Sweet and Savory Grape Appetizers Inspired by the Costco Connection Magazine September 2024 Issue

 

 I was reading the September 2024 issue of the Costco Connection magazine and I came upon a recipe for Sweet and Savory Grape Appetizers. (When the magazine goes live online, I will add a link to the recipe).  I asked my lovely wife what she thought of the idea and she was quite enthusiastic.  We already had some Jarlsberg cheese in the fridge so I stopped at Costco and bought some grapes, mini mozzarella cheese balls and some salami. My lovely wife has a garden with fresh basil so we were set to try this out.

My lovely wife thought of making two types of skewers: one set with grapes and Jarlsberg cheese and another set with a mixture of cherry and grape tomatoes from my lovely wife’s garden and the fresh mozzarella.  Both turned out to be attractive as well as tasty.

We took these over to our friend’s house for gaming night snacks and they were a tremendous hit.  People liked the mixed of sweet and savory and there were three different food groups in one snack!  

To sum up, these were easy to make, a real crowd pleaser and they had some real variety with just one style of snack. And you can customize them with the cheese of your choice.

We were so impressed with these that we decided that we will take them to our company picnic to impress my coworkers!

Eat, be well and be happy!

Our Best Pizza Ever-Chicken and Artichoke Hearts with Pesto Sauce and Fresh Mozzarella

We have made a lot of pizza at home over the years and with the current pandemic we have been make it about every other week lately.  We do a lot of pepperoni by itself or with a variety of toppings. But we do tend to make two pizzas at a time and we also go for some variety.  We had some chicken in the freezer that I pulled out for the meat on the second pizza.  For a crust, I made our extremely reliable and easy recipe from Tyler Florence.

For a sauce on the pizza we used the Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto.  

Here is the crust with the pesto on it:

I add some Artichoke Hearts from Costco.

After adding the chicken the pizza is starting to look pretty good!

Finally, I add the Belgioioso Fresh Mozzarella and it goes in the oven with its companion pepperoni based pizza.

Bake it until it is golden brown and delicious and you end up with this magnificent pizza.

The pesto sauce gives a very different cheesy, herbal flavor versus the more typical marinara sauce.  Chicken as a meat is a good match for the other major topping of the artichoke hearts.  Finally, the fresh mozzarella completes the profile of brighter, less heavy flavors.

As I said, we tend to make a lot of pizza.  We always have enjoyed what we have made but this one really stands out as the best pizza we have ever made.  And with all the quality ingredients we get from Costco at a great price it is really easy and affordable to make.

I absolutely recommend getting some pesto, cheese and artichoke hearts from Costco and making your own killer pizza like this.

I am really confident you will love it.

Enjoy!

Some Pizza Ideas With BelGioioso Fresh Mozzarella and a New Link

We like making pizza at home fairly occasionally.  We enjoy the ownership of making our own food, the flavor, the fun of cooking and the value.  Sure, we get takeout pizza also, but making our own pizza is something we value and frankly do very well.

I have blogged previously that our preferred pizza dough is from Tyler Florence at the Food Network.        It is a great tasting dough with good texture and it is really reliable. This is important because having the basic components of a dish be of good quality is important.  Another important fundamental item for pizza is cheese.  While we have made pizza without mozzarella, it goes on most of our pizza.  Our preferred choice for mozzarella is BelGioioso Fresh Mozzarella from Costco.

It is a very high quality cheese and at $6.99 for two pounds of it, the price is really right at Costco.  We also like the convenience of it.  It comes in two separate one pound packages which makes it handy to use.  Finally, it is sliced and that saves some hassle and timel.  All in all a great product at a great price.

Recently, we made a couple of pizzas using some homemade marinara sauce (which we will cover in another post) and some various toppings.

One pizza was topped with marinara, pineapple, ham and finally with cheese.  The other was a triple meat of pepperoni, ham and bacon topped with cheese, although my side of it had mushrooms and olives which are not to my lovely wife's liking.

We really enjoyed both of these pizzas.  The Hawaiian style pizza had a sweeter, brighter taste with the glazed ham and the pineapple.  The triple meat pizza was very hearty and also really hit the spot.

Yes, it is sometimes nice to get pizza from your local place, a chain or Costco but there are also the times when making a killer pizza at home is delicious and satisfying to the heart and the wallet.  And as I write this, we are still dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic and this sort of food and cooking does bring me a sense of accomplishment that helps me to deal with the world.

So make some dough, save some dough and have a delicious pizza.  And for more ideas on what to do with BelGioioso Fresh Mozzarella, visit their recipe page that I have added to the link sections.

Take care and be well!

Breakfast, Lunch And Dinner With La Brea Bakery Torta Sandwich Rolls-On Sale this Month

We have enjoyed the La Brea Torta Rolls before and with them on sale this month, we had to buy a package. They are versatile and we had no problem going through the whole package. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner using them and all of the meals were  tasty, easy and affordable.

For breakfast, I scrambled some eggs from Costco, put the eggs on one half of the roll and topped the eggs with Jarlsberg cheese. After a few moments in the toaster oven, I topped it with the second half of the torta roll. The cost of two rolls was $1 and I used four eggs.  Even with the price of the cheese, the total cost for both sandwiches was less than $2 and it took less time then running out to a fast food restaurant. Plus, the flavor was simply excellent.

It has been a while since I have had sloppy joes, so I thought that would be a fun idea. We had ground beef in the freezer from Costco ready to go, so I was part of the way through the dish already. I sauteed some onions with some Christopher Ranch garlic and then I added some chopped tomatoes and a small can of tomato sauce. My wife seasoned it with some dry horseradish and some other spices and we were good to go.

These were pretty darn good sloppy joes.  Using fresh tomatoes certainly made this a fresher, healthier and tastier dish than anything you will get out of a can.  Also, my wife's ideas on seasoning it worked well too.  Plus, we had some leftovers for dinner. 

Speaking of fresh tomatoes, we love them with the Belgioiso Fresh Mozzarella.  So why not make a sandwich with them?  First, we started with a torta roll and put some Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto and some fresh mozzeralla on it.

Then we added some freshly cut meat from a rotisserie chicken.

Next came the tomato.

Then we assembled it and we were ready to go.

Again, another home run of a sandwich that came together in moments and was absolutely delicious. Plus, it was pretty also.

We weren't done with the idea for these rolls though. My wife made a chicken salad sandwich using many of the same ingredients as above, plus some onion.

As you can see, we got some great use out of these torta rolls and they made making  a total of five different meals ( since we got two out of the sloppy joes) easy, affordable and delicious.

Caprese Salad Burger

We love Caprese Salad over the summer with farm fresh tomatoes and that means occasionally we have some leftovers. Recently, we were making mini-meatloafs and the idea came up that we should set aside some of the meat to make hamburgers and use the left over salad with the burgers.

This idea worked very well. It was a juicy burger with some fun and different toppings with very little effort involved. This was a great success and the burger looked so good that I rushed photographing it and just got straight to eating it!

This Labor Day Weekend, I highly recommend experimenting with a Caprese Salad Burger.

Kirkland Signature Chicken Alfredo With Caprese Salad On Romaine Lettuce

We felt compelled to buy the Chicken Alfredo since it is such a great deal on sale. However, we felt serving something on the side made some sense, so my lovely wife made a Caprese Salad on a bed of romaine lettuce.  Aside from being a tasty combination, it was also very pretty.

This meal came together pretty quickly and it had a variety of flavors and textures.  Having romaine lettuce and mozzarella cheese from Costco also made this very affordable.

If you are looking for a way to spruce up your alfredo, I highly recommend this combination.