Pepperoni Roses and Vince Staples

There was a dumb recipe for "pepperoni roses" going around online for Valentine's Day and I was like "yes, let's try that!" Oh, let's be real, I said YASSSS because I'm very basic. But unfortunately, the crust mix we used (this one) didn't allow for rolling into any kind of rose-ish shape. I actually don't think I've ever made pizza crust, from a mix or from scratch, so we were taking a risk anyway. What is Records and Recipes if not living on the edge?  So, just for fun, I did try to make one and you can see how unrosy it came out.

How they were supposed to look and how they came out.

Not too pretty and all the cheese sorta oozed out the bottom.

We realized quickly enough that the best course of action would be to make a regular pizza with the ingredients which saved the day. We made the sauce ourselves and it was the easiest most delicious thing. Just a can of tomatoes (people always swear by San Marzano tomatoes but the Trader Joe's ones worked fine) and garlic, olive oil, balsamic, salt and pepper, none of which we really measured. Just blend it up, didn't need to cook it since it cooks while the pizza does. The regular pizza was delicious!
Pizza Roses: F
Pizza: A

We listened to Vince Staple's Summertime '06, one of my favorite albums of last year. I'm old enough to still feel a little guilty when I listen to music I haven't paid for explicitly since I listen to everything on Spotify or YouTube now. So usually we just try to see the artist live so we can buy the album from them. We live in a largish (albeit 2nd rate) U.S. city so most acts make it here eventually but when Vince Staples came last year he was with Tyler the Creator and A$AP Rocky so not only were the tickets kind of expensive, I would argue overpriced because both those guys are pretty overrated and just not my favorites. But I wanted to give this dude a small sum of money for all the entertainment he has provided me (the album and his many hilarious interviews on YouTube, he's both very funny and very cute) so I decided to buy the record online which featured this sweet lenticular cover.

This is the first time the chosen Record lasts for the whole Recipe; good job double album! I do favor the first disc and think it loses a little steam on the second, but then I hear Get Paid and I'm back on board. I enjoy good stories and interesting lyrics and, ahem, dope beats. This album provides all 3! The production on this is killer and even if much of the content isn't exactly upbeat, he has a pretty great sense of humor so it all balances out. Norf Norf is a stand out track but despite the chorus "ain't never ran from nothing but the police" he has, in fact, run from a possum once.  A-