Pizza and granola...together at last.

Now that I've got that special little gadget doohickey thingy I'm going to be posting a nauseating amount of photos! You're going to be so sick of me!



So, I'm trying my hand at a few new things, culinary-wise. Last night was pizza.



Since I am head chef in the kitchen I can do whatever I want with the pizza but I decided to have mercy on my children and make one large cheese, one small pepperoni and one small green pepper and olive. That way, everybody was happy.


Despite my ever-widening horizons, I am still prone to making wifty mistakes and managed to forget to spray the baking sheets before adhering the dough to them. And adhered they were. It took the assistance of the dreamiest sous chef you ever saw to pry those pizzas from those sheets.


I don't think it mattered much, though, because the plain cheese pizza was gobbled up so fast I couldn't even get a photo of it. You can see a few of its decimated remains on those plates behind the other pizzas the children were afraid to approach. I don't know what their problem was, they eat pepperoni pizza all the time. I think it may have been its proximity to the pizza tainted with healthy green things that caused them concern. They were probably afraid of cross-contamination. Let me tell you, that pepper and olive one was quite possibly the best I've ever had. I see no reason to order pizza anymore. Especially now that my new friend from Bible Study has given me her homemade pizza dough recipe and I can stop wrestling with the frozen dough I've been buying at the grocery store. Leave me alone, I'm taking baby steps!


Coasting on the success of my pizza (which was even pronounced "gourmet-looking" by my mother, high praise indeed), I decided also to get a start on some homemade granola (am I copying you too much for comfort, Leila?). I got all the ingredients at my favorite Mennonite/Amish market and mixed, stirred and roasted to my heart's content. The children requested honey as the sweetener and I didn't have all that much, but the stuff seems sweet enough as they've been picking at it ever since it came out of the oven without any complaints.



The pan in the front is for The Viking and me. It's got slivered almonds, flaked coconut and dried cherries, papaya and pineapple. We're into all that dried fruit stuff (except bananas, dried bananas are right up there with candy corn in disgustingness). The pan in the back was reserved for the children's granola. I decided to make concessions and add chocolate and peanut butter chips to theirs. They need to take baby steps also. The chips aren't visible in this photo because they hadn't been added yet. Even I understood I had to let the stuff cool completely so the chips wouldn't melt all over the place...although...that could have been an interesting way to make the mix nice and gooey and moldable...I'm trying that next time. What's the worst that could happen? We'd have some really ugly looking, gooey snack food? I'd probably be Man-Cub's hero!

So, there you have how I spent my Friday night. And I must say it was very productive and rather enjoyable. Come on over next week, I'll make pizza!