Dark Chocolate Cherry Trail Mix Muffins {Monday Muffins}

Sweet with a crunch, these little gems are a satisfying snack of dried cherries, dark chocolate, and almonds. Inspired by the samples at Costco. What, is it just me who loves to sample?

Please tell me I'm not the only one delighted to eat my way through Costco on a Saturday afternoon.

I don't try every last sample [ewww protein drinks] but I can't help but give many of them a go. When my spouse was buying new glasses we were at Costco several Saturdays in a row. [Shopping, ordering, receiving, clicking, double clicking, returning for replacement, picking up replacement . . . great customer service in the Optical department.] One two of those trips I sampled some dark chocolate cherry trail mix. Crunchy-sweet-awesome! After the second sample I decided I wanted to make it into a muffin, and this is the result.

I got my start making muffins using the recipes from Muffins: A Cookbook (Amazon Affiliate link) written by a couple of classmates of my mom, Joan Bidinosti and Marilyn Wearring. Over the years and the pans of muffins I've become comfortable with the muffin formula to branch out on my own. I like to make a not-so-sweet muffin--¼ cup of sugar in a batch of muffins is fine by me! Due to the added fruit and chocolate this is an extra sweet (by my standards) muffin, but it's still got whole oats and I'd serve it for brunch or an after school snack.

In fact, these muffins went to the Fisher House for a brunch.

For other recipes using dried cherries, please see my Cherry Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient.

Seven Tips for Making Pizza at Home.

Yesterday for lunch I baked 3 pizzas (only 1 tried and true recipe) for 9 other women and you know what I worried about most? My floors in relation to 3 shedding dogs with muddy paws. My countertops and their hard water stains. My dusty wineglasses. My housekeeping-not the food.

I did NOT worry if the pizzas would turn out OK. I make pizza at home so often that I've absorbed many lessons along the way. I figured it was time to share another list of tips and tricks. For my first essay, please see my Pizza Primer.

While thinking about what activity to compare making pizza at home with, the only thing that my brain kept coming back to was breastfeeding. I realize I will be alienating at least 75% of the population with this analogy. If you've got anything better I'd love to hear it. 

#1 Do preheat your oven. A hot oven is magic with pizza dough.

I don't go crazy with the self-cleaning function like I've seen in some recipes. I'm not even sure if my oven has a self-cleaning function to be honest, though Robert Barker, in his never-ending quest for stray cheeseburgers, did show me that the oven has a Dehydrate function.
A temperature of 425 to 450 degrees Fahrenheit is hot enough, but give it a good 30 minutes to an hour at that temperature.

If that will make your house too hot--I'm working on a How To Grill a Pizza post for the summer. I've only grilled 2 pizzas [and they were amazing!] but I need more experience before I can say I know what I'm doing.

#2 Do make your dough ahead of time. Or buy premade dough. This is no time to turn into the Little Red Hen and plant the wheat. Folks just wanna eat, you know.

Making the dough early means that the flour is fully blended with the other ingredients, molecules are enrobed, and all the gluten has had time to develop and relax. [If you're not into gluten, skip to #3. I'm not experienced with GF pizza dough and won't be touching the cauliflower "pizza crust" phenomenon here.] The side benefit of making dough a day or 3 early is that you get several short kitchen sprints instead of one marathon session.

#3 Do use a piece of oiled parchment paper on which you stretch out your dough and top it all nice and pretty.

Using parchment will help you transfer your pizza into the hot oven. This one little trick is worth the price of a box of parchment paper to me. I can make my pizza look amazing and then watch it slide off the peel and onto the hot stone while staying intact. Yes, the pizza joint pros make it look easy to transfer a topped crust into the oven, but that's why they make minimum wage and I make $17/month. I have failed at this crucial step more times than I shudder to recall. Parchment paper saved my babies' ears from mama's cursing in frustration.

#4 Do use anything you think would work on a pizza. 

You never know until you try it! For yesterday's lunch I looked to the preserved vegetables (olives & artichokes in jars and Garlic Scape Pesto in the freezer) in addition to the protein leftover from previous meals (grilled chicken and Kalua pig). Since we like to eat our Kalua Pig with fresh pineapple it was a no-brainer to add some pineapple to that pizza. Boom! Done. Of course you can always make an old standby--classic flavor combinations are classic because the flavors play well together. Keeping a package of pepperoni in the freezer means I'm always up for a good pepperoni and cheese pizza when the mood strikes.

#5 Do NOT buy a pizza peel. 

If you've got a large rimless cookie sheet it will do the same thing, especially if you're following Tip#3 and using parchment paper. Now, if you love making pizza and your happy pizza eaters want to get you a gift--ask for a pizza peel! They are useful to have around. Just not necessary like a stone is necessary to me.

#6 Do ask for help/troubleshooting in the comments below or on my FB page. 

If something isn't working right I'd like to brainstorm ways to make your pizza-at-home experience better. Last week my friend shared that she had no need for parchment paper because she simply pulled her stone out of the oven, spread the crust on it, topped it, and returned it to the oven. Her difficulty came in removing the cooked pizza from the stone. Even though she's much faster in the kitchen than I am [so are sloths. I am slow] the stone cools down enough to cause the dough to not immediately cook when it comes in contact. If a crust is placed on a hot stone it's similar to searing a steak--it will come off easily when it's cooked through. If the stone isn't hot the toppings will be done before the bottom of the crust.

#7 Do use my Visual Pizza Recipe Index (broken down into categories of pizza dough, vegetarian, savory pizzas with fruit, and meat pizzas) for ideas. Do follow my Friday Night Pizza Night Pinterest board for pizza ideas from around the web.

I wish you pizza success.

This post is shared on What's Cookin' Wednesday

Szechuan Asparagus with Ma Po Sauce

Szechuan peppercorns and a spicy Ma Po sauce flavor this fast Spring asparagus side dish.

When you move around a lot, you tend to leave behind more than friends at your last duty station home. You leave behind food--literally and figuratively. In the literal sense, you can't take the contents of your pantry and freezer with you when your household goods are going to spend a month on a boat, nor can you take your Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farmers or their produce. In the figurative sense you leave behind the ready access to foods you've come to love. I have not been able to recreate the Chicken Schnitzel Melba from Mom's Place in Spangdahlem, Germany, a Leonard's Malasada from Honolulu, Hawaii, nor a plate of Ma Po Tofu and Ma La Wonton from the Great Wall restaurant on Logan Circle in Washington, DC.

However, I can make a dish inspired by the flavors of that last one. [Feel free to contribute to the 'Send This Blogger Back to Germany and Hawaii So She Can Experience Some Beloved Dishes' fund and I'll work on the other two.] I picked up a jar of Ma Po sauce at the Cincinnati Asian Market during sled hockey practice, and added Szechuan peppercorns to my Penzey's shopping list. Coupled with my other stock of Asian cooking basics I was set. Except I didn't really know where to start. 

One day at the thrift shop where I work someone brought in a 1970's era Chinese Food Using a Food Processor cookbook by Culinary Arts. As I was tagging it I randomly flipped through and my eye caught the Pork & Bean Curd Szechuan Style recipe. I already knew that Ma Po Tofu had tofu, black beans, pork, and Szechuan peppercorns, so I figured this recipe may be a good place to start. [I should note that I didn't follow that recipe, I just looked at the ingredient list and went off, away from the food processor and the pork and tofu, and did my own thing.]

This spicy asparagus is a great accompaniment to a Spring Chinese meal. For other recipes using Asparagus, please see my Asparagus Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient.