In a Week with Minimal Cooking, Trader Joe's Parthenon Pizza to the Rescue

Right now I’m in an odd culinary abyss between last week’s Thanksgiving holiday and a visit from my in-laws this weekend. Last week we celebrated Thanksgiving with my side of the family. We had a great time on our visit and my Mom cooked all her Thanksgiving classics. Lima loved everything, especially my Mom’s sautéed mushrooms. Every time I ask her what she wants for dinner now, she says “mush-rooooms!” She’ll even ask for mushrooms at breakfast. So it’s a weird thing, but since they’re healthy it’s a good thing she’s developed this new fondness for them. Anyway, that was last week: eating lots of yummy food and enjoying the company of family.

This weekend my in-laws are coming for a visit and we’ll probably do our fair share of eating out. We like to take them to lots of different kinds of restaurants here in Chicago so they get a good mix of cuisines. I’ll do some cooking too and I’m finalizing my menu ideas this morning. I know steak au poivre and garlic mashed potatoes is the plan for one evening, but I’m still thinking about the others.

Anyway, this week I languished in a cooking void, as you can probably tell from the lack of cooking posts in the past few days. Ate a lot last week and have entertaining coming up this weekend. So not much big time cooking going on at my house until my in-laws arrive. As such, I broke out the Trader Joe’s Parthenon Pizza last night. This is a pizza topped with Sicilian tomatoes, fresh spinach and feta cheese. It was delicious! As I’ve written before, I’m a Trader Joe’s fan and this pizza is another high quality product from them. The flavors are great, the crust is crisp, and it’s quick and easy to bake. I was impressed with how well the fresh spinach and tomatoes survived the freezing process too. It was just a frozen pizza, but it tasted much better than the average one in the grocery store freezer case. Check it out at Trader Joe’s for a quick meal.

Now I’m off to finalize my cooking plans and hit the grocery store. As always, my trusty sidekick Lima will be at my side. She loves the grocery store now for two reasons: 1) the people behind the deli counter always give her a slice of cheese when we go and 2) our grocery store now carries some really cute horse stuffed animals in the toy aisle (known as "neigh neighs" to Lima). Neighs neighs and cheese---what's not to love? Happy weekend!