Pizza

I've been too lazy to try making a good pizza crust from scratch. It always seemed like too much work for a payoff that might not be so good. Last night I was looking for pasta recipes online at foodnetwork.com and saw a little story about making your own pizza dough.

Emeril Lagasse had a highly rated dough recipe, so I tried it out. I had to add a bit more flour than he had before it wasn't sticking to my hands. I let it rise for about 30 minutes, stuck it in the fridge for 15 minutes, and then twirled it out. It stuck to itself on my last twirl, so I ended up just having to roll it out into a misshapen roundish mess. I added some italian seasoning to some canned spaghetti sauce, and topped it with cheese, pepperoni, fresh basil from the garden, onions, and red and yellow peppers.

It smelled amazing cooking in the oven. I was really setting myself up for a huge letdown. It came out of the oven looking like this:



It tasted amazing. The basil was a nice touch. The crust was crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. I also loved how the uncovered crust poofed up just like in a pizzeria but that the rest of the crust was thin. The kids were coming home just as it came out of the oven, and they loved it too. I had enough dough left over for another, so I made a second pizza.

I can't wait to make more, and hopefully someday with sauce made from our own garden. I'll never look at lower tier pizza chains the same way again.

Addie the Musical Genius

Today, I was sitting around staring off into space with my mind a complete blank when Addie came to me and asked if I wanted to hear her song. I figured it was some lyrics or something that she would sing, so I started asking her if it was called I'm a Cucumber, and I started singing it. She said no, and led me to the keyboard that I just brought home from my Grandma Black.

She put a drum beat on, and started playing a song. All the notes seemed to go together well enough, there wasn't just key pounding, she seems to have thought it through. Anyways, she finished, and played it again, identical to the first time. I got the camera out and taped it for her. Here's the world premier of Addie's song "Untitled"