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Recipe: Taco Pizza

Cinco de mayo!  Weeeeoooooo!  Chips! Salsa! Tacos! Dos Equis! You ever get a pound of ground beef for making tacos, eat a few tacos and then resume with the margaritas and suddenly your left with half your taco meat and fixins sitting there on the cutting board?  Don't throw them out and let's think about something else besides next day burritos.

Taco Pizza.

Ingredients:

1/4 pound seasoned, cooked ground beef

(if you cooked some onion or pepper into the beef, all the better)

1/4 Can of Goya red refried beans

1 green onion - chopped

1 clove of garlic - minced

Handful of grape tomatoes - quartered or halved

1/2 cup of pepper jack cheese - grated

Few spoon fulls of salsa - optional

One Boboli pizza crust

Okay, so everything's been sitting in the fridge for a couple days and you've sobered up.  You're ready to erase any lingering memories of cinco de mayo and throw those leftovers away.  But with the purchase of a good pizza crust you can make those leftovers into one of the best pizzas you've ever had.  If you have a good pizza stone thing for your oven you can use one of those, fancypants.

[So with your pizza crust or dough out you can get your salsa and splash some of that around.  This is a totally optional move - I've done it in the past and it's been pretty tasty.  It gives the dough or crust a bit of spice.  But the last time I did Taco Pizza it was without the salsa and I didn't miss it a bit.  But if you use a couple splashes of your favorite salsa, you should be in good shape.]

Pre-heat the oven to 450.  This is standard pizza temp.

Next, open up that can of refried beans -- this is key, it is the glue that holds the Taco Pizza together.  We don't have any typical pizza sauce going on here so the refried beans is critical.  Don't get any white-boy crapola either, go for the good stuff (Goya).  Take a spoon and flick the refried beans at the pizza crust, making dollops here and there.  You don't want to cover the pizza in the stuff but you want a good amount -- a half dozen or so dollops.

Now throw the meat around.  Use whatever leftovers you got.  If you didn't cook onions in your taco meat, maybe put in some chopped yellow onion for flavor and texture.  If you like it hot, throw some chopped jalapeno or some sort of pepper in there.

Cheese time.  Grate up the pepper jack and sprinkle it around.  Don't use too much cheese on this -- less than you would a normal pizza.  You want small pools of cheese, not a blanket of cheese.  Just as you wouldn't want your taco swimming in cheese, you want just enough cheese on your slice of taco pizza to give you that layer of flavor.

Chop up your garlic into little bits.  Then sprinkle those bits around the pizza.  I like to get a good amount just on to the rim of the crust.

Let's get some veg in here, eh?  Grape tomatoes are perfect for taco pizza (cherry tomatoes would work fine as well), just cut them in half or quarters so that they'll cook well in a short time.  Spread them around so that each slice will get a coupe pieces or more.  

Finally, the green onion, or scallion.  Take one, chop it up, and sprinkle it over the pizza.  It's like a garnish that will not only make the pizza look more attractive, but also add a nice bit of flavor.

[Additional topping suggestions could include - avocado, black olives, hot sauce, queso fresco - anything that you might put on your beef taco you can try here.  Have fun with it.]

2008 - Year of the Beard & Year of the Clam

The Beard is still going strong (being kept at a either a 6 or a 7 on the trimmer) and as summer fast approaches phase two of 2008 is coming to realization.

Living in New England is also living in Clamtown. Not sure if you knew that. My specialfellow friend has lived in New England all his life and doesn't like seafood. He is not well. It's like living in Arizona and not liking heat. I don't know how he does it--he gets by I guess. Eating a fried clam, is like eating a piece of New England. At its best it's a crispy yet tender, salty salute. At its worst it's a rubbery, uneatable, bitter mess. It's either the best of foods or the worst of foods. Anyway, viva la clam!


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Now this, for the most part, is an exploration of the fried clam. There are one or two places on the map that may not have fried clams per se, but do offer a clam dish and look interesting enough or have enough insanely positive word of mouth that they make it on the list.

I'm not going to even attempt to make it to all of these places or even most of the places. I don't have the money or the time. I'll be trying to hit three or four a month every other weekend probably. Some trips might be exclusives -- like the Martha's Vineyard one, some might be trying to hit two or three in one swing. By and large this is going to be a playing-it-by-ear endeavor.

If you have any hot tips please pass them along. I will be updating the map constantly. This will also be coinciding with me picking up the remnants of last years botched Summer of Putt Putt -- only hit three courses... Sad. I promise this summer will not fail in such a manner. So if you know of any superior coastal mini-golf courses please pass the word along. I really haven't begun to work on the Putt Putt Map (the lack of a good Google Map was a problem to last years failure to launch) but here it is in it's infancy:


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The excitement should begin this weekend with Mike's Clam Shack in Wells, ME and THE Clam Shack in Kennebunk.

The Beard Pt. 5 (Day 60 something)

About two months old. I've been keeping tabs on it with a pair of barber scissors on a semi-daily basis. It's had one professional trim about a week or two ago. I don't know if I'm going to keep it up in the summer. a few weeks back we had some warm, close to 60 degree days and I was not enjoying the thing. But on winter days like today where the wind is blowing damp snow around -- it's perfect.

The Beard Pt. 4 (Day 13)

Yeah, these are yesterday's photo's (today is actually day 14) -- didn't have the time to post them but I don't think too much has changed (I'm not spending .75 to take another 3 pics). The big thing here is at this point I'm really not too sure how much I'm going to let it go before the trimming starts.















I think I'm going to give it one more week to grow.















One of the beard tech things I'm finding out is that it takes some work to keep it the soft texture it was when it was first getting going. I guess when it's still close to the skin it gets by all right -- but the longer it gets the more you have to do to keep it from being razor wire. I use a 3 combo shampoo that has conditioner in it but it might take a little extra help. It's not bad right now. I'm not saying the thing is like razor wire or anything -- I'm just concerned that keeping a proper beard might take me buying some extra product -- which is something I wan't quite calculating.

The Beard Pt. 3 (Day 9)

What an unattractive photo. Oh well, this isn't a vanity project! We're starting to get a bit hairy now, there's definitely some action going on here -- you can kind of see the scar under my chin from my sledding accident. I've read that you're born with a certain number of hair follicles -- it doesn't change -- you don't get more as you grow older. It debunks the old myth that you shouldn't shave certain areas for fear that it will grow back thicker. I used to have a goatee back in high school and collage and I swear that this area is growing in a bit thicker than the cheek area... I guess that's just how this beard is going to work out.















I've come across my first problem with The Beard. The area on my neck where I'm trimming my beard every day is the same area where I get the worst razor bumps. My bumps. My bumps. My ugly razor bumps. Sorry, I watched Blades of Glory last night. Anyway, I think I'm going to have to buy product.

Note: First day of work without a co-worker's mention of The Beard.

The Beard Pt. 2 (Day 7)

Yeah, no too much action going on, only the slightest of difference from Day 5. Still feels good though -- a nice surprise when I look in the mirror. Definitely makes you feel older, which in turn can give you a bit more confidence. It's getting more and more fun to rub. For a person like me who's always needing something to do with their hands, stroking The Beard is a pleasant diversion.















Still trying to figure out exactly where to trim The Beard. This picture isn't the greatest but you can kinda see where I'm at. I'd rather be cutting it a little long than shaving too much off, that's my philosophy right now. We'll see -- I think I have to wait and let The Beard grow stronger and tell me what it wants.

The Beard Pt. 1 (Day 5)

This is the part where we follow the progress on Sean's first real beard (I've read that college beards don't count). I've been threatening to grow a beard for a while now. I think the time is right.

We begin with Day 5















Not bad. Still in its infancy. Feels good. Fun to rub. Softer than expected. I've decided to keep it simple at the beginning here. We'll let the beard dictate how it will end up looking -- right now we're going with a simple line from the end of the sideburns to the mustache and trimming it about where the neck starts. We're off to a good start.

For Further Information

I'm inclined to leave this guy here as a time capsule of my late twenties.

Yep... [stretch...] Some good stuff here in the old TRB...

Anyway, enough looking back -- If you perhaps stumbled upon the page, or wondering what became, might I direct you to Reviews From the Couch...