• 4025 Portage Street
• Kalamazoo, MI 49001
• (269) 226-3300
• Website
• Menu

When we lived in Lansing, we had a helluva time trying to find a good pizza place.  We tried almost everything from the few local places to the regional chains.  We weren’t having much luck. 

One of the first weekends there, we tried Cottage Inn.  It was ok, but it wasn’t great.  It was typical chain fare. 

A few months later, I was out-of-town and J wanted pizza.  She called Cottage Inn and they offered her a choice in crust size.  That was an option we didn’t know was available.  J got a thin crust and from that moment on, we had our pizza place in Lansing.  I don’t think we even ordered from anywhere else after finding Cottage Inn’s thin crust.

I was coming home pretty late from East Lansing last night and when I called J to let her know I was leaving, she asked about dinner.  I said I was fine, but I could eat if she wanted to order a pizza.  I suggested she just call Bilbo’s again, but she got the idea to see if there were any Cottage Inn’s near us.  She found one not too far away.

There are actually three Cottage Inn locations in Kalamazoo.  The closest one to us is the Portage Avenue location in the Milwood neighborhood.  J called in the order and they told her it would be about 45 minutes.  That worked out pretty good because I was just passing Firekeeper’s Casino, so the pizza wouldn’t beat me by much.

Twenty minutes after ordering, there was a knock on the door.  They got the pizza there much faster than expected. 

Cottage Inn has a meat lover’s specialty pizza that I really like, but J doesn’t, so we usually order two pizzas.  That sounded like a waste to me, so I just told her to get cheese.  She ended up getting a half cheese and half pepperoni pizza plus an order of Cinnamon Stix. 

Maybe it’s just been a while since we’ve had Cottage Inn or maybe CI Kalamazoo does something different, but J said the pizza was better than she remembered.  The thin crust is almost a cracker thin crust that’s cooked crispy.  Then, instead of cutting it into triangles New York Style, they cut it into small squares…..Chicago style. 

There’s a pizza place back in the Chicago suburbs that we go to almost every time we go home.  It’s not typical Chicago-style pizza.  It’s what we like to call South Side Chicago-style.  This pizza is so good that we’ve never taken anyone there for the first time and they’ve not said it was the best pizza they’ve ever had.  Heck, J and I even had our wedding rehearsal dinner there.  This Cottage Inn pizza is the closest thing we’ve found to the pizza we love so much outside of Chicago.

The cinnamon stix are, I think, the real reason J likes Cottage Inn so much.  You get a pretty good size package of frosting to put on them.  She had to close the box and hand it to me in order to stop eating them.  Instead, I was the weak one who couldn’t fight the urge and I finished them off. 

Before tip, the pizza and stix cost just under $20 which is pretty typical for delivery.  The best thing is, we know we like it and we’re happy to have found a Cottage Inn so close to home.

Thin Crust Half Cheese, Half Pepperoni Pizza

the top tier of this bento got a little cluttered, as i didn’t sketch in advance.  all i knew was that i wanted to use this new onigiri mold from daiso (makes three mini face-shaped onigiri), and then i kept adding more and more random stuff from the fridge and all of a sudden it was crazy.  oh well, at least i wasn’t drunk this time, haha!

top tier has two brothers and a sister (plain brown rice, too small for filling, nori hair and sesame eyes, cheese bow on the sister’s hair) sitting on top of some spicy korean tofu that’s completely hidden, and, clockwise from top left:  yellow cauliflower with cheese and veggie pepperoni flower, carrot sticks and baby orange tomato, red tomato half, tamagoyaki slices, and two edamame skewers on top of fried veggie dumplings (ajinomoto brand), and more carrot sticks (plus one more red baby tomato half to prop up brother #2’s chin!).

simple dessert tier has:  pomegranate seeds in a heart food cup from daiso, chocolate-covered almonds in a square food cup from daiso, asian pear fan, starfruit slices, kumquat slices and a cherry.

i’m really enjoying all of my new picks and cups from my trip to the west coast — this bento is a daiso bonanza!

a turkey made of tofurkey, haha, get it?!  the rest of his plumage is made of regular nori and yellow soy paper, as well as vegetarian pepperoni.  on a bed of thai fried rice.

fruit/veggie section has snow peas, yellow wax beans, purple carrot slices (in front of purple cauliflower which you can’t really see), shimeji mushrooms, a piece of steamed broccoli with a takuwan flower, a few slices of dinosaur egg tomato, and cranberries in a sakura-shaped food cup.

happy thanksgiving, everyone!  i leave for a week-long trip to california tomorrow, and i wont be bento-ing while i’m gone… i *will* however be stopping at daiso and ichiban kan on the west coast, so i expect to come home with a load of new bento goodies!  hope you all enjoy the holiday…

as seen on: austinist and em and lo

Искам да споделя с вас една невероятна рецепта за пица. Ето го линкът щрак. Благодаря на pep-4o (Stoeva), че е направила тази рецепта достъпна в публичното пространство. Аз няма да я пиша тук, тъй като спазвам 1 към 1,  това което тя е описала за приготвянето на тестото. Трябва да отбележа, че сме пробвали различни вариати на плънката: quatro formadjo (бяло сирене, синьо сирене, кашкавал, пармезан и яйце с подправки) и pepperoni (или нещо подобно – доматен сос, гъби, колбас, кашкавал, кисели краставички и подправки).

Снимки нямам. Оказа се, че пицата е толкова вкусна, че и мострените парчета на издържат да бъдат снимани.  Снощи се нахранихме четири човека с тази пица и всички бяхме единодушни, че е много добра. И за да не се повтарям повече, спирам до тук!  Вярвам, че ще я опитате.

So, a few weekends ago, my boyfriend was really craving some Hot Truck. I guess it’s a Cornell thing. I apparently won’t properly understand the craving until I actually eat one of these sandwiches. Rather, one of these loaves of bread, accompanied by sauce and meat and who knows what else. Since he was craving one of their sandwiches, we went out to the grocery store and got some ingredients. Tomato paste, mushrooms, some ground beef, pepperoni, and lots of bread. When we got back to his apartment, we made HUGE sandwiches out of all the stuff. French bread pizzas, I guess you could call it, loaded with sauce and pepperoni and mushrooms and meatballs and cheese. Lots of cheese. Not at all healthy, but it’s not like we were worried about that at the time…

So tonight, when I got home from work today, I ended up hitting up the local grocery store for dinner. I grabbed anything I could think of while I was there. I even grabbed some non-fat plain Greek yogurt. Getting my little brother to take a bite was entertaining… “Sissy, this tastes like sour cream! I think you bought the wrong thing!!”

For dinner, I made imitation-Hot Truck. I don’t even know if that’s possible. Let’s just say that any Cornell alum would look at me and shake their communal head. No one messes with Hot Truck. People have tried, and failed miserably. I tried, and actually made a pretty decent meal out of it. Go me! Unfortunately, dinner was such a diverse combination of ingredients that I don’t even know what to call it. All I know is that I can feel it sitting in my stomach right now. A sure sign that I ate too much…

“Hot Truck…or not even close ” Recipe
1.5 pounds of lean ground turkey
.5 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp oregano
.25 tsp parsley
.25 tsp paprika 
.25 tsp black pepper
.5 tsp salt
2 handfuls of fresh bread crumbs
1 egg, beaten
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
meat from 6 hot Italian sausage links
8 oz. fresh button mushrooms, washed and cut in half vertically
enough olive oil to submerge the mushrooms
2 garlic cloves, minced
1-2 tsp. crushed red pepper (depending on how hot you like your food)
a package of sliced pepperoni
2 large loaves of Italian bread
olive oil to brush on the bread
enough tomato sauce to cover the bread (I make my own)
6 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese
Put the mushrooms in a bowl and pour enough olive oil in the bowl to cover the mushrooms.  Add the minced garlic cloves and the crushed red pepper.  Let the mushrooms sit until you are ready to assemble the meal. Using a bread knife, cut all the way through the bread horizontally (so that it separates into top and bottom, not side and side).  Brush the bread with a little olive oil.  Set this aside on a baking sheet.  Mix the turkey, cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, oregano, parsley, paprika, black pepper, salt, bread crumbs, and egg.  Combine these ingredients well in a bowl (your hands work better than a spoon here).  Roll into small meatballs (turkey balls?)  with a diameter just slightly larger than a quarter.  Heat a large frying pan on the stove over medium heat.  Add 3 Tbsp of extra virgin olive oil to the hot pan, and drop in the turkey balls.  Cover the pan and cook the turkey balls thoroughly.  Heat another frying pan over medium heat and drop small chunks of sausage directly in the dry pan (no need to add oil – the sausage will release enough grease to sufficiently coat the pan).  Cover the pan and let the sausage cook all the way through.  In the meantime, spread the sauce over the bread.  When the turkey balls and the sausage are cooked through, go ahead and put the toppings on the bread.  However you like, there’s no specific suggestions.  I prefer a pizza with sausage and mushroom and pepperoni and meatballs…in this case, turkey balls.  Once the toppings are on, cover each pizza loaf with a cup or so of cheese (to your liking, of course).  Stick the loaves in the oven under the broiler for about ten or fifteen minutes, until the cheese is melted and is just starting to brown in spots.  Cut into individual servings and enjoy!

Rigatoni with Prawns & Chilli in Tomato Sauce

Restaurant: Chix Chox

Location: North Finchley, London, N12

Meal: Lunch

Visited: November, 2009

Cost: £20 for lunch and soft drinks for two

Chix Chox is a bit of a North Finchley institution. It’s been there for at least twenty years and I have many friends with fond memories of hanging out there after school as teenagers having knockerbockerglories, eating burgers and feeling very cool. But its not just a place for teenagers, people of all ages are always made to feel very comfortable at Chix Chox. I used to take my daughter there when she was younger and she loved the place, not least because it used to have a large, meandering plant set against a trellis behind the till (more of a tree than a plant really although don’t ask me what kind) which had lollipops twisted onto its branches. At the time she was young enough to believe in the myth of the ‘lollipop tree’, i.e. that they actually grew on there. Small children would each be given a lollipop plucked from the tree upon leaving – can you imagine how exciting that is for a child? Almost two decades on and the lollipop tree is gone but the same owners and the welcoming atmosphere still remain. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to claim Chix Chox as some rarified gourmet treasure. Its not. What it does – basic pizza, pasta, burgers and cakes – it does to a fair standard and the portions are generous. I ordered the Rigatoni with Prawns & Chilli in Tomato Sauce (see photo). The pasta was nicely al dente and the sauce was acceptable. I say ’acceptable’ because it was far too timid on the garlic and chilli front for me but might be right on the button for others. Michael’s Pepperoni and Chilli pizza was far more forthright on the chilli and garlic front. The base was pleasingly thin and crisp and whilst it wasn’t the best pizza in the world it was more than good enough for a local Italian cafe.

Chix Chox is reliable in its consistency and fairly priced. Its a lovely place to take children and is quite probably the best lunch venue along the High Rd. If you’re in the area and find yourself a bit peckish you could do far worse. For the big child in all of us, though, I still wish they would bring back the lollipop tree.

Mark and I went to a wedding in Houston over the weekend, so I was unable to check out all the awesome drawings/art at Domy’s Monster Show 4 opening on Halloween.  It’s up until December, so I’m definitely going to go check it out, let me know if you want to come with me.   Here are the monsters I submitted for the show:

Fry Dude

Pizza Toof

I am calling this by a semi generic name, because I was winging it and it came out awesome. I used a cast iron fry pan, but a wok would have probably been better. So let’s get cooking.

• 2 TBS olive or peanut oil
• 1 medium onion chopped
• 2 or 3 garlic cloves chopped or a small scoop of minced garlic
• 1 medium carrot sliced
• 3/4 cup of mushrooms sliced
• 1/2 cup of green pepper chopped
• 1 stalk celery chopped
• 1/2 cup of sliced pepperoni, chopped chicken breast or cubed tofu
• 1/4 cup chicken broth, rice wine or sherry
• 1/4 cup oriental seasoning from Mustard Seed Workshop, http://www.mustardseedherbs.com/index.html
• 1/4 cup light soy sauce

Heat pan or wok on stove, add oil, peanut or olive oil. Add onions, garlic, carrots, mushrooms, green peppers, and celery and cook until they are semi done. Add pepperoni, chicken or tofu as desired, chicken broth, rice wine or sherry, as desired, oriental seasoning and light soy sauce. Stir fry to blend the ingredients, etc. Serve over rice or noodles.

This dish came out exceptionally well, mostly due to the oriental seasoning, which is made up of, Sesame Seeds, Red Pepper, Dehydrated Garlic, Dehydrated Onion, Green Pepper, Black Pepper, Celery, Lemon Peel, Mustard Seed and Freeze-Dried Whole Lemon. It’s better if you can order the blend from the Mustard Seed Workshop, but you can also try to make up your own blend.

The veggies are flexible, I might of added some string beans to the mix. The pepperoni is non traditional, but gives the stir fry an extra zing. Maybe just the thing to get kids to eat their veggies. Chicken or tofu could have been substituted for the pepperoni. The measurements on each ingredient were guesses after the stir fry was made, so is totally flexible. Sherry or rice wine could have been substituted for the chicken broth. A very inexpensive meal to make, the most expensive item was the pepperoni. This dish could have easily been made vegan.

Shortlink: http://wp.me/pGQdW-J

(c) Steve Allen, 2009. All rights reserved.

This post may be copied, printed and shared. For personal use only.

It doesn’t look like much, but it’s delicious! Just made this after not being able to figure out what I wanted, so I went with a bit of everything.  The contents include:

rice
broccoli
peas
minced garlic
feta, mozzarella, and mexican cheeses
pepperoni
bacon bits
chicken breast
salt, pepper, paprika, old bay
lemon juice
rice vinegar
a Papa Johns garlic sauce package

Basically, a bunch of random stuff I found in the fridge that needed to get used up.

I learned a lot today.

I learned that if I decide to go on a raw food diet, I can still eat pepperoni and salami. I also learned that surrealist painter Max Ernst is alive and well and designing billboards for lunchmeat in Croatia.

Okay, maybe I only learned two things today.

Oh, to be a cat   I only wish I could sleep this peacefully. Who wouldn’t want that life – spend all day sleeping, eating, grooming. Maybe play with some string. So simple.

Alas, I don’t get to sleep 20 hours a day, and therefore sleep later than I want to sometimes. I didn’t exactly wake up that late this morning, but I was late leaving the house. I must have been moving in slow motion.

I decided to use up the rest of the millet for breakfast.

• cooked millet
• 1 small banana, sliced
• raisins
• splash of vanilla
• milk
• pecan butter
• hemp seeds
• raw cacao nibs

To go with that monstrous bowl of millet, I had a glass of cranberry peach juice.

No way was I going hungry this morning

I actually couldn’t finish the bowl. Sad, I know. I probably should have put less millet in, but then there would have only been a little bit left in the fridge, and it seemed silly to leave that.

We had our last psych lecture this morning before our midterm next week, and man, our prof was flying through the slides! I guess he wanted to make sure he got everything in before the exam, but it meant I could hardly get any notes down, because the slides would disappear before I’d written a sentence even. Looks like I’ll be relying on the textbook to study for this one

After class, I found a comfy spot to eat and blog. Surprisingly, I was hungry for lunch, even after that massive millet bowl for breakfast.

Lunch today was all about things I could dip in hummus.

Like whole wheat pita triangles.

Or this little container of goodies – carrot, cucumber, pepperoni, cheddar cheese. My dad bought the pepperoni sticks yesterday, so I had to get one before they were gone.

As I often say, food is always more fun when you add dip

And yes, I had to buy a water today. Why? Well, turns out I left my Kleen Kanteen stainless steel water bottle back at the cafe when I was volunteering yesterday. At least, I hope that’s where it is. I’ll be heading over to that building for my afternoon class, so I’m going to stop in, hoping it’s still there. I’ll be sad if it’s lost for ever – I love my green water bottle!

Speaking of which, I guess I should think about packing up my things and making the trek across campus. At least the rain is holding off! Later gators

No MSG! Taste the Magic! These look better…

I think TV is like Thai food – it’s either really good, or horrendously bad.  However, unlike pad thai dripped with e.coli, sometimes I can’t tell when a show is bad.  I keep on tuning in, watching week after week, until the evil hits me straight in the face, like Chris Brown.  Afterwards, at least I can see the crap that I’ve put up with for so long. 

Every bad show has a breaking point, where it turns into an abusive, sick-inducing pile of garbage.  The O.C. went downhill once Marissa became a lesbian.  Grey’s Anatomy kicked the bucket once Izzy started sleeping with the ghost of her dead husband.  And The Hills was always terrible, although it became even more unbearable once Kristin showed up. 

For me, all of these shows died at critical inflection points: lesbianism, ghosts, and annoying skankbags.  And after watching Gossip Girl tonight, I’m beginning to wonder if GG is heading towards the junkyard too.  This week’s episode featured more inbred infighting (yawn), lovechild drama (yawn), and some creepy old people singing (Sonic Youth is an ironic name for a tone-deaf band of geezers).  The teaser for next week’s Gossip Girl featured backroom gambling.  As if Blair Waldorf would ever set foot in a room with bad lighting.  Come on. 

Sometimes I feel like I know the characters better than they know themselves.  Marissa isn’t a lesbian!  Blair wouldn’t gamble!  But the TV writers come up with such creative ways to make us believe that it could work: blame it on the al-a-a-al-a-alcohol, baby.  Or, blame it on a brain tumor.  Or, blame it on the need for a blonde reality star to serve as the center of Prada-loving Satan’s attention.

In either case, I would like to bid farewell to Gossip Girl, the latest member of the bad TV crowd to show its true colors.   And just for the record, I can’t really tell when my pad thai is swimming with e.coli either.  So I suppose the analogy is better than I thought.

And on a completely random, unrelated note: if you want a stomach-turning experience, please see this terrifying Tabasco commercial with pepperoni faces.  For some reason, it really creeps me out.  I will never eat pizza again.

Paul and I decided last night that I’m quitting grad school and he’s quitting Americorps and we’re going to open up a little brick oven pizzeria and cook pizzas for a living.

Not really. But after you see these pictures, you’ll probably wish we would.

Here’s what we did: we made naan bread and used it as pizza crust to make several different types of pizzas. One we covered in olive oil, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and fresh tomatoes (the latter two from the farmer’s market). A second, we decorated in red sauce, greasy pepperoni, thinly sliced onions and mushrooms, and shredded cheddar and mozzarella cheeses. The last, we smothered spinach, mushrooms, onions and tomatoes over a red sauce. We baked them on a hot baking sheet in a 400 degree oven for 5 minutes a piece, slid them out onto a cutting board and served to the table, just like in the restaurants. Look at these and drool.

And the best part: we polished off all of it! Because the crust was light and crunchy and the pies didn’t have too many toppings on them, they didn’t even leave me feeling greasy and stuffed. They were perfect, the ultimate homemade pizza experience.

Naan Bread Pizza Crust

2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 Tbsp plain yogurt
1/2 -3/4 cup lukewarm water

Place a large baking sheet in the oven and preheat oven to the hottest broiler setting. Mix dry ingredients together in a bowl. Add yogurt, then water. Mix well, adding more water by drops if needed to keep dough together. (You don’t want it to get too moist however, it should still crack when you pick it up.) Divide into four portions and knead by hand on a well floured surface, like a large cutting board. Use a rolling pin or other large, round object to roll out each quarter into a flat piece with an 8-10 inch diameter, approximately 3/8 inch thick. Bake one at a time for about 1 minute or less per side on hot baking sheet. Remove and let rest for 5-10 minutes before topping with pizza toppings (anything you like works). Reduce heat on oven to 400 degrees and bake pizzas on heated baking sheet. Slide out onto cutting board, slice and enjoy!

It’s that time of year again, to start getting out those casserole and crockpot recipes!  I really wished I took more advantage of my crockpot.   I’ve used it twice in the last two weeks (which is a lot for me) and it has been wonderful coming home to my kitchen that smells like someone has been cooking in it all day AND dinner practically already on the table after a long day at work.  You want to know what I made?  Well, the first was White Chicken Chili the second…you’ll have to come back to find out soon!

Back to my pizza casserole.  I kind of threw some stuff together for this one.  I looked at a few of my church cookbooks that had similar recipes but didn’t follow one to the T.  It was good, I liked it.  I think my husband’s (soon to be daddy!) taste buds got confused with the pepperoni taste, but he ate it

Pizza Casserole

Serves 5-6

8 oz Whole Wheat Wide Egg Noodles

1-2 jars Spaghetti Sauce

1 lb ground beef

Pepperoni, chopped up

Mozzerella Cheese

Onion, diced – Optional

Brown ground beef and onion; drain fat and add chopped pepperoni. 

Cook pasta according to directions on your box, drain. 

Mix the spaghetti sauce with the cooked ground beef mixture and add the pasta, mixing thoroughly.  Dump into a 8×8 or larger dish and spread desired amount of cheese over the top. 

Cook at 350 for 30-40 minutes or until cooked through.

lucky sundae’s adorable doggie bento inspired me to check out the neat bento character recipes provided on the ajinomoto webpage as part of an ongoing contest.

my bento is copied from this cute chicken bento, except i made mine with trader joe’s soy chicken nuggets.

the chickies’ beaks are yellow beet, eyes and feet are nori, combs are soy pepperoni. the chickies are sitting on rice, which is just one layer on top of a layer of shredded cheese, and beneath that a layer of refried black beans (all leftovers from veggie burritos the other night). the top veggie portion is purple broccoli with a cheese-and-sesame flower, yellow wax beans, “twist” cut yellow squash and cucumber, asparagus, two red grape tomatoes, and maki’s pickled radishes.