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Grilled Pizza
1 package active dry yeast
1 teaspoon sugar
1 cup warm water
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons salt
1 jar fig jam
12 ounces goat cheese, crumbled
Caramelized Onions (Click here for recipe.)
1 cup fresh arugula
Olive oil
Heat grill to 350 degrees using only the left burners. In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast and sugar in warm water. Let stand for 5 minutes. In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, oil, and salt and add the yeast mixture. Cover with a towel and allow to rest for 10-15 minutes.
Place dough on a lightly floured surface and roll out to 1/2-inch thickness. Rub both sides of the dough lightly with olive oil. Place on a cookie sheet to transport to the grill. Pick up the dough and throw it on the direct heat (left side) of the grill. Grill for 1-2 minutes and flip using tongs. You will see nice grill marks.
Start building your pizza quickly. Spread fig jam onto pizza dough. Top with goat cheese and Caramelized Onions. Move the pizza to indirect heat (right side) of the grill and close. Allow to grill for 2-3 more minutes. Remove from grill and top with arugula. Slice and serve.
Caramelized Onions
1 sweet onion, thinly sliced
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup soy sauce
In a medium skillet over medium heat, melt butter and add in onions and soy sauce. Sauté, stirring occasionally, for 8-10 minutes or until onions are caramelized. The onions will be a golden brown.
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Mag’s Desserts
Evie’s Cinnamon Clusters
1 stick butter
1 (16 ounce) bag mini marshmallows
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
1/2 cup butterscotch chips
1 (12 ounce) box Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal
In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt butter and marshmallows until smooth. Remove from heat and quickly add in the milk chocolate, butterscotch and cereal. Stir thoroughly and quickly. Prepare a large sheet of parchment paper. Scoop out 2 tablespoon-sized clusters and place onto paper. Refrigerate for 30 minutes before serving.
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Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 sticks butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups self-rising flour
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, using a hand mixer, cream together the butter, sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Slowly add in the flour while mixing on low. Then add in the chocolate chips. Drop 2 tablespoon-sized balls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until edges are browned.
Please note: Mag’s mom makes these with butter-flavored Crisco rather than butter, and so does Mag. Evie, however, makes them just like this!
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Mag
One month before…
His back was to the floor and Evie was moving on top of him, his jeans were at his thighs, her jeans, panties and red Chucks had been kicked across the room.
Their hands were linked and pressed to his heart.
The engagement ring he gave her that she never took off—not ever, not showering, not doing the dishes, not ever—was digging into the webbing of his fingers.
“Trust you to take the bottom when we’re on the floor,” she breathed as she took it slow.
Too slow.
“Baby, go faster,” Mag encouraged.
She didn’t go faster.
She said, “Trust you to put bacon in the first recipe you make up for a cookbook.”
“Evie, beautiful.” He drove up his hips, and he got too fucking off on it when she gasped as he did. “Go faster.”
But again, she didn’t go faster.
“Trust you to do a cookbook for charity at all.”
Shit.
He was going to have to flip them.
“Evie,” he warned.
“Love you,” she whispered, her eyes filled with the meaning in her words aimed right at his.
Yeah.
He was going to have to flip them.
He did that and her reddish-brown hair spread out all over the long, narrow colorful Navajo rug she had in front of the sink.
“Trust you to take over,” she muttered.
He grinned down at her before he kissed her, took over, and went faster.
It took it out of him, she was sleek and wet and had her legs wrapped tight around his thighs, but he got her there before he let himself come.
He was working her neck with his mouth when she pulled her shit together and stated, “We need a dog.”
Although he had no idea what brought her to that thought, Mag had long since given up trying to keep up with Evie’s brain.
So he just lifted his head and agreed, “Yeah, we do.”
“And a cat.”
Before he could reply in the negative to that, she kept going.
“And a bird.”
At this juncture, he needed to stop her, and he did this saying, “Babe.”
“You’re going to protest, then you’re going to give me what I want, because you’re Danny, and I’m yours, and that’s how it goes. So let’s just move past the protest part, eat Cheesy Bacon Knots, and research birds and no-kill shelters.”
She was not wrong with any of that.
Shit.
“Let’s start with the dog,” he suggested.
“Okay,” she agreed.
Easy as that.
But that, too, was Evie.
Oh yeah.
He loved this woman.
Two hours later…
Evie was curled up in an armchair that had a big, chrome dome light arched over the top of it, gabbing on the phone.
“I know, right?” she said.
And then she cackled.
She was talking to Ryn.
About the cookbook.
Her brown eyes strayed to him.
And the look in them…
Fuck.
“Our guys,” she said softly into the phone.
Mag held his woman’s gaze for a very long moment.
Then, sitting on their armless leather couch among a shit ton of fucking toss pillows, he cast his gaze down to his laptop and continued researching recipe ideas.
KA
One month later…
“What’s your favorite recipe?”
This I ask to Mag.
“The Monte Cristo Sliders,” he answers.
“What’s Evie’s?” I ask.
“The Cheesy Bacon Knots.”
“Do you have a dog?”
“Yup,” he answers. “And a cat. And a fucking bird.”
I smile at him.
And Mag smiles back at me.
Bonus from Mag and Evie for the Puppers
Dog Treats
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
1 cup crunchy peanut butter
1 cup water
2 tablespoons honey
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients until combined. Roll out on a floured surface to 1-inch thickness. Using cookie cutters, cut out the cookies and place on greased cookie sheet. Bake for 20 minutes.
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Chapter Two
Not a House, a Home
Boone
Three weeks earlier…
“So?” Ryn pressed.
He really didn’t know why she was asking.
If she wanted to take it on, she knew he’d say yes.
But he looked around t
he house anyway.
It was a disaster.
Eyeing it, his first thought was that his Ryn wasn’t one to back down from a challenge.
And on that thought, he really took in the space.
Some of the drywall was punched in like someone had lost their shit and taken it out on the sheetrock. The carpet was old, worn, stained, and had to go. When whoever was there last cleared out, they took the light fixtures, the cabinetry in the kitchen and baths, the sinks, plumbing apparatus, and even yanked some of the copper pipes out of the walls.
At least it didn’t smell like cat piss, like the first house Ryn had flipped.
Though he saw rat droppings, which wasn’t good.
But no matter what a mess it was, there was a certain vibe to the place that he liked.
Truth be told, he liked it a lot.
It was roomy.
Open.
Rambling.
Big back yard.
And set on an elevation that had an unobstructed view of the Front Range.
This was why, even in the state it was in, the price tag was substantial.
She’d still rock it when she flipped it.
He looked back to his woman.
“You should get it,” he said.
“We should get it,” she returned.
That was Ryn.
To her, they were an us.
In everything.
He had his job with Hawk, she still danced for Smithie.
But when it came down to the important shit of life, it was we.
It was us.
And in this, her gig at flipping houses, it wasn’t only emotionally true, it was technically true as well.
He invested money, and when he had time, he worked with her on her projects (of which she’d flipped two so far, but she had grand schemes to do more, welcomed hard work, had a good eye for the bones of a project and a better one for décor, so they’d scored big on both—that said, Cisco had helped in a way with the first, Boone just decided not to think about that part).
When his buds had time, they worked with her too.
Mostly, though, she’d formed a loose alliance with the Chaos MC.
Even though it was “loose,” no matter what, when she was on a job, one or more of those brothers was always working beside her.
They did it only for lunch, they didn’t take a cut.
They said it was their “hobby.”
This wasn’t a surprise.
For decades, Chaos had made a “hobby” of making sure women landed on their feet.
Ryn’s alliance with the MC had started as a necessity. Not due to the needs of the house she was working on, due to shit fucking with her life.
The shit fucking with her life had ended.
The alliance had not.
Case in point, Hound, one of the brothers of Chaos and the one Ryn was tightest with (something that didn’t surprise Boone, Hound was a wild man, and Ryn had no fear) wandered in.
He looked to Ryn then looked to Boone.
Oh shit.
“It’s solid,” he gave his approval. Then went on, “I’ll take it outside,” and he immediately walked his ass outside.
Boone felt his eyes narrow as he shifted his attention back to his girl.
“What?” he asked.
“How much do you like it?” she asked back.
That wasn’t the answer he was expecting to his question and not only because it was also a question.
He expected to hear about a concern with the foundation. Black mold. Faulty trusses. Hefty shit that killed a flip’s budget.
“How much do you want me to like it?” he replied hesitantly.
She moved, her wavy blonde hair swaying along her back, but his attention focused more on her hips.
Ryn could move.
Wielding a hammer.
Commanding the stage at Smithie’s.
Riding his cock.
She turned back to him and pressed, “Does this kitchen work for you?”
There wasn’t much in the way of a kitchen left.
Still, Boone felt a tickle in the back of his throat with the way she asked this question.
The kitchen was in the center of a big room. There was a family room area open to it. There were floor-to-ceiling, one-and-a-half-story windows that came to a point beyond that.
And beyond that was the view to the Front Range.
In other words, it fucking rocked.
“Baby, talk to me,” he urged.
“This isn’t a house, Boone. It’s a home.”
He didn’t move a muscle.
“Could you be happy here?” she asked quietly.
Not a house, a home.
In other words, not a house, their home.
“You want this for us?” he asked.
“Do you want this for us?” she returned.
“I don’t give a fuck where we are, your place, my place, the moon. What I give a fuck about is if you think you’ll be happy wherever we are.”
His woman was gorgeous, flat-out beautiful.
But that look on her face right now?
Staggering.
Her response was, “I want you to have the kitchen you want because you love to cook.”
His first thought was to order her to get her ass to him immediately.
But if she did, they’d be fucking on rat droppings and that shit wasn’t going to happen.
“Are you sayin’ with this that Hound knew you were gonna pitch this as our place before I knew that shit?” he asked instead.
She shot him a big, white smile, and he saw the tension ease out of her shoulders.
She wanted this for them.
She wanted to build a life with him there.
Raise their kids there.
Christ, he wished he’d brought the ring he’d gone out with Mag to buy a few weeks ago when he’d met her there that day.
He didn’t care about rat droppings.
This would have been the perfect timing.
He’d have to find another.
Maybe when they first walked in after they closed.
“Right then,” he said softly. “You gonna design me the perfect kitchen, baby?”
“Absolutely.”
Of course she was.
Knock herself out doing it.
That was his Ryn.
“Right to the soul, love you, Ryn,” he told her.
That got him another big, white smile, though this one was wobbly.
“Right back at cha, baby,” she replied.
KA
Three weeks later…
“No shit? You found your house in the middle of this cookbook business?” I ask.
Boone tipped up his chin. “Close on it next week.”
“Only dude I know whose woman gets him a house based on the kitchen she’s gonna make him cook in,” Auggie, who I was noticing has the habit, instantly starts giving shit.
“Like you’re not the cook of the family,” Mag retorts.
But Auggie is Teflon.
And as such, not missing a beat, he shoots back, “Kitchen time is Juno-and-Me time.”
“You didn’t make up your pork rind nachos with Juno,” Axl points out.
Say…
What?
“Wait, hold the phone,” I cut in. “Pork rind nachos?”
I mean, it’s a constant threat, imminent orgasm, just sitting and rapping with these dudes.
But…
Pork rind nachos?
That has to be the numero uno culinary orgasm of all time.
“They don’t hold a candle to Axl’s pulled pork tacos with peach salsa,” Mag asserts.
Although that sounds awesome, nothing beats pork rinds.
I know that and I haven’t even tasted them (yet).
I decide not to share that.
Instead, I say, “Please, I beg you, tell me those nachos are among the recipes you’re giving to me.”
Auggie’s smile is wide and glamorous.
&n
bsp; And his answer is perfection.
“Of course.”
I hope a fraction of the sheer amount of gratitude I have for this is offered to him from my eyes before I turn to Boone and say, “Good call, avoiding any hanky-panky on top of rat droppings.”
Boone sizes me up like he hasn’t been sitting with me for the last half an hour.
When he finishes doing that, he says, “Christ, it’s like you could be one of them.”
“One of what?” I ask.
“Rock Chick or Dream Team, take your pick,” he answers.
He has no idea.
“That’s OG for the women who started it all, the Rock Chicks, and the next gen, which are our women, the Dream Team,” Axl helpfully, but unnecessarily, explains.
“Unh-hunh,” I reply.
“She doesn’t get it,” Auggie mutters.
There is no way humanly possible I could get it any more than I already got it.
I don’t share that either.
“Magnusson!”
We hear this from the direction of the book counter.
We all look that way to see bandana-sporting Duke staring at the front door.
So we all look to the front door just in time for the bell over it to ring.
“Fuck,” Mag mutters.
But my heart just…
Stops.
Because in comes two people I know very well.
Daisy Sloan (and she brings with her her mile-high, teased out, platinum-blonde hair and massive bazungas, their cleavage bared over a gingham print, cap-sleeved blouse knotted under her impressive rack, high-waisted, sailor-front, denim short-shorts, and cork-heeled-and-soled, brown leather, platform, six-inch strappy sandals).
And with her is Tod.
Half of Tod and Stevie.
Though now he’s sans Stevie, with Daisy, and homed in on Mag.
Um…
Neither Daisy nor Tod waste time bearing down on our table.
Dream Bites Cookbook: Cooking with the Commandos Page 3