Traditions

While this post did start out as a photo prompt, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it is about traditions.  Things you hold dear to your heart and do over and over again because it brings joy to those around you.

In the five plus years I've been writing this blog, I have probably mentioned our pizza tradition quite a few times.  It's just something we do, it's a constant, a tradition.  I remember Thing One being about 15 to 18 months old and making sure I had the pizza dough set up in our bread machine before we left for the pool, on Fridays, in the summer.  We have visited with family, who know our tradition and bought pizza for Friday night.  Totally unexpected, but made us feel good.  Now that our oldest is camping more with Boy Scouts, we've been known to move Pizza Night to Thursday because it is tradition to eat together.

The dough and sauce ready to go!

Things have evolved and changed over the years.  There was the time that the bread machine totally gave out and we had no pizza dough ~ local delivery to the rescue.  Switched to making pizza dough in the Kitchen Aid and found this recipe that we like.  It's Ree Drummond's recipe.  She has it listed a few places and we just use the dough recipe.  Haven't wavered from this recipe in a few years!  It is even good with fresh milled flour.  Occasionally I need to add a touch more flour because the dough is too sticky.  It really depends upon how humid it is in the house!

As for a the sauce, it changes a bit with time depending on how home grown tomatoes, basil, oregano, or rosemary or growing.  We've had one banner year for tomatoes here.  We ate home grown until March or April.  Almost had a banner year this year, but wild life cleaned off EVERY.SINGLE.TOMATO.  Did not matter if it was orange, red, or green.  ALL were gone.  :(  Anyway, boys have liked what I've done recently for the sauce, which is:

combine in a blender:

2 or 3 cloves of garlic

1/2 to full teaspoon of basil, rosemary, & oregano
1/4 inch to 1/2 inch thick slice of onion, chopped a little bit

1 can (15 ounces or so) of Hunts diced tomato with juice

1 can (6 ounces I think) of Hunts tomato paste (your choice if it has extra spices)

1 or 2 teaspoons of sugar (sometimes you need it for tomatoes)

salt and pepper if you like

small splash of olive oil

Then blend till you reach desired consistency.

Transfer to saucepan and heat up on high if you need it right away

or

low heat if you can let it cook for away to let flavors blend a lot.

Toppings and shape of pizza change from week to week.  Sometimes there is a sparse amount of pepperoni in the house because we didn't plan.  Sometimes its a meat lovers verses just cheese please (after all I was born in Wisconsin) war.  Sometimes we have individual pizzas.  Calzones have made appearances too.

So, traditions are important to us.  At least this one has stood the test of time.  At least 12 years worth.  Or approximately 625 pizzas if we had just one a week!

 

June 1 brings . . .

lots of rain, tornado warnings, lightening, canceled ball games, pizza party, last Quest event, and general rainy early summer weather.  It's a day that the dog doesn't want to be outside (not fun)!

The pizza party brought a trophy for AA Division Champs!

Pizza Party Review

Earlier this summer, I volunteered to help review some of Amanada Bennett's Download and Go Unit studies. The first for the boys and I has been Pizza Party, which we received for free for reviewing it. It's been a blast because I'd been wanting to use this one for awhile now. At our house, we've been making pizza on Friday nights for about 9 years. It really seemed like a great way to get some history, geography, and art into our lives based off of a food we already enjoy.

For me, I have enjoyed the amount of information that is put into this unit. There are many links to Italian cities, various individuals, video's on making pizza, fun science projects, and so much more. Another feature I really appreciate are the links take you to the pages for the lap book pages for the day and a link to take you back to the page you were on. It's so easy to move around the down load with these and to be able to print what you need when you need it ~ I generally don't have time to print out everything at one time, let alone figure out which pages I need more than one copy. Being able to jump around like this, is absolutely wonderful to me.

The boys most favorite parts have been a couple different things. For Thing Two, it's been the art work, he really enjoyed making his self portrait on Day 2. It was neat to hear the two of them working together (Thing One did some self portraits for Cub Scouts and was "coaching" Thing Two on how to make a good picture!). Thing One has been enjoying the history ~ learning about how pizza came to America, people like Marco Polo, Vivaldi, Galileo, and doing some map work.

I think when Friday rolls around this week, the boys are going to enjoy our dinner a bit more with more knowledge of their favorite food now. We so look forward to working through more of Amanda's unit studies.

Happy Eating,

Pizza Night

It's been about 8 years. Eight years of making homemade pizza, from scratch, most every Friday night. There have been some weeks, over the years that have been skipped, because were dining with family or friends (at their house) and there have been some weeks that we order in. Mostly, though, we make our dough in the bread maker, make the sauce, and go from there.

Today was a first. The first time we made individual pizzas and the first time photos where taken (dear hubby even suggested that we should take pictures - guess he knows I like to blog). Here's a look into some of the pizzas.















Here are the hands of my all cheese child. The other pizza if for my meat loving son. Hubby's and mine are on the other tray.











Two trays worth of pizza's ready to go into the oven.