A few years ago, my youngest son Mark (who is 11 now) went with me on a re-sale shop excursion. All three of my kids LOVE to go to resale shops with me and find good deals. As we were browsing through The Brown Elephant resale shop, Mark came up to me and had his purchase in his hand. For only $3.00 he held in his small hands a George Forman Grill! I said “Are you sure that’s how you want to spend your money?” He emphatically said yes!
Well, since then I think he’s used it just about every weekend. I joke with him that when he goes to college, as long as he has his George Forman and Ramen Noodles, he’ll be set!
Fast forward to this fall when our local high school held a book fair. There were THOUSANDS of books that were under $2.00, so naturally I went to the cook book tables first. Mark came over and he had in his hands this cook book:
Of course we had to get it! Inside was a recipe for Calzone’s and since today was a VERY cold day in Chicago, we decided to spend a while in the kitchen making totally deluxe lunches.
Once we got started though, I read the recipe, and the dough had to rise for 1 1/2 hours! Whoops, I should have read that first, but after making a quick call to my sister, she said I could still make it and not worry about the rising part.
The dough is:
1/4 oz. of active dry yeast
2/3 cup warm water
1 tsp. salt
1 TB sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 cups all purpose flour
In a glass mixing cup, I added everything but the flour and stirred it around. In a mixing bowl using my dough hook, I placed the 2 cups of flour, then poured the moist ingredients in and mixed for about 3 minutes, or until the sides of the bowl were clean.
This is what the dough looked like. I cut this dough into 4 equal parts.
For each calzone, I just rolled it out as thin as I could. I used store bought pizza sauce, and deli salami and part skim mozzarella cheese. (In the George Forman Recipe, he added, green peppers and onion at this point, but Mark doesn’t like that!)
Place the ingredients on half the dough. Fold over and pinch the edges closed with a fork.
Place it on the GF grill which has been sprayed with Non stick cooking spray and cook 5-7 minutes or until browned and the inside is heated through.
It turned out surprisingly great!
Instead of making a calzone for me, I took half the dough and rolled it out into a 12 inch pizza.
I pre-baked the crust on a cookie sheet coated with Cooking Spray for about 5 minutes.
Then I added the pizza sauce, a few slices of bacon, (crumbled), sliced red onion and mozzarella cheese, then baked it at 375 for about 8 more minutes. Superb!!
I love making my own pizza!!
So, I am glad the Holiday’s are over, back to focusing on my weight loss journey continuing! I stepped on the scale for the first time in about 7 weeks, and I was unfortunately up, but it’s back to work, I’m not going to let that de-rail me!
What are your goals for 2010??
Haha! I’m so proud of Matt for choosing Mr. GF! He may well be a great foodie! You won’t have to worry about him starving with instant noodles in college anymore!
I love Mr. GF too. I use him for everything and anything, even grilling fruits!
Aww that’s the cutest little story! My brother and I always loved thrift stores, too! We also loved foodie gifts as presents. I remember getting shake ‘n pour bisquik mixes as our stocking stuffers and being SO EXCITED we got to cook breakfast! My parents were prob. cheering inside! hehe
That calzone looks great! Also, so much healthier to make it yourself and cook it on the GF w/ just a quick spray of oil! I tried making that dough for Christmas and letting it rise, but I think the humidity, cold/hot, heat? I’m not sure.. but it killed my yeast!! The dough was a horrible, horrible mess! It had to go in the trash – so I like the “no-rise” version better – mmm!
I do like the pizza better, and personally, I have not had much luck with the George beyond the basics of bacon and…. um… I guess just bacon…
BUT, it is just a tool, and once mastered, i am sure it works great.
What a great thing to have a young man interested in food. It will indeed serve him well the rest of his life.
And be very glad he did not discover le Creuset cookware
The calzone looks great, as does the pizza. We have a panini grill, and I find it’s great to make sandwiches with low-fat cheese because you don’t need mayo.
So funny that your son loves his George Foreman – my older son STOLE my grill when he got his first apartment. Looking at that calzone makes me wish I had it back!
The calzone looks great! And I love the story behind it and the cookbooks! 🙂
Love it! For $5 he has a great start to healthy life. Love that you took time to play grill with him!
Now you have me starving!!
I never think to make calzones. Yum!
It’s cool that your youngest likes to cook, or shows interest. When I was a child my grandma bought me a book called Kid’s Cook Microwave, which I still own. A very simplistic book, but it opened up a world of cooking on my own that I had never appreciated.