A Collusion of Carbohydrates

Today I made a very special pizza.  To begin, I'd like to say that I'm not a big fan of making pizza.  I love eating pizza, and actually, I quite enjoy topping the pizza, but I just don't like making pizza crust.  My problem with pizza crust is two-fold:

1.) You have to make it in advance.  I hate making things in advance.  This is why I rarely make any kind of yeast-bread.  Making in advance assumes you know when you're going to want something, and I usually don't decide that until the last minute.

2.) You have to shape the pizza dough.  I don't mind kneading dough, I really don't, and I don't mind occasionally rolling things out.  I mean, I don't exactly enjoy rolling out dough, but usually I find the end product worth it.  This might be a good time to point out that pie-crust is only just worth it: I generally cringe before making pie-crust, but the finished product is so damn good!  But patting out pizza dough, and then stretching it out into some kind of pizza-shaped circle is just a pain in the ass, and I don't often think it's worth it.

Those are the two reasons I don't often make pizza.  I suppose the second one would go away with practice, but let's face it: I won't make that many pizzas unless I start working at a pizzeria.  That said, this pie crust wasn't too bad.  Sure, I still had to let it rise for two hours, and it was still a pain to shape, but it tasted all right.

By the way, I made Mashed Potato Pizza.  I like mashed potatoes, so I figured I'd give it a try.  I topped my pizza with the mashed potatoes (of course), bacon, mushrooms, and two kinds of cheese, Swiss and Leicester.

Here's the crust with the potatoes, bacon, and mushrooms:

You can't see it, but I put basil, rosemary, and thyme on top of the crust, under the mashed potatoes.  Then comes the cheese:

And when it's done baking, it looks like this:

Looks fantastic.  Incidentally, it also tastes fantastic.  It probably tastes so good because of the two cloves of garlic in the mashed potatoes, garlic is addictive, but the crust was pretty tasty too.  This recipe will go in my keep folder, but mostly for the crust.  The potatoes make a tasty addition, and the rest is just regular pizza stuff, always tasty.   

Grapefruit: Who Knew?

Sorry, it's been a long time since I last posted, and this one isn't really about me cooking.  Actually, I've been thinking lately that I should write about some other things that interest me, but we'll see how lazy I am when it comes to actually doing anything about it.  It's hard enough for me to just take pictures of my food before I eat it, let alone posting said pictures with description.

Anyway, this post isn't about that, it's about grapefruit, and the mystical interaction grapefruit have with drugs (I'm assuming grapefruit is its own plural).

You see, for the past couple of weeks, I've been suffering from a bad case of folliculitis barbae, or barber's itch.  It's an infection of the hair follicle, usually by your common Staphyloccus aureus bacteria.  I finally went to the doctor about it, and he prescribed me a course of oral Erythromycin.  Erythromycin is some basic broad-spectrum antibiotic with a pretty rich history of its own, so I suggest you check out the wikipedia article. 

Everything seems to be working out, and though I've only been taking the Erythromycin for two days, I'm seeing a great reduction in itchy bumps in my beard area, and little-to-no side effects!

I was doing some research on my condition and treatment, mostly wondering why I was given an oral treatment instead of a topical one, when I came across this little gem:

"Do not eat grapefruit or drink grapefruit juice while you use Erythromycin."

From here.  That caught my attention.  Nobody told me not to eat grapefruit.  What's going on?

Well, it seems that grapefruit isn't just your usual citrus fruit; it also messes with an enzyme in your stomach that generally breaks down a bunch of the medications that are usually taken orally.  If you eat grapefruit with your medication, the enzyme doesn't work, and you end up with a lot more of said medication in your system than your doctor intended.  At least that's what I gather from this source and this source [pdf].  I think that's pretty awesome, and I wanted to share.  That second source is a pdf listing a lot of the drugs known to have an interaction with grapefruit, if you're curious about your own medications. 

Oh, and if you were wondering, I think my doctor prescribed the oral treatment because my case was pretty advanced.  I mean, my condition had actually improved a bit in the few days previous to my doctor visit, but the fact that it comes back with a vengeance whenever I shave convinced him that we needed to come at this hard.