing Spot It--she always wins.

No, in fact I mean the How To Fold A Burrito Properly battle.  There are 4 of us eating, and we each fold our burritos in a different way.  And of course each one of us thinks we're right.  (My spouse is.) You'll notice in my Mu Shu (ish) Chicken Burrito post that I completely sidestepped the folding debate.  I'm sidestepping it again here, this time by making enchiladas! (I'm sure this says something about my personality or birth order or whatnot, but perhaps it's just that in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter to me how you fold your burrito.  Your sushi rolling is a different story.) I'm sharing this now because it is a tasty recipe and helped me to add variety in the proteins that we eat.

It just makes sense that eating a variety of foods in our diet is best, you know?  My family is fortunate that eating seasonally from our CSA farm share means that the produce in our diet (and that of the composting guinea pigs) is naturally varied.

I mean, I'm not going to the grocery store on Saturday and buying a head of lettuce, a package of tomatoes, a bag of carrots, and a bunch of bananas each and every week all year 'round.  Instead I'm yearning for tomatoes amidst the greens in May and overrun with squash and eggplant in August.  Such is the life of a CSA subscriber!  And that's the way I like it--eating from my CSA farm share appeals to me in ways I never considered when we started 8 years ago. I thought it would be similar when we got part of a cow for our freezer.  And it was, in part--we tried beef tongue tacos and ox tail stew for the first time.

What I didn't realize was that we'd end up eating more beef than we usually do, just because we have it in the house.  I have to work at eating protein sources other than beef--which is why I was tickled to see frozen Swai (aka Pangasius or Basa) fillets for $1.99/pound at the store.  Swai is a white fleshed fish in the "Good Alternative" category on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch website.  Protein that is a Good Alternative, that is a great price, is good for me.

But what to do with the Swai fillets?

I had some leftover shredded cabbage/coleslaw mix, cilantro, Greek yogurt, some of my home-canned salsa verde made with farm share tomatillos and roasted Hatch chiles from the grocery store down the street, and enchilada-size tortillas, so you can easily see why I went in the direction I did here.  While it is technically an enchilada, it's not covered with a ton of cheese and a rich sauce.  The cabbage still had a bit of crunch to it, the fish was firm, the whole dish just worked.  If you have Swai or any firm white-fleshed fish (tilapia, cod, perch and whitefish are all on the approved list of the website) try this twist on the traditional fish taco, avoid the burrito-folding battles, and add variety to your plate.