Let’s consider this step one of incorporating real food back into my diet.

A week of awesome vacationing/eating in San Diego was directly followed by a week of sickness/sleeping, during which the most solid food I ate was an antibiotic.

Yesterday I was able to stand up long enough to leave the house, so I knew I needed two things:

-a burger, animal style

-a salad that took minimal effort and used some of those veggie type things I’d been missing out on all week.

Oh, and then I made this coffee cured pulled pork for dinner. I’m crazy. I know.

I guess I went into overdrive because I hadn’t really cooked at all this month. Not cool!

But you know what is cool? Summer veggies.

They almost make it too easy.

Gather up pretty much any grouping of summer’s bounty, throw in a bowl with some citrus and you’ve got yourself a meal.

If you can grill said bounty – well now we’re really talkin’.

If not, there’s always your old friend the cast iron skillet. He’s got your back.

I am out-of-control-obsessed with corn right now. It’s too damn good.

I swear, somehow this year’s corn is the sweetest ever! And it costs a pile of pennies! That’s always nice.

This salad would work great for backyard entertaining – it’s easy to throw together and it gives your guests the option to get some kind of health factor in there between all the margaritas and bbq ribs and burgers and whatnot.

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There’s always an exception to every rule, isn’t there?

Normally, I’m a pizza minimalist. I don’t want too many toppings or much sauce. Sometimes no sauce. Throw some thinly sliced asparagus and pecorino romano on a slab o’ dough with some salt and I’m happy. Well, bake it first please. Then I’m happy.

But… BUT! When we’re talking about the BBQ chicken variety, that all goes out the window. I want that pizza loaded with toppings. Loaded I tell you!

In other rule-breaking news: I’m a thin crust girl all the way, but not for this. Not that I really have a choice… Pounds of toppings + thin crust = failure and sadness.

I use my go-to pizza dough recipe for this, which – I’m slightly ashamed to say – I got from… somewhere… years ago. I have no idea where, but it’s a pretty basic recipe; I found a bunch exactly like it while searching for the author. So I apologize mystery person(s), for not being able to properly credit you for this amazing dough recipe.

Rolled out the size of a standard pizza stone, this will make a pretty thick crust. I also use the same recipe to create two smaller thin crusts, or one delicious focaccia on a sheet pan.

For right now though, I’m pretty excited about this loaded, thick-crusted BBQ chicken pizza. So excited in fact, that I kind of forgot the all-important finishing drizzle of BBQ sauce at first. Wtf!!

Thankfully I remembered in time for my second piece. Phew!

That was a close one.

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Well this week was… eventful. Or not, depending on how you look at it. I started it off by pulling a muscle in my back, spent the next few days mostly in bed, then topped it all off with a couple of cooking misadventures. Nothing is more discouraging than throwing away food.

At least I caught up on some reading.

Today, I needed something to lift my spirits: a goooooood brunch. And lots of coffee.

In order to celebrate finding a pretty good burrito place & a Mexican market (with fresh masa! Omg.) within a stone’s throw of our house, I knew it had to be Mexican breakfast hash.

This uses a handful of ingredients that you can find at most grocery stores, and for sure at any Mexican market.

This recipe is best done in a cast iron pan, which will give your potatoes the best color and crunch. I recently had to re-season mine after roasting a chicken on a bed of onions and lemon wedges… um, whoops. If you cook super acidic things in a cast iron pan that isn’t seasoned extremely well, the acid erodes the protective coating. So I ended up with lemon wedge shaped spots of ruin in my pan.

After waiting way too long to remedy this lapse in judgement, my champion of hash, bacon, and general meat searing is finally back. If you don’t have a cast iron pan, let me tell you – it’s the best kitchen investment you’ll ever make. As long as it’s properly cared for, cast iron will last forever.

I serve this up right in the skillet with salsa, limes, hot sauce, and queso fresco to garnish.

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There’s a pattern emerging. It all starts with me cleaning my kitchen. And I mean deep cleaning. The kind where the gloves go on and the stove comes apart. I should mention that this doesn’t take place very often, but when it does it’s always the same thing. As soon as I’m done I get this nagging feeling. It’s clean. It’s too clean. Look at those sparkling countertops just begging to be covered in flour and dough.

Some part of me can’t stand a clean kitchen. Is that weird? It’s nice and all; I just need to mess it back up as soon as possible. So since I completed one of these deep cleaning sessions yesterday afternoon, then went out for dinner… the moment I woke up this morning I knew what had to be done.

Biscuits.

Not your average biscuits either. This recipe calls for an amount of butter that should be illegal. When I first saw it I had to do a double take. Two and a half sticks of butter?! Even the great Ina Garten caps it at 1 1/2. Without doing much math you can tell these biscuits are about as fatty as it gets, but I like to pretend the fresh herbs make it healthier.

I’ve made these herb biscuits several times now with different combinations of rosemary, thyme, chives, sage, and parsley. All were delicious. This morning the only fresh herb I had was parsley, but I also had scallions, which sounded intriguing. The overwhelming urge to flour up my countertops was greater than my desire to go to the grocery store, so I went with it, and I’m glad I did!

Side note: Another thing I didn’t have on hand was buttermilk, but there’s an easy solution for that. Add a tablespoon of lemon juice or vinegar to 1 cup of milk and let it sit for several minutes until it curdles. Poof! Makeshift buttermilk!

Scallions work really well in this since they have a sharper flavor than herbs, which helps to cut through the richness of all those sticks of butter. The resulting biscuit is a tower of light, flaky layers that serve as a comforting accompaniment to breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

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I don’t think I’ve ever made the same stir-fry twice. It’s one of those wonderful things you can make no matter what ingredients are lingering around your kitchen, threatening to spoil before you figure out what to do with them. I dare you to think of something you couldn’t put in a stir-fry.

Actually wait, don’t do that… I know such things exist. But ruling out the obvious no-gos (let’s save the Nutella and puff pastry dough for another time), there are seemingly endless stir-fry combinations you could throw into that wok.

For this round, I used some veggies that I pretty much always have on hand with what has become my go-to stir-fry sauce. The sauce came about one night years ago when I was out of store bought sauce (what was I thinking buying that stuff anyway?) but really wanted stir-fry. So I went to the pantry, threw a few things in a measuring cup, and loved the result. Especially with pork. You probably have all the ingredients for the sauce, but there’s one you might not expect: tahini. You see, I usually pour obscene amounts of toasted sesame seeds on to the finished stir-fry. The tahini adds another level of sesame flavor, allowing me to lay off the seeds a bit.

If you’re new to stir-frying, there are a few things to keep in mind. Get your pan ridiculously hot. Try to chop your vegetables a similar size and shape so they cook in the same time. And the one I had to learn the hard way (over and over): have everything prepped before you put a single thing in the wok. So many times I thought I’d be able to finish chopping a few veggies while the meat cooked, or make the sauce while the veggies cooked, but it always turns into a frenzy of mismanagement. With everything ready beforehand, the  cooking process will be simple and wrapped up in less than 10 minutes.

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