This weekend I decided to become a chef! Well, really I just decided that I need to expand my horizons in the kitchen and elaborate my knowledge of what I can cook. And yes, this idea was partly driven by the boy’s need to eat different meals, but also because I want to be able to cook delicious and healthy meals, not just Mexican food.

Saturday night I tried homemade pizza. Since I’m lactose intolerant, I made a cheese free pizza (yes, they do exist!) and then I made a veggie pizza too. The cheese free pizza was made with Trader Joe’s pizza dough rolled out with pizza sauce spread on top, baked until the crust is ready. Once the crust was ready, I added fresh arugula and cherry tomatoes (halved) to the top. **I stole this idea from a pizzeria in Manhattan where I went for a work dinner one night, and my co-workers ordered me a similar pizza, though that also had prosciutto on it too — very tasty. My other pizza started with the same base, but also had cheese. On top of the cheese, we piled sliced red bell peppers, sliced red onions, some more halved cherry tomatoes and a sprinkle of basil leaves. This one took longer to cook, but again was ready once the crust was just the right crispness on the bottom.

Homemade pizza wasn’t where I ended. On Sunday night I tackled cooking fish for the first time ever (which also meant buying fish for the first time ever…) I saw a recipe on food.com on Saturday that I wanted to try. It sounded tasty, and healthy. I took the recipe as a good starting point, but like always, I don’t follow directions to a T (unless I’m baking…) So I chopped up almost 2 full pints of grape tomatoes, tossed them in two tablespoons of olive oil, added basil leaves (torn into small pieces) and mixed in plenty of crushed garlic. Once it was nicely mixed, I spread it out in a 9″ x 13″ baking pan and roasted the veggies in the oven for 15 min on 425*F. Then I added in 2″ pieces of Alaskan cod spread throughout the dish, and tucked under the veggies. The pan was then put back in the oven for 12 minutes, until the cod was cooked. The tomatoes and cod were to die for and I think this dish would work with any white fish or white meat.