Sunday Dinner - Pizza From Scratch

Carmen, Kevin, Elyne and I always do "Sunday Dinner" together. We alternate hosting a dinner for each other at our respective apartments. It's a nice way to hang out with each other once in a while. We're all busy people, but this is a nice way to schedule in some time for each other to catch up. I'm actually surprised I haven't done a "Sunday Dinner" post yet. Oh well..this could be a good first one.

Let's go step-by-step with how we made our pizzas!!

1: Prepare the pizza dough! 

I had to borrow some sugar from the neighbor for the dough first.

 2: Prepare the ingredients!

Choppin' up them peppers and mushrooms and whatever else.

Scrambled egg is a GREAT pizza topping. 

 3: Prepare the crusts!

 4: Preheat the crusts a little bit!

Leaning Tower of Pizzas

 5: Spread sauce (which we heated to thicken) and add toppings!

We had assorted cheeses, pizza sauce, bbq sauce, jalapeños, spinach, caramelized onions, mushrooms, Italian sausage, chicken, and scrambled eggs.

 6: Heat up again and bake fully.

It was a lot of fun making 'em with friends and a lot of fun eating 'em. Typing up this post makes me wanna do it again. Definitely gonna have more of these in the future...maybe with other friends and my little cousins.

YUM! 

HORT 105 - Hot Pepper Lab

This semester, I'm taking a Horticulture class (HORT 105 - Intro to Veg Gardening). As you may guess, this is not part of my major. I've got plenty of credit hours to spare, so I'm taking this last year to take some classes that are really out there...just for kicks.

I've always wanted to learn more about vegetable gardening since... ONE) my mom harvests a garden full of veggies every year, TWO) I'm a huge veggie eater.... so why not learn more about this! 

We're currently learning about peppers, and so we had a pepper lab. 

The Lab

Taste a variety of peppers to test how much heat can you handle.

The Peppers

All pepper cultivars/varieties are a part of the Capsicum annuum species, which produce capsaicin oil. This is the substance that makes peppers hot!! Because the spiciness is from an oil, that's why water is not an ideal fix. If your mouth is on fire from eating a spicy pepper, drink some milk or eat some peanut butter because the fats/oils in those products will negate the capsaicin oil's hotness.

As you can see from the above picture, the capsaicin glands are near the ridges of the cut pepper, also where the seeds are. The hottest parts of a pepper are the inner ridges. The mildest are toward the bottom of the pepper. 

Scoville Units

Hotness is measured in Scoville units. What does this mean? It's the amount of sugar water needed until it's not hot anymore. 

Green Bell Pepper - 0 Scovilles

Anaheim - 500 to 2000 Scovilles <-- I died at this level.

Jalapeño - 3500 to 8000 Scovilles

Habanero - 200 thousand to 350 thousand

Bhut Jolokia - 1 million

Pure Capsaicin - 15 million <--Don't touch this!

[FAILED 365] Bike Co-Op

[[Today, I officially declare that I have failed my 365 (posting everyday for one year). I will restart some other day.]]

Well, it was my first day volunteering at the bike co-op, & it was pretty interesting. I really liked the environment there. It's a really friendly environment, and we're all just helping each other out and learning from one another.

I just menial shiz. I spent maybe 3 hours cutting spokes out of old rims, fixing flats, and getting rid of rims that were really untrued and/or rusty. Menial--but still fun!

I'm looking forward to volunteering here more in the future.