Barbecue Chicken Calzones

I love this weather.  Well, maybe I love the blessed feeling this weather gives me.  Sure, it was nice the  other day when it was sunny like this and not chilly.  But the chill comes from a wind off the water.  And that means we're near water.  Which is amazing in and of itself.

I am just feeling so blessed to be living where we are now.  Last spring (around this time and a little before), NES and I used to come here just to meet in the middle.  Then we found an apartment here.  Which was also amazing.  So last spring during finals, I was driving the 45 minutes back and forth from my old apartment just to spend time here.  And the weather was like this.  That's why I'm feeling particularly blessed today.

But seriously, there aren't many places where I could be taking a break from my final paper due next week to get lunch and see this.

Or, you know, get the best pizza ever (and a bag of bagels, oddly enough! Gotta love small town New England quirky restaurants . . . the most varied ones do seem to be bagel shops!) and walk to eat it in a location like this, without it even getting cold.

And I even managed to resist all the chocolate around me.  Seriously -- everyone was eating chocolate because they were all on the "chocolate tour" happening downtown.  I resisted!  . . . I got a nutella latte instead.

My rough draft of my paper is done, too.  Phew.  Now just editing, grading, and the take home final I haven't even looked at.  Oh, and giving and grading a final.  That, too.

And now I'm writing to take a break from writing.  That makes sense.

I'm getting a little antsy for having time to bake again.  NES had to work late one night this week, and at like 11 pm, I decided I wanted to bake.  So I baked last night to get over that urge.

But first, I made dinner.  The idea from dinner actually didn't come from Pinterest for once.  I actually saw this one on Pillsbury's Facebook page.  Of course, I adapted it to my liking, but that's ok. That was where the idea came from.

NES and I had actually had our Caesar salad barbecue chicken wraps on Thursday night.  When NES sauteed the chicken with the barbecue sauce, he made about 4 extra tenders.  I shredded them the next night.

So, I will admit, I used store bought pizza dough.  I should really try making it, but there is a garlic dough from the grocery store that is sooo good that I don't have much motivation.

I added a thin layer of barbecue sauce to half of it for sauce.

Then the shredded chicken and a little extra sauce.  The sauce I used was NES and JB's own recipe, and as tasty as it is, it is not a real sharp flavor that would cut through.  So I wanted to make sure it would be enough to be tasted!

Then I covered it all with mozzarella cheese.

Then, I'd usually top my calzones with a brush of olive oil, garlic salt, Italian seasoning and parmesan cheese.  I figured that might not go as well with these, but I couldn't resist the garlic.  So I just used garlic salt and just a little extra mozzarella.

Voila. I baked it at 375 degrees until it looked all browned and golden.

I'll definitely be making those again.

Then, I made brownies.


Except I majorly cheated.  You know those "shake and pour" pancake bottles where you just add water and cook them?  Well, they make those for brownies too.  I got a bottle in the package at Christmas from SJM and MJM, so I decided it was perfect for a baking crave on a night when I was supposed to be working on a final.

But then, of course, I made them in my mini cupcake maker from BMM.  So they did take a while.  I also added some leftover Reese's peanut butter eggs to half of them.

And you can't have warm brownies, new dessert dishes in the cabinet and ice cream in the freezer without having sundaes.  Seriously.

Well, it was frozen yogurt.  But that's ok.  It was tasty.  Nothing like a brownie sundae to brighten up a final-paper-writing Friday night.