Homemade Pizza, one of my favorite things

When we lived in Montana (two years ago, I can’t believe it’s been that long) Waldo and I made pizza often. I used Alton Brown’s sauce (so friggin good) and dough (also very good) recipes. While I love both recipes the dough has to sit in the fridge overnight and always seems to make a big mess. I made it a few times while we were in California, but since we’ve moved to Idaho I haven’t bothered. As an aside, that’s a lot of moving in two years, seesh.  Anyway my Mother in Law Rita has been on a pizza making kick lately so now I’ve caught the bug myself.  She has to make gluten free dough and I like as much gluten in mine as possible so we can’t share. Since Alton’s recipe for dough takes to long to be usable I am now on hunt for the best quick pizza dough.

A few weeks ago I ran across a blog post about freezing foods (a whole different post I’m working on) and decided to give the pizza crust a try.  I made the sauce one day, separated it and froze it. The next day I made the pizza dough, separated it and froze it all.

Homemade Pizza sauce

Homemade Pizza sauce

I didn’t manage to get any pictures of the sauce after I blended the heck out of it. Alton says this sauce can be used for pasta, meatballs, pizza and just about anything else you can think to put a tomato sauce on. I’ve never used it for anything other than pizza.

When I separated the dough I made two big balls and two small ones so that Lil could have her own pizzas. This was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a while. Lil doesn’t like anything remotely spicy and is very suspicious of red sauce so she doesn’t eat much pizza lately and if you know me even a little you will know that is just unimaginable to me. So anyway with Lil’s little pizza dough I made her a white pizza with a little ranch as a base sauce and then she cheesed it up. She loves helping me cook so the fact that she got to make her own pizza was the.best.thing.ever!

Helping to make pizzas

It was totally an accident that her dough was shaped like a heart, but we all thought it was great.

Helping to make pizzas

She also insisted on helping with our pizza, which was fine with Waldo and I.

Helping to make pizzas

*The cup of peas isn’t for the pizza. Lil loves to eat frozen peas so she was snacking on them while we prepped dinner.

Home made pizza

The pizza was delicious, but it was mostly because of the sauce. I’m pretty sure you could dip cardboard in that sauce and it would be the best thing you’ve eaten in a year. You will notice in the bottom corner a small cup of sauce to dip the crust in. Yum.  The dough itself we both felt was a little too bland. We are still searching for the best dough (besides Alton’s) so if you have any recipes for me to try let me know.

Lil’s first snow cone

Last weekend Waldo’s brother was part of a charity event thing that gave away free snow cones and he invited us to come and get some. Lil’s never had a snow cone before and I had been thinking about introducing her to the sickly sugary sweet ice treat so this was perfect timing.

I ordered her a watermelon flavored snow cone and at first she wasn’t sure about the crazy red color.

Lily's first snowcone

She tried a few bites, still not 100% on board I think.

Lily's first snowcone

Lily's first snowcone

Then the sugar hit and she was smitten.

Lily's first snowcone

Lily's first snowcone

Lily's first snowcone

Arms raised high “This is the BEST picnic ever”.

Lily's first snowcone

She repeated that comment at least 3 times.

Lily's first snowcone

Lily's first snowcone

Lily's first snowcone

I’m sure we’ll be doing snow cones again this summer.

Yet another Zoo trip

Yes I’m here to talk about going to the Zoo again. We love going to the zoo. It’s a good way to spend a few hours as a family doing something outside in a fun and controlled environment. We go so often that we know what animals we like to see and the ones that we don’t really care for. Which is to say we know our way around really well and hit the best spots most often.

Last April we bought a year pass to the Zoo in Fresno and lucky it worked in Boise too. I knew buying the pass would save us money, and enable us to go to the zoo on a whim because it wouldn’t cost us more then a few dollars. I had no idea just how often we would end up at the zoo or how much money we would save. Our pass expired at the end of last month so I counted up our zoo trips and was astonished to find out that we visited the zoo 18 times. 18 times! In 12 months. It would have cost us over $250 to visit the zoo that many times, and that’s just admission. We paid $55 for the pass to the Fresno zoo. I’d say it was well worth it. We have already bought our pass for this year of course.

Since I’m already talking about the zoo I might as well share my favorite pictures from our trip this weekend.

I have no idea if the zoo would tell us to stop it or not, but Lil loves to feed popcorn to the geese outside the zoo entrance (there’s a big park). I popped a little popcorn before we left the house and Lil tossed it at the geese with great pleasure.

Zoo Boise 5/6/12

Zoo Boise 5/6/12

Zoo Boise 5/6/12

Zoo Boise 5/6/12

Zoo Boise 5/6/12

We have a tradition of sharing a soft serve ice cream cone at the zoo and this time while we were ordering they had delicious brownies next to the cash register so we bought one.

Zoo Boise 5/6/12

Baby ducks!
Zoo Boise 5/6/12

Coati!
Zoo Boise 5/6/12

My little birdy.

Zoo Boise 5/6/12

Zoo Boise 5/6/12

Zoo Boise 5/6/12

While looking up how many times we went to the zoo I noticed that the number of pictures I took each time grew smaller and smaller. I don’t think I’ve taken our real camera to the zoo in the last half dozen trips, I just use my phone and hope that I get the best pictures possible.

Easter 2012 ~ Just a bit late

I know that I’m late with this Easter post, but I don’t really care. If this actually gets published and doesn’t live the rest of the its existence in my drafts folder I will be one very happy woman.

Last year we had started out dying eggs for Easter, but very quickly we realized that red solo cups of dye are boring and spill very easily (I’m pretty sure I spilled two cups) so I tossed all of the colored vinegar water and changed tactics. I got out our painting supplies and we painted eggs. It worked out great so a tradition was born.  This year I wanted some pastel colors for the eggs and had a very hard time trying to find pastel paint. Finally I found some little pots of pastel-ish colors at Michaels and decided that they would have to be good enough.

The Saturday before Easter Waldo, Lily and I sat down and started painting eggs.  First I had Lil paint her 2012 wood egg.  This is a idea I stole from my friend Amy, I love it. This way I’ll have an egg for every year when she’s all grown up.

Painting easter eggs

Painting easter eggs

I love how every stoke of the paintbrush was very deliberate.

Painting easter eggs

After her wood egg was done we all got going with the regular hard-boiled eggs.

Painting easter eggs

Painting easter eggs

I love how the paint pots looked after a little painting.

Painting easter eggs

Painting easter eggs

Painting easter eggs

Painting easter eggs

Easter morning I hid the eggs in the front yard and Lily had a lot of fun searching for them. Once and halfway through she got cold so I put a sweater over her cute new outfit.

Easter 2012

Easter 2012

We don’t celebrate Easter other than to hide and seek eggs over and over and over and over again. For us it was the perfect day.

Discovery Center videos

A while ago we went to the Discovery Center of Idaho in Boise and had a great time. There are some videos that we took while we were there.

We have been back since these videos were taken and the little grocery check out computers now beep for themselves when you press a button or scan some food. Lily still aboops for herself though.

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