Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?

It was my turn to cook this past Family Night, and even though I had eaten pizza for lunch Friday (Mediterrean), lunch Saturday (lean cuisine Roast Garlic Chicken), late night snack Saturday (don't know, but it was yummy at 1 AM), guess what still sounded like a good idea on Sunday evening?

Holly introduced me to the in house frozen dough at Sprouts a couple months ago, which is amazing stuff, and nothing I am about to say should discredit that point...

The last time I bought this dough was for a pizza night at our apartment. Even though the directions say to let the dough unthaw for 1  1/2 to 2 hours before leaving it somewhere to rise, well, that is just not how things work, world/temperature/America! I still don't know who to blame. After an hour and fifteen minutes out of the freezer you could have used the dang thing as a weapon, so we placed the dough (securely wrapped in the plastic bag I bought it in) in warm water for about thirty minutes... at which point I realized some water had leaked into the bag. All efforts to dry off the dough ball just seemed fruitless and also vaguely unhygenic, so Tanya popped out to get different (ready made) dough from a pizza place down the road. In the meantime, Carmen and I began an impromptu game of catch with the expanding dough blob, because why throw away perfectly good food when you can toss it around your apartment? Moral of the story: if you haven't tried pizza dough catch, you need to.

Anyway, this time I moved the dough to the fridge the night before. Problem solving the second time around is my strongest suit. Actually, I guess that was the moral of the story.

I made two kinds of pizza: Basil Chicken Pesto and Pepperoni with veggies, which does not sound as legit as Basil Chicken Pesto, but I swear it was delicious. I am of the opinion that pizza is not so terribly unhealthy if you use the right ingredients, so I used reduced fat pesto, part skim mozzarella cheese, turkey pepperoni, and lots of fresh veggies. Turkey pepperoni was not the best thing I have ever tasted, but it wasn't the worst either. Mostly it just tasted like rubbery pepperoni.

Oh, and we drank red wine, so it was a healthy evening all around!

It is not unusual for my sisters and I to show up places wearing the same thing-- church, birthday parties of mutual friends, Thanksgiving. Sometimes it's funny, and sometimes there is a small fight that breaks out that results in one or more us not speaking to each other. Fortunately, this matching incident was a little more planned than usual-- Russell answered the door wearing the same shirt as me, and then called Deborah to tell her to wear hers as well. When she arrived,  he sacrificed his shirt so Stephanie wouldn't feel left out. And so we could take this picture:

Sisters! Love all the pictures with the bump, I think it is Stephanie's best accessory.