Wednesday 20 May 2009

Reason for Absence

Things have been VERY hectic in the Jodsgirl household recently and have resulted in me not having enough time to post anything here on the blog, or spend hours reading the posts on the BBC food message board.

So why have things been hectic I hear you ask?  Jodsgirl has a new job!!!

I had my interview the day before good Friday and was pretty much offered the job, and was told they would call me on the Tuesday to discuss further.  Well that never happened.  I obviously panicked a bit, harassed them a great deal, and they kept coming back to say that they were re-writing job specs, checking things with HR, and they had to advertise internally as well.  All of this was not looking good for Jodsgirl, until I got an email one night about 7pm.  I called them straight away and the next morning got an email to say the job was mine.  I handed my notice in that day, and was released from the place I had worked at for 6 years and 9 months, my first job when I left uni.

Anyway, I have been in the new job since the 11th May and its all going well so far.  But the biggest issue is now that I actually have a job that requires me to do some work, I cannot wile away the hours on the internet updating my blog, surfing message boards and generally trawling for new recipes.  Made worse by the fact I cant go on "personal" websites during working hours.  How rude!  Do they not understand I have a blog to write posts for?!

So there you go.  Ive just uploaded a batch of photos taken in the last two weeks, and as hubby isn't home for another hour I can start writing the posts to go with them.  Sorry again for the absence but in the long run it means a MUCH happier Jodsgirl.

xx

Friday 1 May 2009

Homemade Pizza

I think I have found pizza heaven.  Seriously...I'm in love.  

Whilst checking out Annies Eats yesterday I found a fantastic picture of pizza.  It was that good it had me drooling on my computer keyboard.  We have been meaning to try making our own pizza for a while now but always were under the impression it was more hassle than it was worth.  After looking at Annie's picture and reading through the recipe it all looked fairly simple, and it would be inexcusable to not at least give it a bash.

So ingredients bought hubby and I settled into the kitchen to whip up a culinary masterpiece.  That is where I discovered I hadn't read the recipe as thoroughly as I thought.  We had to leave the dough for 1.5-2hrs.  Well seriously, its dough, what did I think was going to happen with it!  So after palming hubby off with carrots and humus to keep him going we continued with the creating.

Annie's recipe is really easy to follow, both for the dough and for the pesto topping suggestion as well.  Actually we made two things for the first time today, pizza dough and pesto.  The pesto was really well flavoured although we used Pecorino rather than Parmesan as I hate the stuff.  I could have done with more basil, but that's just a judgement error.  

So dough made, pesto blitzed, mozzarella grated we were ready to go.  We decided to follow the recipe and use some cooked chicken and sliced cherry tomatoes, but hubby had to add some chorizo for a little extra zing.

So 12 minutes in the oven and we couldn't wait any longer.  The smells coming from the oven were saliva inducing.  And that's it.  To be honest it probably could have done with another couple of minutes just to brown the cheese a little more, but it was still really good.

See the picture below and head over to Annies Eats for the recipe.  Oh and while you are there check out her fantastic owl cupcakes!