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!

 

Crock Pot Meals

Our days seem to be crazy! School, therapy, sports, church, youth group, worship rehearsal, scouts, co-op, mom's meetings!

I'm in the process of trying to find good crock pot meals for those days where I can find time to fix dinner, in the morning, but not in the afternoon.  I do have the "Fix it and Forget it" books, but there seems to be a lot of recipes that use a can of "Cream of ______" soup.  Will give it another reading, on another day.  For now, here are a few that seem promising.

Beef Stew
Easy Slow Cooker Pot Roast
Fiesta Chicken with Rice and Beans
Slow Cooked BBQ Ribs
Lasagna
Texas Pulled Pork
Loaded Baked Potato Soup

Okay, spent some times looking for recipes; this is a good start.  If you come back on another day, look for "crock pot" under Labels!

What do you do?

when exhausted and having a head cold BUT your brain is wide awake and ready to go?

Personally, at this moment, beyond the obvious blogging, I'm sitting with one of favorite cookbooks to figure out some new recipes to try.  Here's my favorite, go to, cookbook (at least one of very few):

This is the cookbook where I found a good fried chicken recipe; the same one that while watching the show one Saturday our youngest cried because they were demonstrating the recipe and I didn't have time to make it for dinner.  That one recipe, is worth the cost of the book.  I've made one or two other things, but want to get to making more.

So I'll sit for awhile and find a few other recipes to try in the near future.  May start with looking for bread recipes as I've been asked to bake some soon.  They have some tasty looking desserts too.

Now off to some like reading, then maybe internet surfing for craft projects I want to copy.