I typically crave pizza at least once a week. Over the weekend, Kevin and I celebrated Valentine’s Day early with a simple dinner. My hearty pepperoni and arugula cast iron pizza was the star of our dinner. I cut up pieces of pepperoni into little heart shapes and added them to my pizza. Pizza is one of my favorite foods in the world. When I lived in New York, I ate pizza at least once each week. I didn’t start making my own pizza from scratch until I moved to the Midwest. When I make my pizza, I usually bake my pizza in the oven on top of a pizza stone or directly on a sheet pan. This time around, I decided to make pizza directly in a cast iron skillet. I preheated the oven with the cast iron skillet in the oven. When the oven reached 500°F, I carefully removed the cast iron skillet from the oven, drizzled on some olive oil, pressed the pizza dough into the skillet, topped the pizza with my favorite ingredients, and baked the pizza in the oven until it turned golden brown. The best part about a cast iron pizza is the dough develops a nice browning at the bottom.

Valentine’s Day is around the corner. February is an exciting month. It’s the month of celebrating love for your partner, family, and friends. Chinese New Year also landed in the month of February this year. Many years ago, when Kevin and I first started dating, we celebrated Valentine’s Day at Cottage Inn in Ann Arbor. We ordered a large pizza to share, a side salad, and garlicky bread sticks. Both of us had such a good time chatting over a delicious, simple meal. We wanted to recreate the experience with a simple Valentine’s Day dinner this year. Since Valentine’s Day is on a weekday this year, Kevin and I decided to celebrate the holiday this weekend. We celebrated with a simple meal of garlic knots with marinara sauce, a fresh salad, and a cast iron pizza. For dessert, we had vegan iced coffee with bits of chocolate chips blended into the drink. You can make a version of my iced coffee here. I am a huge fan of garlic knots and typically make shortcut garlic knots with marinara sauce when I’m short on time. For our Valentine’s Day celebration, I wanted to spend a little extra time by preparing pizza dough the evening before and using the pizza dough to make garlic knots from scratch.

Happy Chinese New Year eve! The evening before Chinese New Year is often my favorite part of the holiday festivities. The evening before is when families come together from near and afar to have a large family dinner. I try my best to return home for Chinese New Year at least once every two years. Last year, Kevin and I both traveled back to Brooklyn to celebrate with my family. This year, it was only Kevin and I celebrating together. I don’t consider myself a very superstitious person, but my parents definitely are. They would instruct us not to sweep, eat congee, or wash our clothes on Chinese New Year day. In the days leading up to Chinese New Year, my dad would buy some nice floral blooms to decorate the home. My mom would thoroughly clean the home from top to bottom. My brothers and I would write down what we want for the family togetherness dinner on the night before Chinese New Year. On the morning of, we start off with a vegetarian meal, usually some form of vegetable and noodles.

It has been a while since I had potatoes. I usually have potatoes at least once a week, but I haven’t picked up potatoes in over two months. I haven’t even picked up my favorite frozen fries and tater tots from the supermarket in weeks. I can’t believe I haven’t had potatoes in nearly two months considering potatoes are an absolute weakness of mine. My drought from eating potatoes changed this week. After my work out earlier this week, I was craving some starchy potato goodness. I ended up washing a few russet potatoes, cutting them up into wedges, drizzling on some olive oil, generously seasoning both sides of the wedges, and then roasting them in the oven. As the potatoes were roasting in the oven, the most wonderful smell filled my kitchen.