Month: June 2013

Deep dish pizza is my new favorite food

~ the home grown tomato ~ 2 Comments

Let’s cut to the chase: Chicago deep dish pizza is one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted. I mean, just look at it…

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Since Chicago was our first real stop on the trip, providing a few days of leisure before camping, we decided to indulge in this decadent local treat. Our host
took us Giordano’s for a taste.

I am not sure what I was imagining deep dish pizza to be, but I could not have been more wrong. I think I was picturing a Sicilian sort of thing, with a thick crust. Instead, what arrived on our table was a stuffed pizza. The delicious crust was filled, like a pie, with a melty core of cheese and toppings, about an inch high. All the elements were perfect. The crust was light, sweet and flaky, just thinly lining the bottom of each slice. The sauce was delicious, closer to a thin tomato sauce than a thick marinara (win!).

Both the sauce and crust take a back seat to the cheese and filling, which ooze out everywhere bringing joy with every bite. Here, take a closer look:

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Now, I am a clean my plate kind of a girl, but a slice and a half put me over the edge. Good thing the leftovers made a great room temperature lunch in the road the next day 🙂

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Junk in the trunk

~ the home grown tomato ~ 3 Comments

When I was little, the word “adventure” was used to sugar coat traumatic family vacation experiences. If we got pickpocketed on the metro in Rome, missed our flight to the Cayman Islands because we did not have our birth certificates on hand, or if I passed out on a mountain top gondola ride in Jackson Hole and peed my pants, for example, we were simply “on an adventure.” Between the ages of five and fifteen, adventures for my brother and me involved a lot of crying and temper tantrums. (These vacations were also amazing and life-changing, but when something fabulous happened we were just “on vacation.”

What once was a dirty word, however, has been restored, especially as I reflect on my childhood experiences and realize how wonderful my parents made even ridiculous circumstances. I like to think that their generally nonchalant attitude about proper documentation and the like made me who I am today.

Today I excitedly embark on a new adventure, my first one in a while. Starting right about now, my best friend and I are driving clear across the country. Not only that, but we are training along the way for a 10k in California at the end of the trip. I am telling you this because this will be my first vacation since I joined the blogging world. Therefor, I am taking the opportunity to challenge us to a three week, cross country, car camping, 10k training, mostly clean eating but also mind-expanding culinary extravaganza. I’m sure we’ll come up with something worth sharing in that time.

Stay tuned!

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