A Side of Pizza Pasta

I'm not much of a Summer fan. The heat and humidity don't mix very well with my pasty, fluffy body. I have lived in the South all my life, and you'd think it wouldn't bother me very much anymore, but it's something that I really can't acclimatize myself to, no matter what. So, how do I survive?

By eating that. Cucumbers may be available all year long, but there is something about eating them during the Summer that makes them extra refreshing. The real trick is using Duke's mayonnaise. Nothing else even makes a cucumber sandwich worth eating...but that's just this Southern gal's opinion.

I have found myself falling prey to taking some of the online quizzes that I've seen posted on Facebook lately. On more than one of them, there was a question that asked what food you would choose if you could only eat that for the rest of your life.

Yeah, it's pizza. Without a doubt.
My husband would probably choose burgers, and I can appreciate that, but for me it's pizza all the way. Especially cheeseburger pizza. And double pepperoni pizza. With bacon.
Lots of bacon.

So needless to say that my ears perked up the first time I heard about pizza pasta.  After I read the recipe, I got hooked. I think the idea is brilliant, and I could kiss the person who thought of it! Now that said, while I love the idea of making it into the main dish, I think the idea of trying to incorporate pizza into side dishes is something I can really get behind. So I tweaked things a little bit, and made it a little lighter so I could serve it along with my dinner last week.  It turned out great!

So they make these really tiny sliced pepperonis for salads that would be adorable in this dish...if that kind of thing matters to you. It doesn't matter to me, and I didn't have them anyway so I used regular and chopped them into fourths. You can use whatever cooked pasta works for you. The popular choice from the recipes I looked at I used ziti because it's one of my favorites next to bowtie!

There's no fancy prep here with the exception of mixing all dry ingredients together first before adding them to the pasta. You basically throw everything into the bowl and then put it in the fridge so the flavors can "marry" for a while. The longer this sits the better it is, but I made it a couple of hours before dinner and it was fine. I did end up enjoying the flavors a bit more the next day, though.

This is a great side dish for anything from hot dogs, hamburgers and pork chops to just eating it by itself for lunch the next day. Not that I did that or anything. Especially not two days in a row. I'd never do that.

I probably won't do it again the next time I make it, either.
Except that I totally will...and I just might add in some crumbled cooked sausage.
*sheepish grin*

Cooking, But in a Different Way

So no posts in a long time. I know.
In the past two months, I have....

• Along with my husband, purchased our first home
• Dealt with the unexpected death of my childhood best friend
• Adjusted to being new homeowners and all the stuff that comes with it
• Had three birthdays and Father's Day all in one weekend
• Watched my first niece graduate high school
• I had unexpected dental surgery and subsequent dental procedures that between the two of us has (so far) totaled nearly $3,000 out of pocket AFTER insurance.

It's been a little crazy, to say the least. Not tons of cooking has taken place as of late, unless you count cakes and pies for birthdays and other holidays. I have the absolute BEST recipe for carrot cake. Ever. I say this with confidence. When my father requested this as his personal cake flavor choice for Father's Day...I rejoiced! I also think I may have converted a few of my family members over to the carrot side.

After uploading that picture, I want another piece of that sucker...like right now. It's a good thing that it's just my husband and myself in the house. I am able to deter myself from doing massive amounts of baking due to the fact that we don't need all of that yummy goodness laying around the house for just two people.

So when we moved into the new house, there were several things that we weren't happy with (who the heck paints a WHOLE HOUSE yellow...EVERY SINGLE ROOM?!) I took one look at the stair railing in the split foyer and knew that I couldn't be happy with it. The house had been flipped and completely renovated in a lot of ways...and some of it had been left alone in other ways. Unfortunately, some of it didn't make sense together. This railing was one of those things.

They had refinished the floors in a cherry floating pergo. I like cherry stain very much, although my heart truly lies with the darker woods like walnut and mahogany, which was good since the new cabinets were indeed walnut. I don't even mind the mixture of the finishes, but this railing...oh, this railing...

Honey Oak. *facepalm*
Honey Oak may be my very least favorite wood ever, with the exception of knotty pine. What's funny is that in most of the pictures, you can't really tell there is much difference in the hues of the woods.

Does that help?
Ugh. I just...I can't even.

Soooo...I told my husband I thought it needed to be redone. As in staining the railings cherry and painting the balusters white. One thing to know about my wonderful husband: he's not much of a fan of change. AT ALL. It took me whining showing him photos of what it would look like via Pinterest before he agreed that it would look better. 

Then I told him I was going to do it. I've never done anything even remotely close to something like this before...ever.

That actually went over better than telling him I wanted to change it. Go figure. I suppose that's a compliment. Actually, I think my showing him a blog where a very smart lady did to her cabinets what I was planning to now do to our railings helped win him over. It helped things greatly that we had a whole month from closing until we actually moved into the house, so I got plenty of time to go work on things without worrying about cat hair getting into the mix.

Or so I thought.  Best laid plans and all...

I started with the tools needed for the job. Luckily, there is a woodworking shop near where I live that sold the gel stain, and I didn't have to order it. General Finishes is not something that Home Depot, Lowe's, or even specialty paint stores like Benjamin Moore carries on the shelf.

The color I chose, Georgian Cherry, is a bit darker than the flooring, but I was okay with that. After talking to the gentleman in the store and telling him what I had been reading, he gave me tips to make my job a lot easier: three coats was a bit excessive, 24 hours is enough to let it dry between coats of anything, wipe everything down with mineral spirits before AND after lightly sanding, tack cloth is not recommended because of potential sticky residue prior to staining so use a coffee filter instead because it's truly lint free. Also, Frog Tape is good, but not great. You still get bleed-through, even after sealing it down like it tells you to.

I'll spare you the details of how to put it on and everything else. It was actually very simple, just follow the directions. I just wanted to show you guys how awesome it turned out!

Now, truth be known, I would refinish a railing again any time. That wasn't bad at all, and it turned out gorgeous.

I will never ever EVER paint balusters again. Blocking them off with tape was bad enough, but painting them was a nightmare - and I'm actually pretty patient when it comes to detail work. In the end, I bought plastic sheeting and ended up spraying them. The fumes were awful even with the front door open, but it cut my time down so far that it was worth it. In the future I will just spend the money I spent on paint buying replacement balusters that are already white and replace them. 

A word of caution: you should probably wear a face mask when spraying. Otherwise, don't be alarmed when the insides of your nostrils match the color of the paint. 

Not that I had that happen to me or anything, you know. Surely not.

*gingerly clearing throat*

This may just be me, but I think it changes one's whole first impression as you walk through the front door. It looks cleaner and more updated.

I know, the steps don't match. I know. I can live with that for a while. One day we will replace them to match the flooring, but that is in the future. Right now there are other things we'd like to do first. That and there is a very nosy reason why that project is on hold: 

Meet Gray the Cat. I love her like no other, but there is literally nothing that she won't come over to investigate, sticking her furry little nose in everything! She is the very reason why I may have to childproof my kitchen cabinets. So needless to say, a lot of the inside house work kind of depends on whether or not we can keep Miss Nosy at bay.

So there we have it. Hope you guys like the results as well as I do! Thanks for being patient about the reveal!