VPN certified Pizza is Verace Pizza Napoletana that translates to True Neapolitan Pizza.

This kind of pizza is certified by the Italian Government to be made a certain way with certified ingredients in a certified oven. The result is an unique smaller pizza that has a puffy crust ends and has a very tender soft crust. These pizzas usually have more sauce than cheese and are usually soft and wet in the middle so they are impossible to eat by the slice and you have to eat them with a knife and fork.

There are three styles of VPN Certified Neapolitan Pizzas.

The Margarita – Tomato, Fresh Sliced Mozzarella, Fresh Basil and Extra Virgin Olive Oil

The Marinara – Tomato, Garlic, Oregano, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil

The Margarita Extra – Tomato, Mozzarella di Bufala, Fresh Basil, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil

The Certified Ingredients are –

Italian Type 0 or 00 Flour, Brewers Yeast, Water,Salt, Raw pureed San Marzano Tomatoes, Mozzarella Cheese made from Cow’s Milk, Mozzarella di Bufala made from Water Buffalo Milk, Fresh Basil, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Water and Salt.

The ingredients are hand kneaded or slow mixed.

Baked only 60-90 seconds in a certified stone oven with an oak wood fire at somewhere around 800 degrees F.

There are only a small amount of restaurants that are VPN Certified in the United States. According to www.FornoBravo.com we only have around 15 VPN Certified Pizzerias across this whole big country. I don’t know how old that information is so I don’t know if it is accurate. We have TWO certified VPN Pizzerias in Metro Phoenix and each pizzeria has more than one location so you have many options if you are looking for VPN Certified Pizza.

The first VPN Certified Pizzeria in Metro Phoenix AZ was Pomo Pizzeria.

I find that the crust more crusty and less pillowy and with a less wet middle than the La Piaza Al Forno. Seems like less cheese than La Piazza Al Forno.

La Piazza Al Forno started out serving Neapolitan Style pizzas for many years and only a few years back changed the recipe and oven to become VPN Certified. I know they have always made their mozzarella in-house. I don’t know if Pomo makes their own cheese.

Although both are certified VPN Pizzas the La Piazza Al Forno has different tastes and a different texture. La Piazza also is slightly less consistent with the topping and crust bottom.

For more information on Pomo please visit www.PomoPizzeria.com

For more information on La Piazza Al Forno Please visit www.LaPiazzaAlForno.com

Sources

www.FornoBravo.com

www.Wikipedia.com

www.Pizza.About.com

 

Sometimes you eat at places that aren’t for you. Sometimes it doesn’t mean that these are bad places….It just means the food isn’t your style but might be someone else’s style.

A beautiful new casual restaurant recently opened in Scottsdale AZ called The Chicken Scoop. This is a restaurant that specializes in Chicken Salad. They offer 14 varieties of Chicken Salads in a variety of scoops and accompaniments. I love chicken and think it is the most delicious of all meats when prepared well. This restaurant seemed like a very good choice for me so I wanted to try The Chicken Scoop.

My husband and I both pick the two scoop platters. Two scoops of chicken salad, a side and a small  pudding “scoop.”

I got Buffalo Chicken salad and Spicy Thai Chicken Salad and I picked fresh fruit as my side order.

The chicken salads truly don’t taste bad. Some were more tasty than others but none of the four taste bad but the texture was soooooooooooooo off-putting to me.

It’s all smooth. No celery or onion. No chucks of chicken. It’s like you made chicken salad, remove the vegetables and just put it in a blender. They give you a basket of crackers to eat with your chicken salad but I would prefer to pay extra to get some crunch like from celery sticks or other crunchy vegetables.

I guess if I just had dental work or falling out or missing teeth this might be the first restaurant I would want to eat all. You don’t need teeth to eat the chicken salads I tried.

These smooth chicken salads just aren’t for me but I will consider this place again the next time I get dental work done.

I also ate at a Tex-Mex Restaurant that’s been on my Bucket List for a long time.

This restaurant has a fun atmosphere.

They have a nice patio with a big water feature.

The inside looks like a cave.

I ordered the Filet Mignon.

My Filet had nice looking grill marks but didn’t pick up any flavor from the wood grill. My husband and I both tasted the meat and both of us thought it was unseasoned. I’m not a big fan of unseasoned meat. So the steak was mine but wasn’t really for me.

Sadly I also wasn’t a fan of the mushroom and cheese enchiladas that came with my steak.The enchiladas seemed sort of dried out.  I thought the mushrooms inside were seasoned nice and were tasty but the cheese inside was next to inedible to me.

It tasted like they used processed American Cheese-like product

instead of a traditional jack or cheddar cheese or combination that most people would expect.

That plate was mine but wasn’t for me.

Went to Kale and Clover Mindful Kitchen in North Scottsdale AZ. They serve fast food style Health Focused kind of foods. I went to get my beverage and saw all the teas were flavored….(bah)…so I decided to try a strawberry kiwi green tea. The tea tasted like green tea slightly flavored water. I asked my husband to close his eyes and taste it.

He said,

“This just taste like water with something in it.”

That’s the Forking Truth! It just tasted like water with a tiny bit of green tea  in it.

I got my salad.

It’s an attractive salad made with several nice ingredients but the salad was very dry and chicken in the salad was tasteless. I guess most people would be thrilled with this salad but it wasn’t for me.

My husband had their Jambalaya Bowl.

He said the turkey sausage in it was delicious but he also said the sauce around the rice was too salty and smokey for him.

My husband normally likes very salty foods so it’s very unusual for him to complain about too much salt. It must have been a salt bomb.

He was upset that I picked this place for lunch.

He also left half his food there and never does that.

This place wasn’t for either for us.

I do note I don’t know if my experience is typical of these restaurants since my written thoughts here are only based on first impressions.

Oh well…….doesn’t mean that these places are bad……Just not for me…. I’ll do forking better next time.

When you purchase any food that is packaged most of the time you will be ok with your purchase. However from time to time things do happen in the factory or elsewhere and you are taking a chance suffering illness or worst. You need to be aware that there are a lot of recalls out there that are hazardous to your health.

We all hear all the warnings on the evening news often about packaged foods containing Listeria, Salmonella and E Coli. We hear it so often that most of the time we don’t even pay attention.

I was surprised to find out that so many foods were recalled over the past two months for Listeria, Salmonella and E Coli.

In my own Kitchen Cabinet is Ground Turmeric that is currently recalled for elevated levels of Lead.

Just a SMALL sampling from the recall list are-

Honey Bunchies Gourmet Honey Bears – Listeria

Bounce Protein Energy Bars- Listeria

Molly & Drew Beer Bread Mix- E Coli

Kashi & Bear Naked – Snack Bars & Granola- Listeria

Whole Foods- Raw Macadamia Nuts- Salmonella

C&W Peas- Listeria

Bountiful Harvest, First Street, Great Value Frozen Peas & Mixed Vegetables – Listeria

Whole Foods Pesto Pasta Salad w/ Arugula- Listeria

Krusteaz Pancake Mix – Possible E Coli

Gold Medal Flour and Wondra Flour – E Coli

General Mills Indian Curry – Listeria

PF Changs Home Meals- Metal Fragments

Marie Callender’s Biscuit Mix – E Coli

Golden Dipt Jalapeño Breader – E Coli

Grassfield’s Cheese 6 varieties Shigna Toxic Producing E Coli

Food can get infected by the handling. E Coli happens with direct contact to feces. You don’t know what kind of person handled your packaged food. Do you?????

 

You can’t grow everything you need in your kitchen yourself but you must make an effort to be aware about the recalls.

There are lots of Recalls out there that are Hazardous to your Health.

 

 

 

When you go out to eat hopefully the food will be good enough to inspire you to cook up something similar. These are all recipes that I posted on TheForkingTruth.com A few of my inspirations came from the wonderful inspiring FnB Restaurant of Scottsdale AZ. When I tasted their dish of Spaghetti Squash with Harissa and Feta I knew I had to sort of copy it. I didn’t use feta cheese but did come up with a Harissa recipe that’s insanely delicious with spaghetti squash.

Another FnB inspired dish is the Twice cooked Gilfeather Rutabaga. My topping taste similar but is much lighter in fat than the wonderful creme fraiche and ginger that FnB served. Instead I used a combination of Fat Free Greek Yogurt thickened with a little whipped cream cheese and seasoned with fresh grated ginger, scallions and hit with salt and pepper. It’s pretty simple but I never would have thought up this one on my own but I did enjoy adding the crisp lotus root chip.

Eddie’s House of Scottsdale AZ starts you off with a complimentary basket of bread that includes flatbreads with blue cheese butter topped with pistou. It’s just scrumptious and I had to try my spin on it.

All the food from Deseo Latin Kitchen of Scottsdale was truly Amazing but the side dish of Red Lentils was very memorable so much that I did my spin on that one too. The original had a vegetable soup kind of taste with tomatoes, greens, dates, almonds and some sort of Latin Cheese. It was delicious and easy to replicate something sort of similar.

At Mayuri Palace of Phoenix AZ I tasted the very best Okra I ever had. I didn’t fry up Okra for this dish but I thought a similar dish with green beans and chickpeas would be delicious!

I had this super delicious Cilantro Lime Chicken Sandwich with Jalapeño Jam and Avocado Aioli at Scottsdale Beer Company and it inspired me to put the same flavors into a chicken meatloaf.

Atlas Bistro of Scottsdale AZ is one of Scottsdale’s offers some of the most interesting cuisine you can find in Scottsdale. The Couscous they served me on my plate there was so darn memorable I recreated my version of it nearly a year later.

At the Vic Bar and Grill of Buckeye AZ I tasted a good quality ripe Melon with baby mint and preserved lemon with goat cheese. Here is my spin on that one.

One of the most delicious Potato Salads I tried was served with my Steak at Carvalho’s Brazilian Kitchen in Scottsdale AZ. The potato salad was unlike any I had before. It was almost like mashed potatoes and chunks of potatoes. The salad had a bunch of soft carrots in it that lightened it up. I liked the pop of olives in it and as a nod to Brazilian style food I added palm to the salad that added another flavor and texture. It really came out Forking delicious.

These were my Metro Phoenix Copy Cat Recipes I came up with and I hope to come up with more inspirations soon.