Week 3: Adventures with KitchenAid

It's time for a recap of my new thing for the third week of 2012, so a review of fun with the parental units will have to wait until tomorrow. Speaking of my parents though, this week's new thing came courtesy of a generous Christmas gift that they gave me - a fancy-pants KitchenAid mixer. Look how pretty!

I'm not sure what it says about me that I was excited to find a kitchen appliance under the tree, but I totally was. Fifteen-year-old me was probably shaking her head in disgust, but 31-year-old me was super pumped. I know the mixer is going to be awesome for baking, but in the spirit of New Year's resolutions, I'm trying to steer clear of that for the moment. I was anxious to give my new toy a test run though, and a nice, whole wheat pizza dough seemed like a reasonably healthy option. Making pizza dough in the mixer? Way easy.

It took longer to get the ingredients out than it did to make the dough.

I opted to try out a recipe for winter pizza - caramelized onions and roasted butternut squash.  Actually, now that I think about it, this recipe involved several culinary firsts. In addition to the first go round with my new mixer, this was also the first time I have ever successfully caramelized onions, and quite possibly the first time I have ever made a pizza without tomatoes. This is fascinating stuff, isn't it? Annnnnnyway, inspired by my success with the mixer and giddy with the confidence that comes from perfectly caramelized onions, I decided to freestyle and deviate from the recipe, so I roasted a head of garlic and sautéed some swiss chard. End result? Yumbo!