French dip sandwiches

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Just thought I'd share with you another one of our quick meals. This is so easy, probably as easy as a frozen pizza, depending on how you make it. I like warm sandwiches better than cold cuts. Always have, always will. Especially when the cheese is melting onto the sides and the bread is nicely toasted.

With the French dip sandwiches we usually make, I just buy a loaf of Italian or French bread, deli roast beef, sliced provolone, a can of au jus (or beef broth), and an onion (optional). Toast the bread, then add a think layer of roast beef and provolone cheese, toast again open-faced. Heat up the au jus. If using onions, slice and saute the onions until tender. Top them on your sandwich, dip, and enjoy.



You can also use swiss or mozzarella, hamburger buns, rolls, regular bread. You can make it a panini. You could also go fancy and do a beef roast and have slow cooked, shredded beef instead of deli roast beef. This recipe looks really good. I may have to try it that way. But you would also need more prep time for that. One of the first lines in that recipe is, "These aren’t your standard deli-sliced roast beef French dip sandwiches"...so there ya go!

Not your typical pizza

I LOVE goat cheese. In fact, I just love cheese.

One of the easy meals we do on a regular basis is "homemade" pizza. When I have extra time, I'll make the crust, but when I don't (which is common), I buy the refrigerated dough in a tube. We usually do toppings like pepperoni, mushrooms, red peppers, green peppers, ham, pineapple, corn (if we want to feel like we're back in Venezuela), and of course, cheese. The toppings are all based on what's available in the kitchen.

In October, we went to San Diego for the weekend to visit Brad and welcome him home to the USA (from Afghanistan). We went to his friend's house and discovered she was practically a gourmet chef. We had delicious gourmet food, including pizzas on the grill! (I definitely want to try this.) One of the pizzas was fig, prosciutto, and goat cheese, among other things like a grilled rack of lamb with spicy brown mustard sauce, wine, and Italian sausage on rolls with sauteed veggies.

So, I recreated this pizza a couple months ago when Amy visited, adding baby arugula, and again enjoyed the mix of flavors--sweet, salty, and peppery.

There's really not much of a recipe. For the crust, I used the refrigerated dough. I flattened it out on wax paper, let it sit for a few minutes. Then, I put some corn meal on a Pampered Chef stone, and put it in the oven to cook for a couple minutes. I took it out before it started browning and brushed it with olive oil. Then I added the toppings: dried figs quartered, prosciutto sliced, and chunks of goat cheese. I threw it in the oven for about 15 minutes. When I took it out, I threw on some baby arugula and enjoyed it!

Back to cheese...because I'm a nerd who loves the dairy section of the food pyramid, I have read about it on the web. I can't believe how MANY types of cheese there are. I want to try to make my own cheese. I heard ricotta is not hard to make. Maybe yogurt too. ...This summer?