Lots of Cooking Firsts

A couple weekends ago we didn't have much planned which hardly ever happens! So we got to spend lots of time together which was awesome! With grad school application deadlines coming up, Greg has been so busy that I already feel like a grad school widow! He still had to do homework and other school stuff but I just used that time to cook some new things which was exciting! When homework didn't need to be done, we watched a lot of Star Wars. We are very excited for the new one! Saturday night I made dinner and dessert and we were so pleased with everything. We had a couple steaks left in the freezer so I planned the meal around that. We had steak, baked potato for me, baked sweet potato with cinnamon brown sugar compound butter for Greg, and I made Brussels sprouts for the first time. I have been hearing all over the place (ok only on Food Network, but I hear it a lot), that if you don't like Brussels sprouts then your mom must have cooked them wrong. My mom hates Brussels Sprouts so I had never even tried them. But I decided to try them roasted. And they were delicious! They were crisp and tasted so good with olive oil, salt and pepper. For dessert I almost always bake cookies or use Betty Crocker cake or brownie mixes because I hate baking normally. But I decided I was going to break in my ice cream maker and try something challenging that would hopefully have a big delicious pay out. I decided to make ice cream from scratch. I was super nervous because I've seen people try to make custards and they don't temper the eggs properly so they get scrambled eggs and I did NOT want that. I did some research and found a recipe for Cinnamon Ice Cream that sounded delicious. It looked hard but not terribly complex. I cut the recipe mostly in half since it was just Greg and me. I steeped the same number of cinnamon sticks in the half and half mixture because I really wanted that cinnamon flavour to stand out. I was able to temper the eggs so I was excited, but I still had to wait for the ice cream to churn before I would know if it was good or not. I also made chocolate ganache to go over the ice cream because I love chocolate and cinnamon! After dinner it was finally time to try it! The ganache was so rich and chocolatey and looked so luxurious. Melted chocolate is one of my favourite things. And the ice cream... Everyone should go make that ice cream. It was so rich, so creamy, the cinnamon flavour was delicious, I don't know that I've ever had a better ice cream before. It was... I have no words. I am definitely going to be using my ice cream maker a lot in the future.

I have been wanting to make pizza dough for a while but I never have time for the dough to rise. I decided Sunday would be a good time to finally try it. I made this pizza dough and instead of splitting it into 6 separate pizzas I just did one big pizza and cooked it in my cast iron skillet at 450 for about 20-25 minutes. I love the idea of pizza because you can put whatever you have on hand on a pizza! I put pesto, ham, cheese, tomatoes, and mushrooms on it and it was delicious! It was hard to wait for the dough to rise, this is why I don't like baking, I'm too impatient, but it was really delicious!