Hearty Minestrone

Cat: very good at sleeping on the couch.
Not so good at working kitchen machines.

I did not want to go to the Kroger this morning. What I wanted was to stay in bed, and have someone serve me a tray of hot coffee with cream and flaky croissants with jam while I listened to the rain patter on the skylight and read the Sunday paper. Maybe in my next life.
Alas, there was no one but the cat to serve me breakfast in bed, and Mamie was even less inclined than I was to get up and brew a pot of coffee. Plus, she has no thumbs and a brain the size of a walnut, so kitchen tasks are extraordinarily difficult for her.
So, after making my own coffee with milk and settling for a bowl of oatmeal with honey at the kitchen table, I decided to go Krogering anyway. Sunday morning is the best time. The shelves are restocked, and there is no one else in the store to fight you for that gorgeous bag of bell peppers that has just been marked down to $0.99. Or that huge bag of banana peppers for $1.50. And no one is going to arm-wrestle those neckbones away from you, no matter what day of the week it is.

Sausage, Kale, & White Bean Rotini

Sauté the onions.

We always want what we can't have.
When it's summer and 100°, I want cool autumn weather and hearty comfort food. When it's 50° and raining for the 40^th day in a row, I want summer sunshine and red ripe tomatoes.
Somehow my stars aligned, and what I actually wanted was exactly what the weather called for: peasant food on a damp and chilly day. I had a taste for beans & greens, but not the southern standard version (black-eyed peas and collards). This is not really a pasta fagioli, because of the greens, but it is a close relation. The flavors are extremely straightforward, and there's not much in the way of spices or seasoning−there's nothing to be gained here by turning to the spice rack and throwing stuff into the pot (and this is coming from someone who routinely turns to the spice rack and starts throwing stuff into the pot just for the fun of it).

Fastest. Pizza. Ever.

The Canadian Chemist and his lovely wife, the Razor-Sharp Mathematician, bought me a lovely birthday present: pizza stone and peel. The new Physics Kitchen had been without a pizza stone for nine months, and they were pretty tired of hearing my neverending but utterly empty threats to steal a wooden pizza peel from our local.

Simply sausage and cheese.

But my birthday was six weeks ago, and I still have not made a pizza. I know, weird, right? Well, I guess I was just too busy making Pirate Cakes and Emergency Birthday Brownies and Pumpkin Scones and forgot entirely to cook anything which was not dessert in nature. What finally got me in gear was a recipe for crispy, thin, cracker-style crust. I know when I say "Chicago-style," you are going to visualize deep dish from Gino's or Giordano's. But the "Chicago-style" pizza I grew up with (from neighborhood joints like Romeo's, Palermo's, Phil's) was a thin pie, on a crackly-crisp crust made without yeast. For years, I tried repeatedly and failed to duplicate it, until I finally just got on with making pizza on a yeasty, bready crust (delicious enough, but not like home).