Four batches of pizza dough later, I have been won over to the Kitchen-Aid dark side.

I got the original recipe from http://www.cooking.com and have tweaked it considerably. This ends up a very flavorful dough with lots of herbs/spices and takes about 45 minutes from inspiration to table.

( Petal's Yumtastic Quick Pizza Dough )

Tags: easily made vegan, easy recipe, freezable, make-ahead recipes, recipe, vegatarian
Current Mood: productive

Might post about the last few weeks eventually, but don't hold your breath. Suffice to say that life has been insane, got to visit far too briefly with the unbelievably beautifully radiant girlfriend, and now my house is empty of anyone with whom I do not share a tax liability, and hurrah for that! :) The limits of my introversion have been severely strained in the last month.

We were supposed to be camping this weekend, but my parents have come down with some horrible creeping crud throat-based illness and it was canceled. I am very sorry they are sick, but I am not sorry to have the weekend at home with my family.

I made a crapload of pizza sauce this morning, which is now portioned out and in the freezer. I'm going to tackle making and freezing some pizza dough soon. I love my pizza dough recipe - I tweaked it and it's totally yumtastic, even with some whole wheat flour snuck in.

In other news, out of Real Coffee. John bought me a bag of Starbucks. Please, can someone explain to me what the point of medium roast coffee is? I didn't think to specify dark roast to him because I had no idea anybody actually drank anything that wasn't dark roast. *boggle*

So yesterday afternoon, somehow between picking my child up at 4:00pm and 5:15pm, he and I were ready to kill each other, over cereal bowls of all things. Argh. Three is shaping up to be MUCH more challenging than two, for the record. I love it, I love the questioning, the emerging awareness, the all-around person-ness that he's developing. But man, can he push my buttons, particularly when I've been in a several week long period of high emotional stress.

So, I informed the hus-bean that I was going to return our overdue DVD to the library (finally we found it!), resisted the urge to scream at Evan that no he couldn't come because if he did, Mommy would take a side trip to the recycling center and dump him in with the cans, and went and did so. Some music, cookbooks, and meditation books later (but not the Caillou that I promised him - I had to reserve them to get sent to our branch... boo!) I indulged in some thrift shop retail therapy, and scored these in essentially new unworn condition. 4.99! Woot! And a fun folksy skirt, both of which I am wearing, so I feel happy and pretty and stuff.

I also picked up a flyer at the library and I think I'm going to take a beginning Hatha Yoga class on Wednesday nights. I really don't like being committed to being out of the house more than one night a week, but it's only an hour and it's right up at the local community center so it's just a mile or two up the road. I think yoga would be good for me, and I've always wanted to take a class. I never expect tremendously high quality out of the classes in our community center (many of the centers have wonderful stuff but ours is a little lacking most of the time), but it's affordable and convenient.

And for today, the baby bean is home with the grand-beans, and I have taken tomorrow off to watch the two best babies in the land, and I have fresh coffee. Life could surely be worse.

I need to go through my closet and umpteen boxes of clothing and shoes and all that and clear out tons of stuff so I can feel less guilty indulging in my clothing habit. I am getting to the point that it's a little easier to let go of things that I don't really love, but it's still hard. I think I need an in house bossy fashionista. I am definitely getting better at only buying things that I really love, and for the most part convincing myself I don't really love anything that's not of decent quality. I love my sense of style when I get to indulge it, though the closet issue would be easier if I wasn't so eclectic.

Oh! Speaking of which! I need to check my ebay auction and see if I won! :)

But for the moment, shoes! :)

So I had to pick Evan up from school today around 1:30 because he wouldn't go potty, and he had to pee so badly he was crying. :( My poor little pookie bear! He's got this thing about going to the bathroom at school, and we can't seem to get him over it. Normally he goes before he leaves the house and then either I make him go before we leave school or he goes right when we get home, and the intervening six and a half hours or so are OK. But today, he didn't go before he left the house apparently, and he had a ton of watermelon with his breakfast and with his lunch. He was fine as soon as I got him to pee six million quarts, but he wanted to leave, and I didn't have the heart to argue with him. We went back to my office where I actually succeeded in getting some work done, and we headed home around 4:30 after a slight detour to let him play in the sprinklers. :)

He was plumb wore out though, and he fell asleep on the way home. I sat in the car for a while and talked to my sister, then carried him inside and put him down on his bed where he slept until John got home at about 6:15. We tried to wake him up and he was utterly inconsolable and then downright hysterical, leaving us with UTI worries. Managed to get an Ibuprofin in him and I was trying to tempt him with yummy fruits. He went hysterical again, demanding black strawberries. Black strawberries?? We were stymmied until I remembered the chocolate covered strawberries that lionessindc brought to his birthday party that were a tremendous hit with the kids (and the adults!). Black strawberries! Well. I actually happened to have two pounds of strawberries in the fridge. And I happened to have some Dove dark chocolate ice cream topping. I melted a bit in the microwave, dipped the strawberries in them and cooled them in the freezer for a minute. They weren't as good as Danie's, but they weren't half bad!

Child was amazingly happier after a plateful. Who can blame him?? His mood recovered, I suspect there was some low blood sugar involved as well as just being really exhausted and awakened at the wrong point in the nap. He's had a bath and some real food now, and he's as chirpy as one could hope for. Pictures of chocolate strawberry decadence forthcoming. ;)

There aren't many moms who can manage to produce chocolate covered strawberries at the drop of a hat in two minutes, on demand. I am smug. :)

My other awesome mom trick of the evening was to spontaneously incorporate a leftover half a bag of frozen peas into dinner. *beams*

Current Mood: pleased

I'm actually kinda tempted to try to convince somebody (anybody?) to go to this with me... how fun!

http://www.goddessdollies.com/salon/index.html

I need to get off the internet! :)

Dear Husbean,

When reading to the child and presented with the question, "What is a well?" the correct answer is not, "For Timmy to fall down." We do NOT have that kind of money for therapy...

Sincerely,
The wifelet

I wouldn't trade scherzoid for all the steampunky goodness in the world. But I might daydream a bit about getting this as a wedding gift from my husband...

*sigh*

I think I need to come with a steampunkerific outfit for the next Big Event. :) It would make me happy. Maybe I shall work on beginning to wrest the new sewing machine into submission this weekend.

Today, I feel pretty and summery and just... happy, albeit very sleepy. I have therefore been avoiding mirrors in order to see any evidence to the contrary. :) I think it's in some part the gorgeous weather, and in some part my weekend fun, and in some part the fact that after tomorrow's presentation I get about a week of no-stress. I seem to have been able to shake off yesterday's funk for what it was, and even the eye-rollingness of Evan's school this morning hasn't really bothered me.

I have wooed my child over to the squished penny dark side! *mwhahahahaha* Even if they cost .51 each. ;)

I still hate father's day. I am not as good as I wish I was at not taking that out on people who are completely innocent bystanders.

Current Mood: dark