Night at Deanna's

A lot of the recipes or food that I talk about on this blog were inspired or tipped by Deanna. She is one amazing cook. Everything is so easy and simple to her. I once said to her, "It's not that simple or easy if there's 15 ingredients in all your recipes." She said I was exaggerating. There aren't that many ingredients, she claimed. So, she took one recipe for example and started numbering off each ingredient. She stopped at twelve and said something like, "Yah yah...".

Anyway, today, I got the privilege to taste some of her cooking again. She said she'll make something easy. (Yes, Deanna's version of "easy"). Homemade pizza. Now, keep in mind that she's Italian. So this is the real deal. (Haha). Homemade pizza dough from scratch. Homemade tomato sauce. Crushing her own home-grown tomatoes and adding her own herbs and spices. It really doesn't get any better than this.

Oh, the aroma that came out of her oven made me so hungry. And the funniest thing to me was how clean her kitchen was. How does one cook with a spankin' clean kitchen like nothing was ever touched or out of place?? For me, I'll have bowls everywhere, utensils stacked high in the sink, and I'll spread everything out all over the counter. Mind you, I try to do a pretty good job of cleaning it all up afterwards. But, in the process...  I'm the tornado that blows through the kitchen. Deanna's kitchen was spic and span. It's like... magic.

She made a total of four pizzas (for the four of us. Yikes!). Ham and pesto. Spinach and Feta. Mushroom. And a pepperoni. Oh, I took the first bite and I surely felt like I died and gone to heaven and back. It was so. Good. The crust was light and thin. Chewy yet lightly crispy. It was perfect. I could have eaten that crust all day. All the toppings were finely sliced or delicately chopped. And the cheese was also a fine layer. All the ingredients seemed to balance. If I could say so... it was almost like an art.

My favorite had to be the ham and pesto. I don't know if it's because it was the first type that I tried. Or because I love pesto. If I wasn't so full after just trying one slice of each, I would have devoured the whole thing. Gee, I wish I had some with me right now. We sat around the dinner table with our pizza slices and chatted about shopping. What women do best. I sipped on  San Pelligrino while Deanna had her Perrier. It was really nice spending a night with my coworkers outside of work. We browsed a jewelry catalogue. Deanna pulled out some of her best finds in clothes. It was nice to have a girl's night.

Then, Deanna whipped out dessert. Margarita Freeze. We've been talking about this dessert for some time now. She's given me the recipe but I have yet to make it. So, she surprised us by making it for us. It's a mix of strawberry and orange frozen with cream cheese. It was so yum. Esp. with the graham cracker crust. Love those. We washed it all down with a big sip of delicious Inniskillin ice wine.

 Umm. Yah. That pretty much sums up a more than prefect night.

If you read this, Thanks Deanna!