Yet another post without a recipe, but I grilled pizza for the first time today and took pictures, so I thought I’d post them in case it inspires anyone else. I know grilling pizza is hardly revolutionary, but I had a lot of fun and would like to share.

First I lit the fire and let the coals burn until they were mostly white. Although it’s in the mid-90s today, which makes slaving over a hot grill a bit ridiculous, one advantage grilling pizza has over baking it in the oven is it takes the oven and baking stone nearly an hour to come up to temperature, whereas the grill took next to no time. I also wasn’t heating up the house, although I am about to turn the oven on to bake a couple loaves of pain au levain, so I’m not doing so well at keeping the kitchen cool after all.

While I was waiting for the briquets to be ready, I got everything ready on the table. Here are our two pizza crusts on peels; I’ve sprayed the tops of them with olive oil. I used my whole wheat version of Peter Reinhart’s New York style dough. I made my normal pizza sauce: saute crushed garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil, add crushed fire-roasted tomatoes, salt, pepper, and, sometimes, oregano; cook for 10 minutes and optionally puree. I also had Daiya mozzarella ready.

When the briquets were ready, I spread them out, then put the rack on the lower position. Then I picked one crust up and put it on the grill olive oil side down.

I sprayed the top with more olive oil then closed the grill for a minute or two. When I opened it, the crust was bubbling like crazy!

When the crust was firm enough that it was no longer sticking to the grill, I used an aluminum peel to remove it and flip it over onto the wooden peel. it got a bit darker than I’d intended, but I don’t think it matters – charred is good!

I added my toppings to the grilled side …

… and returned the pizza to the grill, sliding it off the peel.

I closed the grill and let it cook for a few more minutes, checking it every minute or so until the bottom was done and the “cheese” was melted.

It was hard to take a picture of the bottom because it really takes more than two hands to hold a pizza up and photograph the bottom of it, at least when it’s too hot to touch, but here’s my attempt at doing so:

Verdict? This was great! There’s room for improvement: next time I’m going to try to roll the dough out thinner, and I might move the rack to the upper position so the pizza has a chance to bake a little longer before starting to burn. But considering it was my first time grilling pizza and only my 4th or 5th time ever using a grill, the results were very impressive, and very tasty. I’m definitely going to use this method for our weekly pizzas whenever the weather allows.

In other news, I’ve had a very productive weekend. I mentioned in my last post that I recently bought a whole bunch of vintage mason jars to store dry goods in and I even posted a picture of my newly organized baker’s rack. Well, yesterday I found a great rack for storing my jars in my favorite antique store – it’s the perfect size for the jars and fits perfectly next to my baker’s rack – and what’s more it was only $24! How awesome is that?!

And here’s that whole side of the kitchen:

Where I had some of the jars on the baker’s rack, I moved them to the new rack. Then I emptied half of my over-stuffed cupboard onto the newly-freed shelf on the baker’s rack, which means for the first time in years I can actually see what I have. I discovered I have three bottles of apple cider vinegar because I could never see the bottles I already had. THAT gave me plenty of space in that cupboard to spread out my canned goods so I can see THEM and so they are not falling on my head when I open the cupboard door. I always feel so good about life when I organize the kitchen! And now that my dried beans are out on display in the dining room, I’ll see them and think to make them more often, in fact, I’m soaking some right now for dinner tonight!

And finally:

I hope everyone has had as nice a weekend as I have! Apparently Torticia has.

Hello, friends. No, I haven’t abandoned the blog – I just haven’t cooked anything new or original in a few weeks, and I’ve been fairly busy. I don’t have a recipe for you tonight, but to tide you over, here’s a personal post. Seemingly ages ago, Zoa at The Airy Way passed on a Happy 101 award to me, which means I have been requested to list 10 things that make me happy. Because I’m very shy – you may not believe it because I do share personal stuff periodically, but perhaps even more shy online than in person – and because I find it hard to believe anyone cares what makes me happy, and actually I bet most of you can already list 10 things that make me happy anyway, I would ordinarily have been happy to “forget” to address this. But for some reason, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. So I’ll do it – I’ll tell you 10 of the things that make me happiest. Mostly I’m doing this to pimp Zoa’s blog, though, because I think she is incredibly creative and she’s always doing amazing things, like making realistic poached “eggs”, and doing mind-blowing things with my nemesis okara. Really, you need to check it out if you don’t already – she has one of the most impressive blogs I’ve seen. I wish she lived in Virginia instead of Canada so she could cook for me!

So, on with my list of things that make me happy. I think you know what #1 is going to be. Really, if you’ve read more than two of my blog posts, you know it’s all cats, food, and books, right?

1. Gomez and Torticia.
   
   And memories of Tigger and Brachtune.
   
   I am awed by how much I love these cats and no matter how bad my day has been, they make it better. More broadly, though, I would say that all animals make me happy. I am far more relaxed going into a home that has pets than I am one without. If I am walking or driving down a street and spot a cat, I’ll point and shriek, “kitty!” like a 3-year old – and if I’m walking, I’ll follow it. Though I’m partial to cats, large and small, bats, and otters, I simply love all animals and being around them or just looking at pictures of them makes me happy. Conversely, though I have a reputation for being unemotional, animals in cages make me cry.
2. That moment when you are reading a book and you realize you really, really like it. Also, every other moment of reading a book. Also, being near books. Okay, books in general. I love reading. I’ve read 78 books so far this year. According to the database I created to log them, that’s 2.29 books a week. Few things in life make me happier then curling up in my reading chair with a book, gazing at my bookshelves, being in a bookstore, or frankly, even ordering books online.
   
3. The smell of: onions sautéing, basil, bread baking, chocolate, lemons, coffee, garlic on my hands (not so much my breath). In general, cooking. Well, obviously. I have a whole blog about it. But it makes me happy. On the rare occasions I don’t make dinner when I get home from work, I’m actually very disoriented. It feels quite wrong to not spend at least an hour in the kitchen every night.
4. Sitting down to a good meal, with wine. Nothing says relaxation to me like dinner and wine. Good dinner, made with fresh foods. It often takes me an hour to eat dinner because I savor it. I love to eat. I love to eat a little too much.
5. Old things. My kitchen is full of vintage Pyrex and antique cast iron. I am distrustful of new things. I want to live in an old Victorian house, filled with antiques and oddities. Not particularly nice antiques, though; I don’t like expensive things. Just well-made, sturdy, unique things with a history. My latest thing is vintage mason jars: I’ve bought a bunch of them to store my dry goods in.
   
   I’ve tried saving jars from food I buy, but I make so many things from scratch I really just don’t accumulate that many jars, especially of the sizes I want, so I’ve been storing grains and things in plastic containers. I have wanted to switch to glass for a long time but thought it would be kind of costly to buy old jars in the quantity I need. Turns out they manufactured so many canning jars in the first half of the 20th century (and earlier) that they are actually pretty inexpensive. It would have been even cheaper for me to just buy a couple of cases of new canning jars, but you know, I didn’t even think of that until I’d already placed bids on old ones. And I don’t care; I just prefer the older ones. Not to collect – I’m not really a collector of anything – in fact, I prefer whatever is common or imperfect just because I’m less ill at ease about breaking it. I just like knowing my jars were used by someone before me. I like it best when I have old things that come from my own family, but it doesn’t matter if I don’t know who had the thing before me. My jars are almost 100 years old. I find that comforting for some reason I can’t explain.
   
   By the way, another cool thing about storing stuff in these jars is they are so pretty I’ve put many of them out on display in the dining room, which freed up a lot of space in my rather small kitchen! And here’s my newly organized baker’s rack in the kitchen:
   
6. That “a-ha!” moment when you are learning something new and it suddenly clicks. I love learning. I love school. I even love taking tests. It’s my life’s mission to collect as many Bachelor’s degrees as I can. I can’t decide if Physics or Neuroscience should be next!
7. The sound of Nick Cave’s voice. The music of Einsturzende Neubauten. The Smiths. Morphine. And hundreds of other bands – music in general, really – but if I need to MAKE myself happy, or sooth myself, I’m certain to pick one of those four.
   
   _{This is me buying a Smiths poster that is bigger than I am, in front of my first car.}
8. This may make me a terrible person, but my car. My non-hybrid, not-particularly-fuel-efficient, non-vegan (it has leather seats, which by the way I HATE, not just because I’m vegan but because they are hot in the summer and cold in the winter – who thought that was a good idea?), lovely little tiny car of joy. It’s a 1995 Mazda Miata that I bought used (the only reason it has leather seats) ten years ago. Driving around with the top down on a warm summer day is one of my favorite things. So is driving around with the top down on a crisp autumn day. Especially so is driving around with the top down on a sunny, fragrant spring day. Winter…not so great for the Miata.
   
9. Taking off in a plane, and any travel by train. No matter how much I travel – and how degrading and awful TSA makes the experience – I still find it exciting to get on a plane. I just love going somewhere new – or familiar – even if it’s just for work. I especially love travelling by train, though, particularly in Europe. Not that I’ve done a huge amount of train travel in Europe, but I’ve done enough to know I love it. If I lived in Europe, I’d be on a train every weekend going somewhere new.
10. Watching TV with Mark (and kittens). No matter how stressful my day has been, I heave a huge sigh of relief when I collapse on the sofa next to Mark to watch the X-Files or whatever we’re into at the moment. I also like coming home together late at night after we’ve been out somewhere and just being glad to be home, together.
    

So, that was way more than you cared to know about me. I had a hard time narrowing it down to ten things. I’ve left so many things out. These, though, are all things I do every day (except travelling), which I guess means I’m one very happy person – who knew? I’m supposed to pass my award on to other bloggers, but I’m afraid I had enough trouble working up the nerve to drone on and on about myself. So I’ll do the cop-out thing and say I award it to all of you: if you are reading this and you have a blog, I really do want to know what makes you happy, so post me a link.

Wow, have I been busy! I was thinking earlier today that it has been a while since I’ve made a post and lamented the fact it seemed it’d be even longer until I’d have a chance to do so, until I decided to make burritos for dinner and realized I could use and then write up my pickled jalapenos! Which I was trying for the first time and which turned out fantastic! So here goes! (I’m addicted to exclamation points today!)

Pickled Jalepenos

1 pint jalapenos
1 small carrot, sliced on the diagonal
3-4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 bay leaves
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp Mexican oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp peppercorns
white or cider vinegar to (just barely) cover other ingredients (about 2 cups)

Place all ingredients in a small saucepan.

Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer until jalapenos are soft, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Transfer to a clean glass jar.

Refrigerate for at least three weeks.

That’s it! The hardest part is not eating them for the three weeks. I actually ended up waiting four, but they were worth the wait.

Tonight I minced up a few …

… and stuffed them into a burrito. They were REALLY good! I don’t know why I’d ever buy pickled jalapenos again.

The second hardest thing about the pickled jalapenos was getting a picture of them that didn’t involve Gomez, who kept getting between the peppers and the camera. This picture was taken with Torticia climbing atop me as I squatted on the floor. SO MANY KITTENS!

Nona, if you’re reading this, I really do think he looks like a baby Crookshanks.

So. In other news. Boston. It’s full of Australians and vegans! Mark and I accompanied this handsome Australian fellow to Boston:

We stayed with a friend Smucky’s known “since birth”, Nick, and I’ve decided that all the Australians I know are the greatest people in the world. I’ve never met an Australian I didn’t love! And on top of that, I met a vegan! This is very exciting because I’ve never actually MET a vegan in real life, other than Mark, who converted after I met him and probably because I met him, and this girl who lived in the apartment above me in one of my places in Baltimore (who was probably my biggest inspiration when I went vegan because I figured if she lived in the exact same place I did and she could do it, I could do it). I’ve ALMOST met other vegans numerous times but this is the first time it actually transpired. Not only that, but Smucks, Mark, and I knew him through Twitter for reasons completely unrelated to veganism. So we met up with him on Saturday and he took us to The Other Side, where I ordered the raw Mock Chicken Salad:

Zach promised to take us to Peace O’ Pie on Monday, which I was extremely excited about, but then it turned out they are closed on Mondays and I shed tears of pain and grief (as we were leaving on Tuesday). Apparently the entire city of Boston shuts down on Mondays. Smuckalert asked us to walk along the Charles River with him so he could take pictures on Monday and I told him it was probably closed. (It wasn’t, but it was very, very, very hot. I thought Boston would be an escape from the heat?!) Zach mostly redeemed himself by suggesting we go to Addis Red Sea instead, which was conveniently located right down the street from Nick’s place, and although it took forever the food was fabulous (although not quite DC Ethiopian fabulous; that’s one thing DC does right). I LOVE Ethiopian food, so I was about to burst with excitement, as well as hunger. I was so hungry and excited, I quite forgot to take a picture of the grub, but I DID take this picture, which I wanted to submit to The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, but it turned out too blurry.

Not too blurry for my own blog though! (Which may soon turn into the Blog of Unnecessary Exclamation Points.) It says, “Hi! My name is ‘MESOB’. I am serving you as a ‘TABLE’. Please do not lean on, I am very fragile.”

Busy upcoming weekend; it may be another few days before I’m able to post again, but I found a vegan grill cookbook in the library, so I’m looking forward to grilling up a bunch of stuff in the very near future and I’m sure I’ll have my camera in hand. Until then, mates, g’day!