Grated fingernail, anyone?

If you read the title then you can probably guess I am back to my old ways of putting myself in danger in the kitchen. I finally got around to making the homemade pizza this weekend. My husband had the kids occupied so I grabbed the premade store dough, the pizza sauce and the pepperoni out of the pantry. It was all premade so the most "homemade" thing about it was that I slapped it all together and stuck it in the oven. I know we can all agree that sometimes even something that simple can be a challenge for me! I spread the sauce on and reached for the cheese. It was then that I realized I forgot to get it out and went searching in the fridge. I found it in block form. One part of me is thinking," Yes! I get to use my cheese grater and sound awesome on my blog!" The other part is thinking, "You idiot. You should have gotten the bag when you were at Publix and Russ kept telling you that you would regret it when you realized you bought a block." I really dislike when he is right.

I grabbed my poor, neglected grater and got to work. It took about 30 seconds before I realized I could grate my fingernail. *Note: Before you start gagging, none of the fingernail grating intermixed with the cheese. I'm positive! I would never feed that to my family or myself if I thought it had!* I am keenly aware that I have grated about a quarter of this block and I've already messed up one of my nails. For some reason this thoroughly aggravates me and I immediately progress to grating faster. What in the world was I thinking? I guess by grating faster I figured I could get done faster. Nope, not even close. I had to stop every few seconds to make sure I still had a nail. I did however manage to destroy two other nails. I finally finished the pizza and threw it into the oven. I wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, but I still had to deal with chopping and dicing vegetables.

I started rummaging in the fridge for a salad to go with this medium sized pizza. I found lettuce, onion, tomato, bell pepper tops (freezer cooking scraps), half of a yellow bell pepper, broccoli, carrots and cheese. I opted out of the cheese and onion and started washing everything else. Russ waltzes into the kitchen and asks if I need help. I am wielding a very sharp knife at this point and wrestling a carrot. I start cutting it and the knife slips. He gasps really loudly. I stopped and looked at him and he says, "Um, I'm not in the mood to go to the E.R. so could you be a little more careful?" He ended up gasping two or three more times before he was shooed from the kitchen. Yes, I tend to be close to cutting off a finger, but I don't need an audience for it. I managed to finally get the salad and pizza ready and everyone settled down for supper. Five minutes into a nice dinner someone asks for ranch dressing and the room fell apart. Evidently we are out of that type of dressing. My kids protested and acted like salad was something I pulled from the garbage can. I guess I should have put ketchup on top of it. Anything covered in ketchup or ranch gets eaten!

Sunday was Father's Day and we celebrated by grilling out. My husband loves to grill sirloin so I splurged and bought some on freezer shopping day. I made a potato and onion bake and some BBQ toast to go along with our sirloins. It was a pleasant dinner (mostly because Russ handled all the grilling- if you want more on this story, go to the post Day 6- Queen of the Grill in 2011).

I will include the recipe for potato and onion bake below. We had our first freezer meal tonight and I'll update more about it tomorrow!

Happy Belated Father's Day and Happy Cooking!

Potato and Onion Bake
(There is an oven OR grill option)

1 bag of red potatoes (you will not use the entire bag)- I've used regular potatoes also. Very good either way.
2-3 onions
olive oil
Lawry's seasoning salt
pepper
shredded Parmesan cheese

Cut the potatoes in quarters. Cut the onions into small strips. Toss the potatoes and onions in oil, seasoning, and pepper. Proceed to oven or grill instructions.

Oven- Preheat to 350-375 degrees. Pour potatoes and onions into small casserole dish. Cover with foil. Cook until the potato and onions are tender (about 20 minutes). Sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top when done. Let cheese melt and serve.

Grill- Wrap potatoes and onions in foil pouches (Tip-divide the potatoes and onions up into serving sizes and make one foil pouch per guest.) Cook on the grill until the potatoes and onions are tender. (15-20 minutes) Sprinkle cheese on top and allow to melt before serving.

**The cook time depends on the size of the potato slices!