We were at Giant Eagle earlier and the people in front of us in self-checkout left their receipt. I grabbed it when ours printed out to tear it off and this is what I saw:

How do people do this?!? I wish I had the patience to figure out the sale/coupon/Foodperks savings apex each week. Our 12 month savings is a pathetic $67 and some change. This is like magic to me.

There are two things I want to talk to you about today.

One is jalapeños and how much they apparently hate me, and the other is chardonnay and how much I apparently love it.

First, jalapeños.

I was innocently putting together a pizza last night, topped with a rainbow of peppers. The four colors of bell peppers went off without a hitch. Then came the jalapeño. I cut one up and removed the seeds with my hands, as I always do. I placed the slices on the pizza and then rinsed my hands off immediately afterwards, as I always do. But apparently this wasn’t enough this time, because right after I rinsed and dried my hands I needed to rub my eye, and oh #@%$! there was still jalapeño oil on my hands. I can not even tell you how much it burned! I immediately said to Jason, “Oh god oh god oh god, I got jalapeño in my eye, help help I am dying what do I do??!” He told me to put milk in it, which I thought would only make it feel weirder. So after some deliberating I eventually ended up putting a big glob of yogurt over my closed eye, and let me tell you, the relief was immediate. I left it there for a few minutes, standing in front of the sink with my head tilted back, yogurt slowly sliding down my face. I was quite the sight. When I wiped it off my face was still burning, but at least I could open my eye again. Phew. Crisis averted.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. Upon taking the first bite of pizza, I got two huge slices of jalapeño in one mouthful. Not good. I like spice, but only in small doses. I guess I didn’t spread the jalapeño slices out enough, because two was way too many for me. I coughed and spluttered and apparently hadn’t removed all the seeds because I bit into one of those and ugh, it tasted awful. I ended up picking all the rest of the jalapeños off the pizza (which is delicious otherwise, by the way) just in case there were any more out to get me.

On a happier note, I was gifted recently with a 2007 chardonnay and broke it open to taste last night. WOW. My first impression on the nose (oh no, when did I start using pretentious wine speak?) was olives. No, more like OLIVES!!! because it was that strong. Then some olive oil/butter (y’all), then…citrus? That was a little surprising after all the heavy buttery-ness. I’m no wine pro so these notes could be totally off, but that’s what it smelled like to me. Taste-wise it is very buttery and rich with a slightly sweet finish, like good hearty bread with sweet butter. Of all the wines I’ve tried so far (i.e. about 4) this is by far my favorite. And it has a slightly lower alcohol content than the other wines in my fridge, so I feel comfortable drinking it for lunch (as I am right now). And it happens to pair wonderfully with my pepper pizza (sans jalapeños, of course). For other pairings, I’m thinking pasta with clam sauce or a rice risotto. Anyone care to recommend something?

If you want to make the pepper pizza, here’s what you do:

INGREDIENTS
-1 pkg refrigerated whole wheat pizza dough
-1 each of red, yellow, orange, and green bell peppers, chopped into bite-size chunks
-1 jalapeño pepper, sliced and seeds removed
-About 1/2 cup marinara sauce (use more or less to taste)
-Parmigiano cheese, freshly grated, to taste (I used about 1.5 cups)

1. Prepare pizza dough according to package directions. Optionally, drizzle lightly with olive oil before topping.
2. Top with sauce, then distribute pepper chunks and jalapeño slices evenly over surface.
3. Top with freshly grated parmigiano cheese.
4. Bake at 400° for 18-22 minutes, until cheese is bubbling and crust has browned around edges. Cool slightly before serving.

via Door Sixteen

Every time I see this, it really makes me chuckle and miss New York, in an “Oh, you” kind of way. I know I’m a little late to the party posting it, but I just saw it again posted on Door Sixteen today and it was the last nudge I needed to actually get around to posting it here. (Holy cow, how many times can I use a variation of the word “post” in one sentence? Apparently a lot.)

Hope everyone has a good holiday weekend. I’ll be back Tuesday with my Pin It Forward post on what home means to me!

Good morning! How were everyone’s weekends? Mine was really great: spent Friday and Saturday with Jason, and Sunday I planted my garden! I’ll be back later today with more details when I have time — stupid morning shifts messin’ with my groove.

Real quick, though, I wanted to share with you this awesome Crayola Color Chart by Steve Von Worley I found over at Black&Eiffel.

How cool is that? Without waxing poetic here, I think it could be sort of symbolic of how, over time, our whole lives have become more complicated, with more choices for everything. Then again, I think I’d get bored with the 1903 box. Remember in restaurants when we were little, they’d always give us just four crayon colors? That annoyed the heck outta me. I had a lot of orange people with blue hair on my placemat pictures.