Egg and Pesto Breakfast Pizza

Weekend breakfasts are a treat for me. During the week, I do well to grab a Chobani yogurt cup on my way out the door because--as much as I like an elaborate breakfast--when given the choice between that and sleep, I’m going to choose sleep every time. So on weekends, I can have my sleep and eat yummy breakfast too.

This pizza did not disappoint. In fact, if I had had the stomach capacity to do so, I would have eaten the entire pizza in one sitting. And would have felt no shame. My pizza was actually a combination of three recipes from Naturally Ella (pizza), Faux Martha (no-rise crust), and Food Network (pesto). This pizza is definitely best for a leisurely morning when you have nowhere to be and no one to see, because there are quite a few steps—and you’ll get quite a few dishes dirty. But it’s so worth it!

It looks a bit like a face

This piece had two yolks. Heavenly!

Egg and Pesto Breakfast Pizza

Crust:                                                         

1/4 cup water, heated to 110 degrees

1/4 Tbsp. sugar (yes, this is unusual to measure 1/4 Tbsp.)

1/4 Tbsp. olive oil

Heaping 1/2 tsp. rapid rise or bread machine yeast

1/4 cup + 3 Tbsp. all purpose flour

1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1 Tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 tsp. salt

Pesto: This will actually make about twice as much as you need for one pizza, but even this amount was almost not enough for my food processor. So just save the leftover pesto for something else.

2 cups fresh spinach

1/2 cup walnuts

3-1/2 oz. Feta

2 tsp. dried basil

1 tsp. dried rosemary

1-2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed

Freshly cracked pepper, to taste

Olive oil

Pizza toppings:

1 cup grated mozzarella (approximately)

4 eggs

Freshly cracked pepper

Heat a skillet over medium heat and spray with olive oil. Add the walnuts and toast for 5-6 minutes, until fragrant. Set walnuts aside to cool. While the walnuts cool, add the rest of the pesto ingredients (except the olive oil) to the food processor bowl, with the spinach on the bottom and everything else on top. Set aside.

Put pizza stone in oven and preheat oven to 500 degrees.

For crust, add flours, Parmesan, and salt to a single-serving size blender or food processor (such as a Magic Bullet). Pulse until combined and Parmesan is powdery.

Heat water and whisk in the sugar, oil, and yeast. (The recipe says to heat the water to 110 degrees. I don’t have a thermometer, so I just went for water that was hotter than my skin but cool enough that I could hold my finger in the water without discomfort.) Allow yeast to proof for 5 minutes.

While the yeast proofs, finish the pesto. Add the cooled walnuts to the rest of the ingredients and pulse until combined. Turn the processor to “on” and drizzle in olive oil until pesto reaches desired consistency, stopping periodically to scrape down the sides of the bowl. I kept my pesto pretty thick. Taste and adjust herbs, pepper, etc., if needed.

Finish up the pizza crust. When the yeast is finished proofing, combine the liquids with the flour mixture, and stir until combined. Then knead into a dough. At this point, you can set it aside if needed, to finish up other steps. But the author of the recipe recommends going straight into rolling it out, so that's what I did.

On a floured surface, roll out pizza dough to about a 9-inch circle. Transfer to parchment paper. Spread with pesto and top with mozzarella. Moving quickly, remove pizza stone from oven and place on a wire rack. Put parchment paper with pizza onto stone, crack eggs over the top of the pizza, and put the pizza back into the oven. Bake for 8-10 minutes, until cheese and crust are browned and eggs are set.

Remove from oven and slide parchment paper with pizza onto a cutting board. Sprinkle with freshly cracked black pepper. Cut and dig in!

Yield: 3-4 servings (1 nine-inch pizza)

Results: Is it too dramatic to say that this pizza is life-changing? Seriously, though, I never knew you could take something as awesome as pizza and marry it to something as awesome as breakfast. My mouth was so unbelievably happy! The pesto alone was good enough that I could eat it with a spoon. Then you throw in a hearty crust, cheese, and eggs with rich, creamy yolks . . . be still, my heart! Make sure that each serving has a yolk on it, because the yolk takes this pizza from good to delicious. After 8 minutes in the oven, my cheese was very browned but the egg whites weren’t quite set. Next time I might decrease the oven temp to 475 and cook for a couple minutes longer.

                                   

Variation ideas for next time: Add sliced fresh tomato and/or fresh asparagus (1-inch pieces) to the pizza. I would put the veggies on after the cheese, before the eggs. Maybe garnish with some cooked, crumbled turkey bacon?

Lamb, Apricot, and Olive Tagine

Back in September I bought some ground lamb on a bit of a whim, then couldn't settle on a recipe special enough to use said lamb (it's not cheap, you know). So into the freezer it went, and there it stayed until last week when I discovered this Slow-Cooker Lamb, Apricot, and Olive Tagine recipe from Real Simple. I'd never heard of tagine, it sounded like a really interesting combination of flavors, and I thought that using a slow cooker might be good in case the lamb was freezer burned.

Not the most photogenic dish, but very tasty!

To my surprise, the meat was not freezer burned (points for HEB packaging!). And the flavors were, in fact, interesting and incredible! I also just Googled "tagine" (also "tajine"), and it's a Moroccan dish named after the unique pot it's traditionally cooked in. There's also Tunisian tagine, but it's very different and resembles a frittata. Who knew?

I followed the recipe almost exactly, though I used ground lamb rather than 1-inch pieces. I also decreased the olives a tad since green olives aren't my favorite. And I left out the pistachios.

The original recipe says it serves 4, but you can easily do smaller portions and get more servings out of this. In fact, it's pretty rich, so I've been eating portions that are probably about half the size that Real Simple intends.  Smaller portions also helps make it more nutritious since this is not the lowest-calorie dish out there.

Slow-Cooker Lamb, Apricot, and Olive Tagine
Copied word-for-word from Real Simple

1 1/2 pounds lamb shoulder, trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
4 carrots, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup dried apricots, halved
1/2 cup pitted green olives
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
kosher salt and black pepper
1 cup couscous
chopped pistachios, fresh cilantro leaves, and lemon wedges, for serving


In a 4- to 6-quart slow cooker, mix together the lamb, carrots, onion, apricots, olives, garlic, flour, paprika, cumin, cinnamon, ginger, 1 teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper, and ½ cup water.

Cover and cook until the lamb and vegetables are tender, on low for 7 to 8 hours or on high for 4 to 5 hours (this will shorten total recipe time).

Ten minutes before serving, cook the couscous according to the package directions. Serve the lamb on the couscous with the pistachios, cilantro, and lemon wedges.

Song Leading

I got to lead singing in chapel last week, which was both awesome and terrifying. I appreciate graduate chapel SO much, and one of the biggest reasons is because it's one of the only places I've worshipped where gender really, truly doesn't matter. Any and all positions of leadership--from planning to praying to preaching--are equally open to women and men.

But back to last week...

As many experiences are apt to do, it got me thinking about women in church leadership. You see, this was only my third time ever to lead singing. No one has ever taught me how to do it. I don't know how to do the hand-waving tempo-keeping thing. It didn't even cross my mind to direct the congregation to stand or sit. Everything I know about song leading, I've just picked up by watching other song leaders over the years. Because, while we do an excellent job of training our boys to lead from a young age, girls just don't get that same training (maybe things are better now, but when I was kid, that kind of training wasn't an option for girls). So while many men my age have been leading singing for 15+ years, I didn't start until last year. When little Billy Bob gets up, leads a song, and bombs it, people think, "Aww, he's 12 and cute! Let's encourage him to keep doing this and keep getting better!" It's less cute when a 27-year-old leads singing and bombs it.

I was talking about this with a friend last night, and she made a really good point. For us women, it feels like there's more pressure to be excellent at any act of leadership we perform. Since there are so few women doing public leadership tasks in church, each woman who does do something up front--at least to an extent--sets the tone/expectation for how women do that particular thing. For instance, say Billy Bob grows up and never becomes very good at leading worship but still volunteers every now and then. When he gets up and leads poorly, people just kind of accept that he's not awesome at song leading, but most people probably don't make assumptions about the rest of the male population's ability to lead singing. But as a woman, I feel like my performance--however good or bad--is a reflection on ALL women who may want to lead. "She really messed up the tempo on that last song. Maybe Paul was on to something when he said women should keep silent." Or, "She did a great job! We should get more women to lead singing!"

So here are my pleas:

Church - bear with us. So many of us desperately want to lead but don't know the ins and outs of how to perform certain functions within a worship service. Just because we're adults doesn't mean we've ever led a public prayer or served communion--much less done so lots of times. When we stand behind the pulplit and read a passage of Scripture, extend the same level of grace and encouragement you would extend to a 12-year-old. Oh, and starting teaching girls how to lead from a young age.

Worship planning teams/individuals - be intentional about inviting women to do things. Since public leadership roles in church are new to us, we may be hesitant to volunteer because we fear we'll do a bad (or even a mediocre) job. So we may need some extra pushing and encouragement. And if a woman bombs a Scripture reading, ask her to do another one anyway! Pretend she's 12 years old.

Women - jump in there and lead! Yes, it's terrifying. But it's also wonderful, and it gets less terrifying with time and experience. And the more your sisters in Christ see you lead, the easier it may be for them to step up and do the same. The church so desperately needs to hear your voice. Let it be heard.

Cancer and Community

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately, largely because I’m in a rough patch right now and have experienced incredible support from the community around me. Let me share with you a few glimpses of that community:

A few Sundays ago the communion thoughts really hit home—the young woman leading us talked about her struggle with her mom’s cancer, tying that in to the passage about Jesus grieving with Lazarus’ family before bringing him back to life. Her prayer started with, “God, I’m sick of cancer. And I’m sick of death.” That did me in. I wept for basically the entire rest of the service. At the end of the service, a woman I barely even know stopped me and said, “I saw you crying. Are you okay, and can I give you a hug?”

From there, I went straight to small group. For our devotional time, we each shared something we hope to accomplish in the coming year. We had such a mixed bag of emotions in the room: excitement and anxiety about moving, worry about raising support for fulltime mission work, stress of finishing college and applying for grad school, happiness about reaching a significant milestone in thesis-writing, uncertainty about jobs and income, joy and fear about having a baby, stability of no major life transitions coming up, grief over loved ones losing their battles with cancer . . . That night, we all came from vastly different places emotionally, and despite our own individual emotions, we were able to be fully present with each other in all of the wonderful, terrible, happy, unsure feelings swirling in the room. Even now, I’m sitting here trying to put into words the amazingness of the genuine community that took place that night. We didn’t try to make the tone of the group homogenous. Someone who was happy didn’t ignore or minimize the obvious grief of others; and vice versa. We were transparent and raw. The masks were off, and we were able to throw wide the doors of our hearts and invite the group to enter into the good, the bad, and the ugly inside.

The women in that small group had a lunch date a couple weeks ago. That morning I sent an email to let them know that I’d be coming from a prayer vigil for my boss/friend Charles and therefore might be late or emotionally unfit to come at all. But I ended up going, and one of the girls commented, “I read your email and thought, ‘Then it’s even more important that you come be with us.’” Yes! In true community we don’t have to hide our emotions—or avoid said community if we’re going through unpleasant emotions—but instead can bring our puffy eyes and rubbed-raw noses and experience love and support.

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for a seven-year-old boy, Liam, who died of leukemia. Liam’s death and Charles’s worsening cancer have messed with my faith. Charles is such a faithful servant, doing incredibly good things for the kingdom; Liam, in the face of his illness, rallied an army of people to participate in his well project and give life to communities of people who don’t have access to clean water. Literally thousands of people have been praying for Liam’s healing for over a year, and for Charles’s healing for over two years. Why wouldn’t our all-powerful God step in and heal them?

Randy, who did Liam’s eulogy yesterday, said many pertinent things, but I’ll just share this one that especially hit home for me. Randy asked Liam’s parents if they felt like God had sat this one out. But, to his surprise, they answered, “No.” God hadn’t shown up to heal Liam, but God had shown up in countless other ways—through hugs and encouraging calls from friends; through kids who sent care packages and their own artwork to Liam, who also loved to draw; through compassionate, competent doctors and nurses who cared not only for Liam but for their whole family; through thousands of dollars donated toward Liam’s wells; through the countless ways their community of family, friends, and friends of friends who have showered them with love and support. Randy went on to assert that God doesn’t just work cancer magic, and God isn’t a god who is at our beck and call to do whatever we want, exactly when we want it. But God is so very present—and God’s power is so very prevalent—in the ways we rally around each other.

That reality has been so true for me in this season of grief. Liam died, and Charles doesn’t have much time left. God didn’t wave a magic cancer wand for either of them. That reality is awful, and I’m pretty upset with God for not providing healing in the way that I thought God should. But in the midst of all this pain and anger, God is providing me with healing through the supportive calls, emails, hugs, “I’m thinking about you”s, and offers of help from this incredible community of people around me.

Snowpeople

I wonder why it is that we refer to snowmen as "snowmen"? What is it about them, really, that makes them male? True, some wear top hats and smoke pipes, which are stereotypically masculine behaviors. But what about the snowpeople who simply have a smiling face, twiggy arms, and no gender-specific accessories? A friend and I gave Christmas socks to the rest of our coworkers, and one design had a snowperson with a pink scarf. Pink = stereotypically feminine. Yet at least one person still referred to her as a snowman, and when some of us intentionally called her a snowgirl or snowwman, it felt really weird.

I also noticed this assumption of masculinity (for lack of a better term) while playing a card game with my dad this week. The cards have pictures of various kinds of bean characters on them (for instance, the black-eyed bean is in a boxing ring and has a black eye, and the blue bean is dressed like a police officer). There are eight or so different bean characters in the deck, some of which are decidedly male, but most of which are fairly gender-neutral. Yet we both kept saying things like, "I'll plant this guy but let you have those other two guys."

I also find myself talking this way while driving. If I talk about (or at) another driver on the road, I almost always refer to him or her as male. "That guy was nice to let me in," or, "Dude, what are you doing?" It's almost never, "She cut me off," or even, "That person cut me off"--and I'm normally pretty conscious of gendered language.

Just an observation. Well, a few observations, really. I just wonder why we are so inclined to use masculine language over feminine.

Note: In case you've missed it in other posts or conversations, I don't hate men. I think men are pretty awesome. And I have nothing against the term "snowman," or against referring to beans or drivers as guys. I'm just observing speech patterns in myself and others . . . and I think there must be some connection between our language and our societal norms about gender hierarchies.

The saga of the Christmas Cookies ice cream

Prologue:
Early in November, I glanced through the Blue Bell ice cream freezers and discovered a delectable-sounding holiday flavor called Christmas Cookies. Here's how Blue Bell describes the ice cream on their website: "Your favorite holiday cookies – chocolate chip, snickerdoodle, and sugar – combined in a tasty sugar cookie ice cream with red candy cane-shaped sprinkles and a green icing swirl throughout." Uh, yum! But since it wasn't yet Thanksgiving, I put it back it back on the shelf with a promise that I'd be back for it. Big mistake.

The Saga:
Once Thanksgiving had had its glory and it was officially Christmas season, I started looking for it again . . . but couldn't find it anywhere. One store had empty cartons of it on display, but no cartons of Christmas Cookies in the freezer. Such a tease. Eventually I asked a manager at the store with the empty cartons, and he gave a friendly but non-committal answer along the lines of, "Blue Bell only sends us a limited amount in each shipment since it's a specialty, seasonal flavor, and we keep selling out. But we restock our shelves every morning." Sad times.

A night or two later, my friend Lauren whisked me away for an evening of hunting for this elusive Christmas Cookies ice cream. Store #1: no CC ice cream. Store #2: no CC ice cream. On the way to Store #3, I called three more stores in town, to no avail. (Side note: have you ever called a grocery store and asked for a specific brand and flavor of ice cream? It feels really strange. Fortunately the store employees who answered the phones were very friendly and even went to look and see if they had any Holy Grail ice cream.) And, of course, Store #3 was also out. We settled for some Reese's ice cream bars and went home deflated.

The next day, Lauren called and said, "I've been on the phone with about seven different Blue Bell employees, and I think we can get some Christmas Cookies ice cream tomorrow morning!" I've heard her tell the tale of the Blue Bell phone calls several times, but I still get some of the sequence and finer details mixed up. But it went something like this:

1. One of her coworkers has a family member who works at Blue Bell, and he (coworker) suggested she call Blue Bell directly to order some, even if it meant buying some in bulk.
2. Lauren called the Blue Bell plant in Brenham, Texas. But apparently you can't buy directly from them; so they gave her the number for a transit location. The number didn't work. So she got her hands on the number for the distribution center in Big Spring, Texas.
3. Lauren explained our quest to a Blue Bell employee (BBE). Apparently Blue Bell had already produced as much as they're going to this Christmas season, but there were still some cartons floating around in stores. So Lauren asked how she could get her hands on some Christmas Cookies ice cream. BBE: "How much are you wanting to buy?" Lauren: "How much do I need to buy?" They thought she might need to get a three-gallon container. But then the BBE remembered that they don't make three-gallon containers of the special flavors. Lauren: "So how can I get some?" BBE: "Well, let me check with my local delivery guy and see if he has any on his truck to deliver tomorrow." Somewhere in this process, Lauren got transferred to at least one other BBE and had to start over. Fortunately, all the BBEs were very friendly. Go, Blue Bell!
4. Good news! The delivery guy had some CC ice cream scheduled to deliver to one of our grocery stores the next morning (Saturday morning). Hooray!

At that point, Lauren called me to tell me the Blue Bell story. Now, sleeping in on Saturday mornings is normally a BIG priority to both of us. But we were willing to forego sleep for the sake of guaranteeing that we'd find CC ice cream at the store before they sold out. Because by this point, we were committed. There was no way we'd get through the 2011 Christmas season without trying this ice cream! She then proceeded to call the store to ask A) what time they stock their shelves, and B) if they could set aside a carton for us so we could still sleep in. They were non-committal and less than helpful.

A couple hours later, my friend Jaron called: "I have a weird question. I saw several posts on your Facebook wall about this Christmas Cookies ice cream. Did you ever find any and, if so, where? Because I want to buy some, too." So I told him the story and let him in on the secret that Blue Bell was supposed to deliver more the next morning . . . but selfishly asked him not to tell too many people, lest the store sell out before Lauren and I could get there. But Jaron was planning to go grocery shopping right then, so oh well.

A little while later, Jaron calls again: "I'm at [the grocery store with the empty cartons on display] and I'm holding the last two cartons of Christmas Cookies ice cream. Do you want one of them?"

!!!

Of course! Yes! I'll give you my left arm in payment for it. We worked out logistics and hung up, and I could barely sit still from excitement! And when Jaron got through the checkout and pulled up beside my building, I practically skipped outside to get the ice cream from him. I might have also hugged the carton at least once. And, of course, I thanked Jaron profusely and declared him a rock star.

Dancing back into the building with the Holy Grail ice cream under my arm, I called Lauren, breathless, and exlaimed with dramatic pauses, "Lauren! I am holding . . . in my hands . . . a carton of Christmas Cookies ice cream!" Lauren: "What!? How did you get it?" I told her the tale and half-asked, half-declared, "What time do your guests come over tonight? Can I come over right now for us to eat some ice cream?" Fortunately it was the end of the work day so I could leave the office immediately, and there was enough time before her guests came over so we could eat ice cream.

And oh, what a delicious ice cream it was (is)! It's like eating a platter of cookies, complete with icing and sprinkles . . . in ice cream form! Strong work, Blue Bell. Without the whole saga, this flavor would probably be in my top ten; but with all the energy that went into this--and with all the emotional highs and lows along the way--Christmas Cookies ice cream is easily in my top five.

Epilogue:
On Saturday afternoon, I had to run some errands and buy some groceries, and I happened down the ice cream aisle. Lo and behold! There were two cartons of Blue Bell Christmas Cookies ice cream! So I picked up a carton for Lauren and a carton for another friend who had been looking for CC ice cream since I first found it before Thanksgiving.

Later that afternoon, a friend from church texted me: "They have lots of Christmas cookie blue bell at [grocery store]!"

On Sunday afternoon, while eating lunch with Lauren and two more friends, I got this text from a work friend: "Just bought you some BB Xmas cookie ice cream."

Lauren and I got a good laugh out of it and filled in the other two friends on the saga. Lydia responded, "Oh, I've seen tons of that ice cream all over the place!"

I guess when it rains, it pours.

And that is the story of the Blue Bell Christmas Cookies ice cream.

Privilege

Not too long ago I had a frustrating conversation with a colleague of mine. It started innocently enough with us mutually asserting that churches should be more inclusive of women in their services. Usually these conversations about women in the church fit into two categories:

1. We fundamentally disagree on so much about what Scripture says about women, neither of us budges on our respective positions, and we both end up at least a little frustrated with each other.
2. Or, we agree on basically every point, and rally together in hoping for a better situation in our churches.

I thought this conversation would be more like the second category, but somewhere in the middle of our discussion, it became more like Category 1. Which was strange because we agreed on the main point that women are created equal and, therefore, shouldn't be treated as inferior and limited to potlucks and the nursery . . . but we disagreed on several of the sub-points leading up to that ultimate conclusion.

Of all the things that frustrated me and caught me off guard in the conversation, I think the thing that got me most was his refusal to acknowledge his position of privilege as a male. Most of the men with whom I've talked extensively about gender freely admit that their maleness automatically gives them an advantage in myriad situations. Even if they don't fully grasp the extent of that privilege, they know it's there. (Or they fall squarely into Category 1 above and may know they're privileged but think that privilege is ordained by God.) This colleague, though, was willing to admit that--just maybe--he might be privileged, but he didn't really think he was.

For a while I pushed back, but eventually just stopped talking because we were going in circles and I didn't want to say something ugly. And I left the conversation exceedingly frustrated.

Upon reflection later, I got to wondering . . . in how many ways am I oblivious to the positions of privilege into which I was born or have earned? I'm not in poverty. I'm white. I have a good job with a consistent paycheck. I live in a country with a (comparatively) stable government. I have a college education. I have clean water and easy access to food. I have friends and family who love me unconditionally and will be there for me no matter what.

While I consciously know these privileges exist in my life, I know that I take them for granted, and they're definitely not in the forefront of my mind. And I don't feel the weight of my privileges in the same way I feel the weight of others' privileges that I don't share (maleness, greater wealth, a more important-sounding job title, etc.). 

I wonder how many times I've unthinkingly opened my mouth and hurt someone who doesn't share these privileges that I take for granted.