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Just something I thought of as I was walking through the grocery store!  All the flavors of my favorite type of pizza with a little twist! (the grilled zucchini which compliments the grilled ratatouille soup that we had to go along with it)

Here’s what you need…

• slices of some nice crusty bread (whatever kind you like)
• sliced tomato
• several basil leaves
• slices of zucchini, grilled on a grill pan (or you can just sautee them if you don’t have one)
• CHEESE!  I used smoked mozzerella, but you can use whatever you want)

Here’s what I did…

Sprayed a little EVOO on one side of one of my slices of bread with my olive oil spritzer (if you don’t have one you can just drizzle a little on your bread

put it sprayed side down onto my grill pan (you could also use a panini press or a george forman grill or you can just make it grilled cheese style if you don’t have any of these)

layer cheese, basil, tomatoes, and grilled zucchini, then more cheese

top with other slice of bread

spritz with a little more EVOO and squish it down

flip it over and squish it down again

ENJOY your delicious sammy!

Grilled Ratatouille Soup
Adapted from a Rachael Ray recipe.

(Print this recipe!)

Ingredients:
1 head garlic
drizzle of EVOO
1 stem fresh rosemary, finely chopped  (you can use dry if you want)
Salt and pepper
1 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2-inch planks
1 medium red onion, cut into 1/2-inch-thick slices
1 medium eggplant, cut into 1/2-inch thick planks or rounds
4 roasted red peppers, drained
1 can diced or whole fire-roasted tomatoes (28 ounces)
2 cups vegetable stock

Directions:
Pre-heat the oven to 425?F.

Cut the head of garlic to expose all of the cloves. Drizzle some EVOO over the cut end to coat the cloves. Press the cut garlic into the rosemary, coating the ends of the cloves completely. Season with salt and pepper, then wrap the garlic head in foil. Roast the garlic for 45 minutes, then let cool.

Mash the cooled roasted garlic into a paste, combining it with the rosemary.

Heat a grill pan over medium-high to high heat.  Using a pastry brush, brush the vegetables with EVOO and season with salt and pepper. Grill in batches until the zucchini, onion and eggplant are cooked and tender, 3-4 minutes on each side per batch.

Coarsely chop the grilled vegetables and roasted red peppers.

In a food processor, in two batches, puree the roasted garlic, grilled vegetables, roasted red pepper and canned fire-roasted tomatoes and stock.

Transfer the pureed vegetables to a soup pot. Heat the soup over medium heat, then reduce the heat to a simmer. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

2 new recipes coming up right after this post…stay tuned!!

It was a short day today!  It went by so fast.

It started out with an awesome massage!  :)  I haven’t had a massage in forever and it was great!

Then I went for a really great run on the trails- felt awesome!

Then I got this cool new chair!!  And also a couple of shelves and a few little things for my new desk at the container store.  This chair looks a little weird, but it is seriously SO incredibly comfortable!  My butt will be very happy sitting in this chair for hours on end studying, LOL.

I also ran into the marked real quick and came out with this really cool tea.

SO GOOD!!!!!

Then home to sit in my new chair!  LOL

Dinner recipes coming up next!

And this little piggie is chilling in the guest room!  Okay, I’m obsessed with these little towel animals.  I admit it!  We’ve been on two cruises and I just love these little guys!  So much that I got a book showing how to make them.  I’m just now getting around to playing around with it.  It’s fun, and they’re super cute!!

Anyhoo…

Nothing much going on around here.  I decided to switch our guest room and office.  So everything in the guest room I took into the office and everything that was in the office went into the old guest room.  Whew- I’m tired!!  The guest room is completely done!  And I’m still working on the office.  I HAVE to get it done this week because school starts back next week.  I ordered a new desk and it’s not supposed to come in until the 20th, so hopefully I won’t have any assignments the first week of school.  And I kindof have to wait to do much in the office until I get the desk in so that I can make sure everything fits.  The only thing I’ve really done in there so far is put up some new curtains.  But they’re really cute curtains!  LOL  I decided to do turquoise in the office.  It will look awesome with the desk- can’t wait till its done!

I decided to switch the two rooms because I’ll be working on schoolwork from home more this semester than last semester (especially since I have an online class and no classes on Fridays) and the room that I was using for the office is right off of the living room and the TV is right up against the wall of that room.  It’s fine when no one else is home, but when my hubby is home of course he has the TV on and it’s freaking LOUD in that room.  Not very conducive with studying.  Especially when you have ADD and already have problems focusing as it is! So anyway, the other room is farther down the hall and it’s much more quiet. 

That’s about all I’ve got going on here- just working on that room.  Took the dogs to the vet today, which is a fete if you’ve got one that’s trying to escape the office the whole time and the other (the one that weighs 100 lbs) is trying to climb in your lap!  The girls are having some tummy troubles, so we’ve got them on some meds and some nice bland food (which they actually seem to like, surprisingly).  Hopefully this will all clear up soon- the vet is expensive!!

I have to share this yummy pita pizza I made for lunch!  It was on one of the new pitas I was talking about the other day- they’re only 60 cals and so good!  (btw- sorry for the picture quality, I dropped my camera with the lens open-on concrete no less- and it broke.  :(  I’m so sad!  And I haven’t really had it that long either)

So I just took a pita and some leftover pasta sauce and a little cheese and voila!  Tasty yumminess in just minutes!

Brown rice and lentils are simmering away on the stove for dinner.  Smells delish!  Here’s the recipe.  I’m adding some jalapeno chicken sausage to them tonight.  There also might be a glass of wine involved!  Okay, there will definitely be a glass of wine involved!

Oh yeah, look who I found lounging on the bed when I was changing the sheets.  You step away for 30 seconds and she’s up on the bed taking a nap!  Crazy dog!  Good thing I hadn’t put the comforter on yet, lol.  (oh, and that’s a queen size bed!!!)

Off to do some blog reading!  Night yall!!

I slept till almost noon again today!  Who am I?!  I usually can’t sleep past 7 AM even if I try.  It might have something to do with my lack of sleep the night before and the tylenol PM that I took, though.  🙂

After I got up I had a quick lunch- a leftover turkey burger from last night.  Then I bummed around a bit more before I headed into town to the grocery store.  Anytime I’m at the grocery store I’m always on the lookout for new stuff and I found a few new things today that looked pretty great.

First is this Nature’s Own cinnamon raisin bread!  YUM- can’t wait to try this!!  I like the Nature’s Own brand because 1) the first ingredient is whole wheat flour b) there is no high fructose corn syrup, and 3) no preservatives!

I also liked this one in particular because I noticed that it was fortified with a bit more vitamins and minerals than most bread.  And a few of them were things that I know from my diet analysis that I did are things that I am deficient in- Calcium and Vitamin E.  So that’s good that I can get a little more of that into my diet just by eating some yummy cinnamon raisin bread!

The next thing I found were some Pita’s.  They looked interesting so I thought I’d try them out!  I’ll let you know how they are…

I like that it has flax in it- I definitely don’t get enough Omega-3’s. 

And then the next thing, I’m not exactly saying this is “healthy” but I just couldn’t resist.  I can pronounce all of the ingredients, so I guess it’s okay right?  😉

Light Pimiento Cheese!  Anyone else’s parents buy this stuff a lot when they were kids?  My dad LOVES this stuff!  We almost always had some in the fridge.  It takes me back to the good ole days :)  Am I insane or does anyone else love this stuff as much as I do?! 

Well, besides the usual suspects (fruits and veggies) that’s all I picked up at the grocery store.  We didn’t really need much.

Tonight we’re having taco soup and home made margaritas for dinner while we watch the cowboy’s game.  We’re not huge football fans, but Justin IS a huge Cowboy’s fan so I am being forced to watch the game.  Oh well, there are margaritas involved so I guess I’ll live!  🙂

I’m sure everyone has their own taco soup recipe cause it’s pretty popular, but I’ll post mine later anyway.

Have a good evening!!

Bible verse of the day…