It’s shelling time!

It also appears that I didn’t plant enough peas this year, because I’m already hungry for more!

I love peas!

So, I have a horrible truth to be shared.

I’m almost 30 years old, and until today have never made my own pizza dough. Weird, eh?

I don’t know how, it wasn’t intentional, I love pizza. We buy local whole wheat pizza crusts and make pizza weekly, it’s just so much fun. I’m new to Active-Dry yeast, and maybe that has something to do with the lack of pizza dough in my life (for heaven’s sakes, I even worked in a take-and-bake pizza place my first year of college (mysteriously, I never had to make the dough)).

Well, today was a new day, and started out like any other weekend morning, a small child climbing over me and trying to put my glasses on at 7:30am. So much for sleeping in. Around 4pm inspiration struck, can you guess, yes, pizza.

I whipped out a couple classic cookbooks  “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone” and “Chez Panisse Pasta, Pizza and Calazone” compared and contrasted their recipes… and started foaming my yeast!

Three little pizzas sounded like a good idea (since there are three of us), so after mixing my dough and letting it rise and then rest, I cut up my big ball of dough… and rolled these babies together.

I stretched them out, then put them down on a polenta and flour covered pan.

Toppings were prepared!

The first two in the oven were BBQ Chicken and BBQ w/out chicken pizzas!

Then the Mediterraneanish pizza with sun dried tomatoes, blue cheese, arugula (thanks Rene!) and artichoke hearts.

Wowsers… they were good!

It was so much easier than I though! I might start a weekly pizza ritual… although I also said that about making cheese, and have yet to make another batch!

There is nothing like cooking with kids!

I just love it!

So, as you might imagine, I’ve been waiting patiently till Etta is “old enough” to start helping in the kitchen. She’s good at putting away dishes (not really, but it’s amusing), taking out the trash (okay not really either, but she thinks she’s helping), but a couple of weeks ago she actually started helping make the salad (well, dry the salad).

We documented with a little video for your viewing pleasure.

Since we purchased our house over a year and a half ago we’ve been wanting to add some timber to it! We’ve been designing and scheming, then milling and cutting, sanding and oiling, and this weekend finally installing and partying!

The picture below shows us raising the two posts!

Here it is installed, in just 3 hours, we went from a stack of wood to a beautiful Pergola! Our living room faces South West and get’s lots of  late afternoon sun with its gigantic window. The idea is that the we can have some shade cloth or a bamboo rolling screen to help shade the late afternoon sun that comes in that window!

This is obviously a very abbreviated version of our installation and work! If your interested in Timber Framing here’s the website http://www.swiftsuretimber.com for our family business! We are insanely blessed to have so many dear friends help us over the past few months, put this all together and then put it up!

Did I forget to mention food? Ah yes! I spent all day Saturday preparing for the party! Chocolate coconut oatmeal cookies, hot artichoke and cheese dip, potato and asparagus salad, garlicky hummus, stuffed eggs, white chocolate chip cookies with dried cherries… the list goes on! I don’t think I’ve spent that much time in my kitchen in a while, I had a blast!

They have become a weekend regular in our house!

Here’s a couple versions we’ve had over the past few months…

Lemon Sticky Buns

If you decide to make these sweet buns of heaven, make sure your cream cheese (for the frosting) is at room temp, or warmer!! Our first batch turned into chunky city, and we were running around the neighborhood begging more powdered sugar from the neighbors!

Walnut Sticky Buns

This is actually a wacky recipe mix of The Joy of Cooking’s Sticky rolls and Martha Stewart’s Monkey Bread Recipe.  I use the sticky part of the sticky rolls, and the bread part of the monkey bread recipe, a wicked collaboration. If your curious about the monkey bread I blogged about it here.

Cheese is good.

I’ve been meaning to make cheese for a while! I was even gifted with some cheese making supplies & a cookbook this past holiday season. Even though I read the book cover to cover, I never got around to making any cheese. It sounded scary. Boil a pot of milk, and magically you have cheese (oversimplification, yes)?

So, I signed up for a cheese cooking class at our local Co-Op! I feel much more comfortable learning it in a class, before experimenting at home!  It was on Saturday and on Sunday morning I purchased a new Stainless Steel pot, a slotted spoon and we were making cheese!

First the Mozzarella

Then the ricotta.

YUM YUM YUM!

The mozzarella & ricotta have been used in pizza, risotto and eaten fresh! They turned out FABULOUS… to our surprise!

I had a little tamale fever the other night! So we whipped these up! On a weeknight even!

Zucchini and Cilantro Tamale’s from The New Vegetarian Epicure! I just LOVE this cookbook! Now if I could just get my hands on the original edition The Vegetarian Epicure!

The tamale’s turned out great… Etta even had her own baby cheese tamales! She gobbled them up quick!

The sun is shining so we are back in the garden…  After some boring projects like turning compost… and cleaning beds…. we planted some wee little starts and lots of seeds.

Here’s one of our little starts! Swiss Chard! YUM

We’ve been spending our weekends on the hunt for morels!

Our dear friends have a nice big piece of property, that is abundant in morels! So we’ve been journeying out to the Applegate Valley and hiking all around on the search…

Here’s a couple we found last weekend!

This guy above is actually the size of my HAND! It’s a giant, the biggest one found all season! Colton spotted it with his magical Morel vision!

As you can imagine, we’ve been eating lots of morels too!

Okay!

Some cool stuff that’s been on my mind, I thought it might be worthwhile enough to share!

• Angry Chicken’s new Mail order PDF! 16 Potions & concoctions and labels!
• The Complete Vegetarian Cuisine by Rose Elliot I checked this out from the library! It’s a fabulous book, we made the Mac & Cheese recipe last night.. so delicious!
• Men’s Knits by Erica Knight, also from the library! I think I must have been the first person to check it out! I’m excited about casting on one of the simple green “man” scarfs! Just need some yarn!
• Make your own Mini-Me at I am a Stuffed Animal .com very cute.. although probably just as easy to craft up at home!
• This pillowcase skirt I made, during nap time last week…. Just have to find the right occasion to wear it (I can’t stand wearing skirts to work)! I got the pattern idea from Sewing Green. The pillowcase was recently thrifted from my favorite Goodwill!

• These bogle face washcloths we crafted up for little baby friends, Etta loves her “prototype”, she likes to point at all the cute monster faces!

• Last but not least….VANCOUVER! We’re headed that way in a few weeks…. Etta’s first trip to Canada… we’ve been trying to decide what we want to see while we’re there! So if you have any suggestions… post them!