I made food that was edible! Huzzah!

Well the post title pretty much says it all for me, hee hee. I love eating, but I CANNOT cook. I made salt cookies before. I really only cook scrambled eggs and watercress soup, which is pretty bad considering most 24 year olds have enough cooking skills to feed themselves. Ha!

Last night I made delicious healthy calzones, which went pretty well (except for the time when my litte sister came into the kitchen and looked at my little calzones all ready to go on the baking sheet and said "you're supposed to get most of the filling INSIDE of the dough...hey, pizza dough is tough to work with!). The thing about me and cooking is, I don't follow the recipe, even though I don't know how to cook. I usually have a recipe, and I look at it, but I don't know what goes wrong from there. It's much better if I improvise, which I did for these calzones.

They were delicious, easy, and probably a lot healthier than they are if you buy one from a restaurant. Spinach, pepperoni, cheese, mushroom and onion... mmmm. Here is my made up recipe (don't worry, it turned out good... you can see I didn't do anything weird with them). A pro at cooking will probably only take 1/2 an hour, and I foresee kids enjoying slicing mushrooms and rolling/ filling the calzones.

Ingredients (makes 8 calzones... I have a big family):

Crust: 2 cans of pizza dough

Sauce:

• 1 large can of tomato sauce


• 1 can of stewed tomatoes


• 1 teaspoon of dried basil


• 1 teaspoon of oregano


• a pinch of sugar


• 1-2 garlic cloves pressed


• 1 bay leaf

Filling:

• 1 tub of fresh mushrooms


• 1 box of frozen spinach-drained well


• 1/2 an onion, diced


• 2 pats of butter


• 2 cloves of garlic (in a garlic press)


• 40 slices of pepperoni (optional... I wouldn't have put it if I didn't have such meat eaters in my family; you can also use reduced fat pepperoni, turkey pepporoni, ham, chicken, etc.; just make sure you use some seasoning in your filling to make up for the pepporoni slices)


• cheese of some kind (I used 2 deli slices of provolone for each... you can use shredded or sliced cheese of any kind... yummy! You can even use low fat/reduced fat cheese)

(** you can substitute all kinds of veggies for this calzone, just not really wet ones... I was going to put sliced black olives and sauteed bell pepper inside too)

In a small pot, place the 2 pats of butter with the diced onion until it starts to caramalize. Add the garlic. When the onion is getting translucent, add the sliced mushrooms. There should be enough liquid from the vegetables so that you won't need any extra butter or oil... low fat! Add the drained spinach and mix until well heated.

For the sauce, add all ingredients and reduce for 10-15 minutes.

Divide the dough into 4 balls (2 tubes= 8 balls). Roll each one into a big circle, place cheese, 5 slices of pepporoni and a large amount of filling in each. Pinch each shut well (fold over dough if necessary... it doesn't have to be pretty; mine weren't)

Place calzones on a greased baking sheet (the kind with a lip on all four sides is preferable, they will probablly ooze) and put into a preheated 425 degree Farenheit oven for 13 minutes. Check, if needed cook for 4 more minutes until crust is golden brown on top. You can paint melted butter on top to make it shiny, but I didn't. When done take out and cool for 5-10 minutes before eating. Serve with dipping sauce and a large salad!