Homemade Pizza

I'm going to share with you two of our all-time favorite pizzas. We make pizza every Friday night for our family and for some cute neighbor kids that have caught on and just happen to show up our house around dinner time every Friday :) . We always have at least four different varieties of toppings but the two we always come back to and have every week are chicken and spinach with alfredo sauce and bacon, rosemary and potato. Yes, potato. I was skeptical at first but it is so amazingly delicious.  My kids can't get enough of it.
Lets begin.
First, if you have a baking stone, place it on the lowest rack in your oven and preheat to 500 degrees. If you don't have a stone you can turn a baking sheet upside down and use that.

My very well loved stone. I prefer this rectangle one over the circles that I have had in the past.  I love that I can make french bread on it and usually fit two or three personal pizzas that my kids make.

Now you will need to make some dough. The recipe we use most is from here at Mels Kitchen Cafe.
A little side note from me, when she says to add flour until the dough clears the sides of the bowl, if you are using a Bosch mixer I've noticed that you have to make sure it clears the inside part of the bowl also. Not just the outer part.

After it clears the inside and outside part of the bowl it should still be slightly sticky

Because I only have one pizza peel and I make at least 5 pizzas I like to roll the dough out on my counter and then transfer the dough to a piece of parchment paper.  That way I can put a pizza in the oven and while its baking prepare another one and then immediately after taking one out, I can throw another in the oven.  Also, my husband is not a huge fan of cornmeal on the bottom of his pizza so this way you don't have to use it. When you pull it out of the oven the paper will be dark and crispy. Don't let this scare you. I've done this hundreds of times and it has never caught on fire. The pizza also slides easily off of the parchment after baking. It doesn't stick at all.

For the chicken and spinach pizza:
 either make your own alfredo sauce (our favorite here) or you can use a jar of sauce.
Grilled chicken or you can use a rotisserie chicken-my personal fav. and chop or shred into bite sized pieces.
Spinach

Spread a good amount of sauce on to your prepared dough.

Now, heat up a tsp. or so of olive oil in a sauté pan and throw a handful of spinach in there and season with a little salt and pepper.  Let it wilt just a little and flip over. This whole process should only take a minute or two.

Arrange the chicken and spinach over the sauce and then cover with freshly shredded mozzarella.

See how brown the parchment gets? I promise my house didn't burn down

Bake for 9 minutes and then place on a cutting board and let sit for a few minutes before slicing to give the cheese a chance to settle.

What you will need for the potato pizza:
2-3 medium Yukon Gold potatoes
1/2 lb. bacon, cut into small pieces and cooked until no longer pink but not crisp
pinch of dried Rosemary crushed

-For the potato pizza, boil the potatoes until they are almost cooked through. Once cooked, slice the potatoes thinly and set aside. Roll out your dough and drizzle with a little olive oil and sprinkle with a little bit of pepper. Evenly cover the dough with mozzarella and then arrange the potatoes in a single layer and add bacon and lightly cover with rosemary.

Bake for 9 minutes. Again, let sit for a few minutes to let the cheese settle.
Enjoy!

Ruffle skirt tutorial

Today I will be showing you how to make one of my favorite skirts.  It also happens to be one of the easiest to make.

My 15 year old daughter, Emily made the skirt so that I could take pictures.
I get my ruffle fabric from a small, local fabric store but you can also purchase it online here.  They also carry some darling elastic for the waist band. If you happen to live near a Hobby Lobby they carry a few colors and you can use your 40% off coupon to get it for around $8.99/yard.
Most ruffle fabric is 48-50" wide so in order to determine how much you will need, measure from your hip to where you would like the skirt to fall to. Ruffle fabric is a bit pricey online but you won't even need a yard for most projects. My daughter measured 23" so we didn't even need quite a yard. We ended up buying a yard to use the excess for another project which I will show you next week.
To figure out the waist measurement you will need to measure your waist and then cut your fabric to 1 1/2 times your measurement. For example, if your waist is 30" you would add that plus half which would make it 45". That is what you will cut your fabric to. Once you have done that you will need to match up and pin the bottom of each ruffle. Pin all the way to the bottom.

Next sew along the edge, keeping the edge of the fabric lined up with the edge of your presser foot.

Now, instead of measuring your waist with a measuring tape, just wrap the elastic around your waist and cut it right at the end. Do not have any overhang. Simply put the elastic right sides together and sew along the edge of your presser foot.

Now, line up the seam on your elastic with the seam on your skirt. Pin right sides together. Fold the elastic in half and the skirt and line up those two points on the opposite side of that first pin.
Line up your pins and pin the two opposite sides. You should have four pins now.

To sew the elastic on simply lower your needle onto the elastic seam and then pull your elastic tight until the ruffle fabric is straight.

Once you start sewing you will be pulling the fabric toward the back of your machine with your left hand and pulling forward on the other side. Be careful not to sew your ruffles in between the elastic and the fabric. Once you get to the next pin, remove it and do the same thing all the way around the skirt. Turn right side out. If it needs to be trimmed just pull up a layer and cut along the straight fabric.

Done!

 I hope this made sense. Please feel free to email me or leave a comment with any questions.

Dana

"Bonjour, au Revoir!" Hello Baby and Goodbye Going Away Party

I recently found myself unexpectedly moving from a state that I had been born and raised in my entire life. This presented a tidal wave of emotions, as you can imagine, along with some major problems, like: two of my friends were having babies and we needed to have a party before I left! Lets get our priorities straight here!

If parties are as important to you, as they are to me, than you know, there was no way these two girlfriends of mine (who just happen to be SISTERS-how cute is that?!) were going to have babies without a party first! They, in turn, made me agree to it doubling as a going away party for me. Fine. Have it your way. We all know you don't mess with pregnant ladies.
 

 

So the theme was created, a "hello, goodbye" party to celebrate the upcoming arrivals of two sweet little boy cousins and for friends to say goodbyes amidst tears...not of sadness, but slap your knee, squeal with delight, hilarious girl talk tears. You know the kind I'm talking about, where your cheeks hurt so bad you have to hold them in poker face position so they don't sting? Ya, that kind of laughter brings on the best kind of tears. Ok, enough about the "why", here are the fun party details! The "Bonjour/au revoir" garland was made by sketching letters onto black paper with pencil, and then carefully, VERY carefully cutting those letters out and then gluing them to one another. The black and white bakers twine was strung through the tops of the letters. The mini striped flags were cute from black and white paper and the bakers twine was affixed to the backs with tape. 

 

We used mustaches and gumballs as inspiration for the party, creating the decorations with black and white, and bright colors. We used honeycomb globes to mimic the gumballs used to decorate with. Those little gumballs were put to a perfectly practical use as drink stirrers. We only stabbed ourselves about 15 times jamming those gumballs onto the ends of the sharp (VERY sharp, I might add) bamboo skewers, but hey, we all make sacrifices for the greater party good, right?

The gumball stirrers in action, clearly not stopping juicy conversing from happening.

 

My talented friend, and one of the expecting mamas, Wendy, made this adorable mustache garland, handle bar 'staches and all! She cut the mustache shapes out of black felt and then sewed them all together. The garland really pulled everything all together.

 

The gumballs made another appearance on the cake.

 

The dessert table also featured Snickerdoodle cookies and Chocolate Chunk Salted Carmel cookies. Both were also tucked into the cute little mustache bags for guests to have a sweet treat to take home. Because, lets be honest, when cookies this good are served at a party we all want to shove a handful in our purse to take home and eat while we watch our favorite show, but never would. Oh, that's just me? oh well. And some of you actually do? Well, I won't judge. But that's what the guilt-free party favors are for!

 

 

Aren't those mustache balloons perfect?

 

The menu was casual, to go along with the casual, intimate gathering. Toppings to create your own pizzas were displayed for guests to add what they liked and then transferred to the oven to bake. While pizzas cooked, guests nibbled on vegetables, fruit and cheese and crackers. A hearty pear and goat cheese salad accompanied the pizzas and it was fun to sample the various flavors of the pizzas that were created.

 

And what's a mustache party without some mustaches on a stick?

 

I hope your party is fabulous!

 

-heather