Weekend Foodie Warriors – Take 42!

Hello hello, again, Foodie Friends 🙂 Hope you had a great weekend! For this edition of Foodie Adventures, join us for Friday Night Pizza at Brooklyn’s Pizza & Wings, a brand new Colombian Puree Project, and making homemade Rosemary, Roasted Garlic, & Olive Oil bread!

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Friday was a great day for pizza, and the one thing I miss about living in the South is great New York style pizza. Huge slices, a little sweeter tomato sauce, and thin crust – but still thick enough to dunk into things – and not make you feel like there’s a bread stick attached to the back of the pizza.

I remembered finding this place when I was doing research for my Restaurant Updates/takeout food blog (see that link here). I’ve tried some New York style pizza places in the Upstate and I haven’t found one I’ve really liked yet – until this one!!

There were a ton of pizzas to choose from, which all sounded awesome, and Jamie and I narrowed it down to either the Brooklyn Bridge (Italian sausage, pepparoni, ham, sliced meatballs, green peppers, onions, mushrooms, and black olives) or the Manhattan (Chicken, sundried tomato, pesto, roasted red peppers, and parmesean). We ended up going with the former and saving the latter for another visit!

It was the perfect thing to go along with us watching the Parks and Rec Quarantine Reunion Special, which ended up raising over $2.8 million for Feeding America’s COVID-19 relief fund. If you would like to help give to this worthy cause, please visit the link here!

“For every dollar donated to Feeding America through this form, State Farm, Subaru of America, NBC Universal and the “Parks and Recreation” writers/producers/cast will collectively give $1 up to a maximum matching donation of $500,000 through May 21, 2020.” 

Copyright © 2020 Feeding America

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I was contacted a couple months ago on Instagram by a sweet lady named Ximena from a company called Wislla Distribution out of Bogata, Columbia. She loved my blogs about baking, and offered to send me some samples of their exotic fruit purées to try (for free 😁) in exchange for reviewing them on the blog!

The below flavors are what we recieved in the mail:

• Mango
• Naranjilla (see right picture below for detailed description of that fruit)
• Peach
• Strawberry
• Tangerine
• Guava
• And Orange!

These are pure fruit purées, with only natural ascorbic acid (also known as Vitamin C) added to help preserve them, and can be stored at room temperature for up to six months.

This was a lot of purées, even for me, so I ended up tagging in my good friend, fellow food writer, and neighbor Madison to help in our procured purée preparations! 🙌👩🏻‍🍳👩🏻‍🍳

Our initial recipe ideas we came up with are below, so get excited for a lot of new recipes in the near future for this Purée Project! If you have any other ones you could send us for suggestions, message us or leave a comment below:

• Fruit bars & use the purée as filling instead of jam
• Mixed fruit jam/fruit curd
• Dipping sauces or marinades
  • Sweet and sour sauce (over Pork meatballs)
  • Orange sesame sauce for chicken
• Smoothies
• Cookies
• Danishes
• Breads
• Icing
• Cake
• Pies
• Cheesecake
• Cobbler
• Candies/Jellied candy
• Fruit roll ups
• Cocktails

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To pivot a little, if any of you asked me what my favorite Italian chain restaurant is, I’d probably tell you Macaroni Grill. It holds a special place in my heart for a few reasons.

My first two years of college in Maryland, I lived about 30 minutes from home, and just about once a month, my dad would meet me in the middle to come visit and take me out for lunch. The place? Macaroni Grill, of course! My favorite part (besides hanging out with Dad, obviously)? THE BREAD.

Macaroni Grill is known for their famous Rosemary Olive Oil bread, a crispy outside and soft inside, perfect for dipping in that seasoned olive oil mixture. Since I started baking more sweet breads in my bread maker, I wanted to try something a little more savory, and this was the first flavor that popped into my head.

I found this amazing recipe from a fellow food blogger, Amy over at House of Nash Eats, and I had to try it out! You start by roasting a whole head of garlic in the oven – I swear if they made candles that smelled like roasted garlic, I’d be such a happy camper. My whole kitchen smelled amazing!

After snagging some fresh rosemary from Madison’s patio, I chopped that finely and added that to the bread dough, letting it proof overnight. It was so cool to watch the bread slowly rise as time went on!

I’m soo happy with the way this turned out!! It tastes amazing and the fresh rosemary and roasted garlic made all the difference. This is also the first time I’ve cooked with my dutch oven (bought it at Lidl, those things sold like hot cakes!), and it was so fun to use.

I would absolutely make this recipe again, but possibly double it next time and maybe cook it for slightly longer. As I took it out of the oven to cool, it deflated almost, so I’ll have to practice with this more to get the hang of it.

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So how was your weekend Foodie Friends? Do you have any recipe ideas for our new purée project? Sound out in the comments below to let us know your suggestions of what dishes to make or places we should visit next. As always, feel free to like, comment, & share 🤗