I’ve been battling a sinus thing since Tuesday. I started losing my voice Tuesday night [at the awesome Minus the Bear and The Velvet Teen show]. My birthday was on Wednesday. Andrew couldn’t even hear me while we were at dinner. My voice was that far gone and the music was way too loud [hipster dance party at a German restaurant…wtf?]. I continued to pile on Cold Eeze and Theraflu in hopes of keeping my voice and being able to party Friday night—my birthday party at The Old Gold [omg, elk burger!]. I still sound like hell, but I had a blast.

And now I’m waiting to go to my “surprise” that Andrew has planned. I celebrate my birthday week if you hadn’t noticed. I hope this “surprise” involves food because I’m having a hard time avoiding the massive plate of snickerdoodles I made the other night. You’ll hear all about those later. I’m too busy missing this pizza topping combo I stole from Jessica. It has fall written all over it, and I’m a big fan of smoked gouda [I’m eating more dairy again. I’ll tell you about that sometime, too].

Inspiration: How Sweet It is

Ingredients

Pizza dough of choice [I always use this now]

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 large apple [you’ll thinly slice this later, unless you dig brown apples]

5 slices thick cut bacon, chopped into large chunks, cooked and drained

1 small red onion, sliced

1 garlic clove, minced

1 cup shredded smoked gouda [or more! I might have used more!]

1/4 cup shredded parmesan

8-10 sage leaves, torn into pieces

Preparation

Heat the olive oil in a large pan on medium high heat. Add the onion slices, tossing to coat. Cook the onion, stirring occasionally until they start to caramelize [8-12 minutes]. Add the minced garlic and toss. Remove from heat after a minute. Burnt garlic sucks. Follow your own pizza cooking directions if you want, but I’m a huge fan of grilling small pizzas. Turn grill on medium heat and spray the grate with olive oil. Divide pizza dough into four equal balls and roll them out into desired thickness. Place the dough on the grill for 2-4 minutes until the bottom is cooked and has charred marks on it [I can only fit two at a time on my grill]. Remove from the grill, grilled side up. Brush the tops of the dough with olive oil. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Slice your apple if you haven’t yet. Add 1/2 of the cheese to the base of your pizza(s). Layer with slices apples, bacon, and caramelized onions. Top with the remaining cheese. Sprinkle the torn sage leaves over the pizzas. Return the pizzas to the grill and cook for another 2-5 minutes until the cheese melts and the dough is cooked but not burned.

PS – I totally bought a Good Housekeeping cookbook from the 1940s. Things are going to get rad around here.