Blog | CyberBob City

Carmelized Onion and Goat Cheese Pizza

Bob Butterworth — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 02:58:34 +0000

I have no doubt some of you are already familiar with Caputo’s Fresh Market. If you are lucky enough to live near one of their seven Chicagoland establishments, you definitely need to try some of their fresh pizza dough. One bag of dough easily gives you two decent sized pizzas and costs only $2.29!! Quite a steal for a if you want a quick dinner tonight and want it to be amazing.

Andi and I do a lot of pizzas on pita bread, but I felt like making the real deal tonight so I stopped on my way home and picked up a bag.

I had recently Evernoted a recipe from a blog called Foodess.com that just sounded AMAZING! It was Caramelized Onion & Goat Cheese Pizza and I just had to give it a try. Andi LOVES anything with cooked onions and I think goat cheese is a great addition to specialty pizzas. Their recipe called for a 1/4 of cup of olive oil to cook the onions in but I was trying to keep this as light as possible so I used half the amount and got them going on the stove.

After 20 minutes the onions were looking pretty amazing and I added a little salt and white wine vinegar for a little acidic flavor. I then took it off the heat to cook the spinach just a bit before building the pie.

We love making pizza on our now quite seasoned pizza stone. After it was heated up to 450 degrees, I removed and dusted it with some corn meal so that I could easily get the pizza to slide out once it was finished. I placed the rolled out dough on the stone and loaded up the pizza with all the ingredients including mozzarella, parmigiano-reggiano, onions, spinach and goat cheese.

After about 15 minutes it cooked up golden brown and delicious!! Andi and I both really enjoyed it and will definitely be making it again. I still have dough left for another pizza! Oh the possibilities!

Baked Parmesan Wedges

Bob Butterworth — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 04:27:43 +0000

My brother who lately could be confused with someone trying out for “Extreme Couponing” had a giant bag of potatoes, all of which he wouldn’t be able to use before they went bad. I took a few thinking I could put them to good use.

I decided to make some Baked Parmesan Wedges. I sliced up the potatoes, mixed them with some garlic olive oil, minced garlic, garlic powder, parsley and parmesan cheese and put them in the oven at 425 degrees for about 30 minutes, flipping them half way through.

They turned out pretty good but could have been a little crispier. One recipe I found online said you should add the parmesan cheese towards the end so the cheese isn’t too brown by the time the potatoes are done. I might try that next time. Overall I give this about a “B”.

The Apple Genius and the iPhone

Bob Butterworth — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 01:58:29 +0000

This year we had an absolute blast during Halloween. My girlfriend Andi and I, being the Apple and iPhone geeks we are, dressed up as an Apple Genius and iPhone! Together we tied another partygoer for 1st Place Best Costume!

I got a little bit of a late start on mine and ended up just ordering the blue Apple shirt. Though I saw a “real” Apple name tag on eBay for $21 (though it finally sold for $61), I ended up just making the name tag with cardstock, a clear plastic sheet, a shoelace and the body of a translucent Bic pen. I worked up the insert in Photoshop with the Apple logo and my name and glued everything together. It actually turned out pretty good for the amount of time I spent on it.

The real winner though was Andi, and I sort of felt like I was riding her coat tails. She bought a basic black t-shirt and I picked up some dark fabric iron on transfers for her at Michael’s. She found the icons of her favorite apps online, got them all looking nice in Photoshop and printed them out. She also printed out images for the camera, logo, and even put the mute and volume buttons on her sleeve! Ironing on the printouts proved to be the hardest part of the task. Getting them all aligned properly was tough and she definitely was stressing with each icon.

It turned out great though and we had a fabulous time!!!

Just Write It Down

Bob Butterworth — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:07:16 +0000

For those of you that don’t know me, you’ll soon realize I am a “big” fan of
Getting Things Done, a book and productivity method created by David Allen that has spread like wildfire in recent years. It’s the best way I’ve found to get things off my mind, get control of what I have or want to do, and just relax. Of all the things GTD has taught me, the one that has benefited me the most is the act of “collecting”.

Everyday, our minds can bug us like 30 alarm clocks going off with all the things we might, want, could, should or someday do. When you let that thought go, it’s really just like pressing the snooze button in your mind. At a later point in time, your mind WILL bring that thought back up again and most likely not during the best time for you to do something about it.

“How do we stop this?”, you might ask… By “writing it down”. Get it out of your head! Use a paper, a computer, an ipad or whatever you need so that you can stop the cycle of these needless reminders.

If you are feeling stressed, I dare you to give this a try. Just take out a piece of paper or open up a new document on your computer and just write down anything and everything that is on your mind. Need to fill a new picture frame? Write it down. Need to pick up a new spice at the grocery store for a recipe? Write it down. Think up a great new blog post topic? Write it down. Keep writing until your brain has nothing left to remind you about.

While doing this on a regular basis can make wondrous changes to your mood and stress levels, just doing this once will reveal immense benefits. All of us get stressed out, and mostly likely more regularly than we’d like. Externalizing what your mind is telling you is one of the best ways I know of to alleviate it.