A New Way to Pizza

One of the most delicious foods on the planet is homemade pizza, but in the summer it's torture to think about heating up your kitchen to cook it.  So instead of kicking on the oven, and heating up the house, why not take your pizza pie outside to the grill.  I found an easy and delicious was to grill pizza (detailed instructions) and it's changed my life.

Here is how I make it happen....   

Turn your grill on and make your pizza crust, but don't leave a raised crust.

Heat up your grill and brush it with olive oil and slide your crust directly onto the hot grill.

Cook the dough for 2-3 minutes, when it's browned.  Take it off the grill and put it on a cookie sheet, browned side up.

Top the pizza, but use a light hand with the sauce, too much will make the pizza soggy and it'll break on the grill.

Apply more olive oil to the grill and put the topped pizza back on the grill, close the top and reduce the heat.  Let it cook for another 3 minutes.  Once cheese has melted slide it onto a cutting board and serve it up!

Keep it Simple...Syrup style

Starwberrey basil simple syrup

Something about summer begs to have a fruity drink with a tiny umbrella in it.  Many of these drinks have one thing in common.  No, it's not a excessive fruit garnish, it's simple syrup. 
I've spoken with a lot of bartenders and it seems all the good ones are making their own simple syrup, so i assumed it was sarcastically simple, like how how you call a big guy tiny.  Then I had dinner with my sister and one of her friends and i realized, it's actually really simple.

Ingredients:

• 1 parts sugar
• 1 part water

Preparation:

1. Bring the water to a boil.
2. Dissolve the sugar into the boiling water, stirring constantly.
3. Once the sugar is dissolved completely, remove the pan from the heat. (Note: Do not allow the syrup to boil for too long or the syrup will be too thick.)
4. Allow to cool completely and thicken, then bottle.

Fun extras-
You can flavor the simple syrup by adding fresh herbs to the syrups while it's cooling before you bottle it. I added strawberries and basil to mine to make strawberry basil lemonade.

 To prolong the shelf life of your simple syrup, add a little vodka (you'll probably do that anyway) - usually between a tablespoon and an ounce, depending on how large the batch of syrup is.