Not exactly "pan" pizza.

Whoopsies, unless you have a sweet-tooth I guess...

Most college students cannot afford takeout everyday. I know, I'm one of them. As a transfer student this is my first time actually away from home, but I do not live in a dorm, this means I am lucky enough to have my own fully functional and occasionally (with frequent trips to the local grocery store and farmer's market,) fully stocked. Now, I've had some experience in the kitchen, but mostly I just know how to make rice, beans, and soups of all sorts. Being away from home has me missing my roots so the other day I experimented making "albondigas," (meatball soup) a traditional Mexican soup, and it turned out splendidly! I had enough for the week. Which is awesome when you come home after class and you're starving and really just want to eat something quick and take a nap before you have to head back to class in a couple hours.

Last weekend I attempted to make enchiladas. And can I just say Yum! They weren't as great without my Tia's homemade enchilada sauce, but did well in a pinch. But Geez louise what a mess! Stove top enchiladas are not for the faint of heart or those who do not like to clean but would rather not be slobs either.

Not all of my cooking adventures have been so great though. Last Thursday I decided to make brown rice, just a cupful and holy guacamole! That stupid grain took nearly three hours! I usually make white rice which takes about 20 minutes at most but since it's Breast Cancer Awareness month certain items at the store give proceeds to the Breast cancer association and brown rice was one of them. Sure it's great being able to help out and I actually prefer brown rice to white rice but like I said it almost took 3 fricken hours! And about eight 16oz cups of water! Good thing I have Netflix... ahem, I mean books to study.

And the other day( a couple of weeks ago) I attempted a tuna casserole. My roommate barely forgave me. Nuff said.

Today however I ate up the last of my albondigas for lunch and I finished the chicken and enchiladas yesterday and I happened to have the ingredients for a pizza so I decided to make one.
By ingredients I mean that I had pepperoni, mozzarella, canned "tomato sauce" (basically a tomato puree,) italian spices, roasted red pepper and garlic powder and some other salad seasonings that smelled about right and of course one of those pre-made refrigerated pizza can things.
Ok well this is where the trouble starts. Last weekend my roommate opened the refrigerator rather abruptly and the pizza can thing fell out and she just shoved it back into the freezer.
The damn thing froze! It had burst open a bit, and was rock hard when I attempted to open it. I had to break it apart and defrost it in pieces, which was a major pain in the rear let me tell you. Then I had to attempt to make it pizza shaped!

For those of you who have never made pizza from scratch or dealt with a lump of pizza dough that stuff is ridiculous! You spread it out and it shrinks back into a ball. Well luckily I have some cousins who have dealt with pizza on a regular basis and both recommended using flour on the cutting board to help shape it. Lovely. except for one tiny issue. I don't have any flour. My roommate was out at her night class, and it was getting dark, the darn oven was already on and it was too late to turn back now so what could I do? I scrounged around in my pantry and found, pancake mix! Honey-wheat pancake mix to be exact. So well what could I do? I used it! It didn't take much, less than 1/3 of a cup really.

And once I had the dough spread well enough (lumpy as heck,) but even as it would get, I let it pre-bake and made the sauce with all of my  previously documented seasonings, making a rather questionable but tasty concoction all the same. The rest of the baking experience turned out all right and I had no further issues except that the pizza that was supposed to be baked in 18 minutes max took about 30 minutes to bake through. (Maybe my stove/oven don't get hot enough?) It turned out a relative success, but tasted a little bit like pancake, it was sweet in a way that pizza had never been sweet before. But yay for pizza leftovers! now I have lunch for tomorrow and possibly Wednesday unless I get really hungry tomorrow or am too lazy to make breakfast and just eat some pizza. Whateves. That's the beauty of being a college student, we don't really get to be picky anymore. And besides, when you have labs at 7:30am you can't really function enough to care what you're eating anyway.

I guess the lesson for today is don't give up? Learn from cooking mistakes, and keep the kitchen clean.

Seriously, clean dishes after each use, and after every meal; it keeps them from piling up and becoming overwhelming, and keeps the cupboards ready for whenever you have surprise study groups. It also makes cooking and cleanup soooooo much easier. Luckily my roommate and I are both relatively cleanly creatures and we take turns cleaning the kitchen, living room, and dining room every week. Life as a student is much nicer when there aren't huge messes to deal with all of the time. (I guess that's my message of the day.)

Ciao!

Ink_Stained