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!

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!

This recipe was inspired by Sew Liberated’s post, I saw her Tortellini recipe and had to try it out! After several months of testing and mixing it up a bit, I’ve  nailed down our version of the recipe.  It’s a hit with everyone (although Etta eats the tortellini & peas and leaves the rest for me) and a super quick dinner.

DISCLAIMER: If you consider yourself a coffee snob or coffee enthusiast, you may want to navigate away from this page. What I’m about to share with you might be hard to handle.

You’re at the office, it’s about two hours till the day’s over, YOU NEED COFFEE, but not just any coffee you need that magical mystical chocolaty mocha.  Your stuck AT your office, breaks are over, there’s no way for you to obtain a “quality” mocha before you break down into a pathetic mess of mocha cravings.

Enter the latest greatest instant office mocha.

You’ll need three ingredients for this crude yet effective drink.

Here comes the technical part, add HOT water & stir.

Enjoy.

An amazingly delightful mocha, instantly! Just hide the evidence, and don’t tell your coffee enthusiast friends!

I’m relatively new to this blogging thing, both blogging myself and reading them! Angry Chicken has been one of my first & favorite blogs to follow! Last week she posted this Martha Recipe “Bread of the Monkey“, it looked like cinnamon heaven!

I had to make it!

So, Sunday morning after a fairly health breakfast, we made this indulgent pull-a-part delicacy. It is my first ever yeast recipe, and heaven’s I cooked professionally for years, somehow I never got around to making yeast breads.

WaLa! It was amazing, straight shot to cinnamon ecstasy!

My glaze was a little lighter than Martha’s & Angry Chicken’s but yummy none the less.  I also had some problem with the yeast  (I guess my water wasn’t warm enough the first time),  my husband has some experience with the stuff, and as I was frantically searching my iphone for images of foamy yeast, he informed me that indeed, my yeast was NOT foaming, it was purely my imagination.

It’s the eve of the night before Christmas, close enough for me to say “It’s Christmas Time!”

Woo Hoo!

Tonight we celebrated the holiday season with SwiftSure Timberworks crew and their family, it was a fabulous party with lots of tasty food (cooked by mwa),  good drink, and best of all great friends.

Wishing you and yours a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (oh, and yes, those are ninja salt & pepper shakers… :).

Cheers!