Monday Night is Calzone Night!

Scott tends to get on kicks with food where he likes to eat the same thing over and over again for weeks. It got so bad with chicken tacos that his sister (and my former roommate) Laura refuses to ever eat them again. So, one day I bought some Trader Joe's pizza dough and decided to try to make some calzones. They were so delicious that we craved them all the time. Eventually Scott named Monday night as calzone night and we eat them while we watch Big Bang Theory (the best show ever!) and the other CBS Monday night shows (the only shows we can agree on!).


Calzones

There really is no recipe for these, you just throw everything together. I highly recommend the pizza ingredients from Trader Joe's. Their pizza dough, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni and pizza sauce are all excellent and very reasonably priced. The dough is premade and in a bag and can be found in the refrigerated section by the cheese. We use the pizza sauce in a jar, not the refrigerated stuff.



Here's what you need:

pizza dough
pizza sauce
mozzarella cheese
your favorite pizza toppings

If you are using the Trader Joe's dough, divide the dough into 4 pieces. Roll out each piece on a flour covered surface, or you can carefully stretch it with your hands. Layer your pizza toppings, a little cheese and a spoonful of sauce on one half of each piece of dough. Fold the dough in half and pinch the sides to seal. Place on greased cookie sheet and bake according to the pizza dough directions. Heat up some extra sauce to dip your calzone in as you eat it.

Scott likes his with hamburger, onion & pepperoni. I like mine with pepperoni, but prefer just cheese. We usually cook the pepperoni in a skillet first so that they aren't so greasy. I also cook a pound or so of hamburger at a time with some onion and garlic and keep it in the freezer, so it is faster to put the calzones together. Hope you enjoy them as much as we do!



Soft Pretzels

This past Monday, Scott insisted we buy extra pizza dough and try to make soft pretzels, even though we had no idea how to make them. I divided the dough in pieces and rolled and shaped the dough with my hands, but it is so stretchy it was hard to maintain any kind of shape. We brushed them with melted butter and sprinkled them with a little coarse salt. We then baked them according to the dough directions.



Neither one of us cared for them that much. It pretty much just tasted like a buttery, salty breadstick. Later I found a recipe that said to brush the dough with a beaten egg, rather than butter, so maybe we will try that next time.