Yo Quiero Taco Grande!

I absolutely LOVE Mexican food. I could seriously eat it just about every single day. So when I saw that this month’s special at Papa Murphy's is the Taco Grande pizza, I just knew we were going to have to get it as soon as possible. Seasoned Taco Beef, refried beans, and salsa all on one pizza just sounded delicious. It will be available until the end of the month here in Middle Tennessee, (depending on your local store's supply levels), so if you've been curious about this one but haven't gotten out to try it yet, there's no time like the present!

Big pizza on a budget!

Thing 1 enjoys watching the pizzas get made

I ran to our usual store on South Rutherford to snag one of these babies. I just had to ask the guy working if he had tried one before and get his opinion (particularly since the hubs isn't quite as into Mexican food as I am). He smiled real big and said, "Ma'am, it's one of my favorite ones on the menu." Sounds promising!

New faces, same great service

Almost all put together

Back at home and unwrapped

One thing to note about this particular pizza is that they use the refried beans in place of the pizza sauce. I had been a little curious about that since the sweet tomato sauce seemed like it would clash with the Mexican flavors. This isn't the first day on the job for the pizza creators at Papa Murphy's, though; they're masters at balancing the flavors in pizza, and they nailed it once again. It's topped with seasoned taco meat, salsa, mozzarella, black olives, roma tomatoes, green onions and cheddar cheese. Again, there are those tricky olives, but I was much less worried about them this time.

Quite the festive looking pizza when it's all cooked!

Still missing our true macro lens camera, but still - a close-up!

I think I should have gotten out the big plates

I have to admit, I'm worried I may be running out of things to say about our pizzas. There are only so many synonyms for "delicious" in the English language. But as usual, this pizza did not disappoint. It was, in fact, delicious. It's not what I would really consider "Mexican food," but it's definitely not a traditional flavored pizza. Rather, it was that somewhere in between, but with enough of both worlds to conquer a craving for either. We got adventurous and decided to throw a little sour cream on a couple of slices since I usually add a heaping spoonful to my tacos, but the sour cream definitely threw the flavor off a bit. It could have been the temperature of it, too, since it was right out of the fridge, but I honestly preferred the pizza just as it came. The only thing I might have changed was to back off the olives just a tad, but that is just a personal preference.

Here comes the airplane ... open wide!

Taco Grande with sour cream. Not bad, but it was better without it.

And for those of you that can never finish a whole pizza in an evening, here's something to keep in mind: I typically find a piece of day-old reheated pizza is every bit as good as the day it was cooked, if not better. For whatever reason, this is the first of my Papa Murphy's that didn’t reheat as evenly. Maybe it's the refried beans being a different consistency than the usual sauce, but you may want to check the temps a couple of times, because my piece took a little longer than usual to reach its optimal temperature. I usually don't mind a bite or two of mildly warm or even cold pizza, but the Taco Grande pizza definitely needed to be reheated thoroughly for me to enjoy it. If you like your refried beans cold, however, you may find yourself in love with this pizza straight out of the fridge on leftovers day.

¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!

Gimme S'mores (Pizza, That Is)!

We're back, everybody! We took a week off our pizza eating while I was traveling for business, and unfortunately my bag containing my laptop and camera (among other things) was taken from the train I was on during that trip. Bugger.

Thankfully, I had already saved a few shots to my other computer of the last pizza we had before my trip. My old college roommate and his wife were visiting from several states away, so we wanted to do something a little fun and different. They'd never had a Papa Murphy's pizza before. We decided that instead of a more traditional choice, pizza for dessert sounded like just the ticket, so we picked ourselves up a S'mores Pizza!

The S'mores Pizza couldn't have been a bigger hit. I've had dessert pizzas before and they were okay, but most of the ones I've liked have had one of three key ingredients: apples, caramel, and cinnamon, or any combination thereof. They were really more akin to a pie or a cinnamon roll than a pizza. The S'mores pizza, on the other hand, comes off looking a bit more like a normal pizza that's been invaded by fanciful toppings. My only hesitation with the S'mores pizza was how the pizza crust would taste combined with the other ingredients; I didn't really want to feel like I was just eating a regular pizza with marshmallows and chocolate, after all. Thankfully, the S'mores didn't disappoint, and tasted like a real sweet treat. It comes topped with real Hershey’s® Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips and mini marshmallows. There is also some sort of "crisp topping" whose ingredients I'm not sure of aside from the oats you can clearly make out. (And a special thanks to our reader Celeste who brought to my attention the amount of extra work that goes into this pizza and making it so special - there is also a chocolate chip folded into every individual braid in the outer crust ring itself! Chocolate stuffed crust - yummm!)

Fresh from the wrapper

I hope whoever stole our camera at least makes good
use of its awesome macro mode. This looks so yummy!

Once thoroughly browned, it looked like a true dessert. And even better, it certainly tasted the part! This is one we'll definitely be picking up again to take with us to gatherings when we're asked to bring along a dessert, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone with a sweet tooth.

It turned out perfect!

Deliciously golden-brown

8 Slices for 6 people ... somebody's going to get hurt.

I had pictures of our friends giving their seal of approvals as they enjoyed their desserts out on the patio with us, but alas, I didn't get those pulled off the camera before its untimely disappearance. So you'll have to make do with this point-of-view shot ... if you hold your nose and cover yours ears while staring intensely, you might be able to trick your brain into thinking it's about to really get a bite. That should hold you over for at least 30 minutes, which gives you plenty of time to go pick up one of your own.  :)

If you have the means, I highly recommend getting out of your chair and picking one of these up immediately!

Saddling Up with the Cowboy Pizza

This week the wife and I have decided to co-op the blog. She wanted to tell you about the pizza, and I wanted to tell you about how I lied to you last week. I'll start.

Last week I stated, "we decided to try something this week we've never done before - grilling a pizza." This is partially true in that we had never grilled a pizza before. But as it turns out, we had forgotten about a little sidebar during an afternoon trip to Lowe's a few years back. On that day, there were some people sitting outside the entrance and they were grilling pizza and giving it away for free. For free! We had a couple of slices, and it was delicious. It also happens to be the first time we ever tried a Papa Murphy's pizza, because that's exactly who the folks grilling all that pizza were with. And now we've come full circle, because this week we cooked up the very same pizza - The Cowboy.

"Courage is being scared to death, but taking the time to finish your slice of pizza anyway."

- John Wayne

Take it away, wife! ...

---

I've got to admit, so far we've been playing it pretty safe in our weekly pizza choices. Most of the pizzas we’ve tried have either been the monthly special or ones we’ve been dying to taste. However, this week we decided to be more adventurous. More daring. More brave. And the pizza that lived up to that kind of hype is rather appropriately named “The Cowboy.” It comes loaded up with pepperoni, Italian sausage, mushrooms, black olives, red pizza sauce, and an herb & cheese blend that is sprinkled all over the top.

Our pizza working its way down the line
(with a Combo Magnifico bring up the rear, it appears)

She's back! And still smiling! We love going
to the South Rutherford Papa Murphy's.

I tend to be a pickier eater than the hubs. There’s not much I could put in front of him that he wouldn’t eat, as he’s proven by eating every single meal I’ve made for him since we’ve been together, no matter how creative the recipe. But the one ingredient that always makes me cringe on a pizza is black olives (shudder). One of the stipulations we’ve given ourselves with our weekly pizzas is to order the pizzas as-is. We may go light on an ingredient, but we leave none out. So if you take a look at the pizza below, you’ll see that by my definition it is loaded with black olives. So buck up, cowgirl!

Presenting "The Cowboy"

Up close with all the toppings

That being said, when the hubs picked up the pizza, an essential ingredient was almost left off, and no, it wasn’t the olives (sigh). Right before the pizza was wrapped, one of the employees realized they'd forgotten to put the “herb and cheese blend” all over the top.  “Oh, glad I caught that!,”  she exclaimed. “This pizza is good anyway, but the blend is what really makes it!” and it was immediately remedied. And she was definitely right.

Family-sized and full of flavor. It's ready!

A little obsessed with macro shots? Maybe. But that is some good looking pizza!

Depth check! This is a pretty standard sized pizza this week.
Family-sized with a regular crust.

So for all my hesitation, I just have to say believe it or not, the olives were really good. Apparently I have been missing out for years. Or maybe I just needed the exact combination of hearty meatiness with earthy veggies and herbs. The olives added a bit of a salty taste, but the mushrooms counteracted that nicely (interjection from the hubs: he says he found the olives kind of meaty tasting when on the pizza. Meaty olives ... ooo-kay. His weird taste buds aside, he really liked them on the pizza, though he's still not a fan of eating olives by themselves, either). There was a solid portion of sausage and pepperoni, which in my book is always good. The red sauce was just the right hint of sweet tomato to compliment the flavors. The herb and cheese blend definitely made the pizza, though. I don’t even have a clue what’s in it, but whatever it is, it’s great. It added the complexity and variety that made me want seconds of this pizza. All in all, it was a great tasting and well-rounded pizza this week!

All sliced up!

Guess which slice is the hubs'?

First-person perspective on dinner!