A baby shower

I had every intention of taking lots of pictures of my best friend's baby shower, but... I forgot.

So I will just tell you about it instead.

My friend Lauren and I decided we should throw a baby shower for Amy--all three of us were roommates freshman year. It ended up being a lot of fun! Almost everybody who was invited came, and there were lots of good presents and yummy food.

We played two games at this baby shower, and I'm passing them along in case somebody else wants to use them. For the first game, we shoved infant diapers into a clear plastic container and made everybody guess how many were inside. For the second game, we passed around yarn and scissors and everybody had to cut a length of yarn that they thought would fit around Amy's stomach. Then, Amy measured them around herself to see who was the closest. Almost everybody cut the yarn way, way too big, and it was funny to see. The same girl ended up winning both games, which I thought was amazing. I guess she's really good at sizing things.

For dinner, Lauren made homemade pizza. It was delicious, easy, and really quick to make. Try it out. :-)


Lauren's Famous Pizza

Dough (makes 2 pizzas)
1½ cups warm water
¾ tablespoon dry yeast (1 ¼-ounce package)
1 teaspoon sugar
4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons olive oil, plus additional as needed
Stir together water, yeast, and sugar. Let the mixture rest until the yeast blooms, 3 to 4 minutes.
Place 3 cups flour and the salt in a mixing bowl. Add the yeast mixture and oil, and stir together to form a sticky dough. If using a mixer, use the dough hook after this point. Otherwise, knead in 1 more cup flour until the dough becomes a smooth, elastic ball, approximately 5 to 8 minutes. Add a little more flour so that the dough comes away from the side of the bowl. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover with a cloth, and let rise for 30 minutes in a draft-free spot before splitting and rolling into shape.
Note: this dough does not require a ton of kneading. However, the more you knead it, the crust will become stronger and chewier.
After making the sauce, preheat the oven to 500 degrees. If you have a pizza stone and paddle, preheat the stone in the oven (if using just a pizza stone, it will take longer to cook each time the stone cools down so it’s better to leave it in the oven). Each pizza takes 8-12minutes to cook.

Sauce (makes enough for 2-4 pizzas. I usually use a 24 oz jar of pasta sauce and a 6 oz can of tomato paste and add heaping amounts of the other ingredients and it will make enough for 4 pizzas)
1¾ cup tomato sauce or 1-15 oz can (1 prefer to use pasta sauce—better flavor)
½ cup (4 oz) tomato paste
2 teaspoons sugar
½ teaspoon garlic powder
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
Combine ingredients in a blender til smooth. I normally have to add 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil because it is too thick.

Toppings
Basic (for most pizzas)-1 cup of shredded fresh mozzarella (the kind that is floating in the liquid tastes best), ½-1 cup parmesan (adds the special flavor), oregano and basil (fresh basil is best) to sprinkle over pizza last (use almost a tablespoon of each)
Other ideas:
Margherita-just mozzarella, sauce, fresh basil. I like to add fresh, sliced tomatoes and a little parmesan
Quattro Formaggi (4 cheese)-you can buy a great shredded cheese assortment at Trader Joe’s, or you can buy
your own assortment. My favorite mix: mozzarella, asiago, fontina, parmesan
Pepperoni-a classic, for picky eaters. Fun fact—if you order this in Italy you will get peppers on your pizza
Prosciutto-use 2-3 oz of this special, cured Italian ham. My personal favorite. Tear the ham into strips (like 2 in
by 1 in) and place on top with basic toppings. Also can add things like mushrooms, or carmelized
onion/roasted garlic/gorgonzola
Artichoke-put artichoke hearts on with basic and chicken if you wish
Barbecue chicken-not very Italian but still good! Use a thin layer of your favorite BBQ sauce instead of tomato,
mozzarella, and strips of grilled chicken
Alfredo chicken-use alfredo sauce instead of red sauce, mozzarella, and grilled chicken strips. I still like to
sprinkle basil and oregano on top

A halloween recipe

When I was growing up, my family often ate dinner in a pumpkin at or around halloween. It is one of my favorite foods, and dinner in a pumpkin is now our family halloween tradition. I'm posting the recipe in case you want to try it too! If you want to cook it in the microwave (which is much, much, faster) make sure your pumpkin is small-ish so it will fit. Last week I baked it in the oven, and it took 2 hours and the pumpkin still wasn't all the way cooked. But it still tasted good.

Dinner in a Pumpkin

1 pumpkin, seeded
1/2 lb ground beef
1/4 c celery
2 T chopped onion
1 c cooked rice
1/2 c ketchup
1 T worcestershire sauce
1 t sugar
1/2 t basil
garlic
1 egg
8 oz tomato sauce

Brown ground beef, celery, and onion. Mix with everything else and put inside a pumpkin and microwave for about 20 minutes or bake in the oven for an hour-ish.

When you scoop out the stew, make sure to scrape a little pumpkin "meat" off the wall of the pumpkin; it's delicious!

Comfort food

Today I discovered what my comfort food is: pasta and spaghetti sauce. I have not been feeling so great the past few days and have really not had a lot of appetite. So today, when I got home, I wanted to just go to sleep, but I knew if I didn't eat I would be miserable in the morning. Nothing sounded good until I saw the jar of spaghetti sauce in the refrigerator, and suddenly eating seemed like a good idea. A really good idea, in fact. And as I was eating, I realized that spaghetti sauce and pasta (although usually not spaghetti, ironically) ALWAYS sounds good, especially when I feel sick at all.

In honor of my discovery of my comfort food, I am posting one of my favorite pasta-and-spaghetti sauce recipes. Enjoy.

Ziti Casserole

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Cook ziti (I use penne) pasta according to package directions.
Combine two 15-oz packages cottage cheese, one 8-oz package of mozzarella, diced, 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese, two eggs, one tablespoon chopped parsley, one teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Mix together with a wooden spoon until blended.

Spoon a little spaghetti sauce into a casserole dish. Layer noodles, cheese mix, and then sauce three times. Bake uncovered for 45 minutes. Top with extra parmesan cheese.

President's Day, Bananas Tempura, Etc.

Happy President's Day! I definitely enjoyed sleeping in this morning, I hope everybody else got to also. Today Peter and I get to catch up on all the homework and housework that we didn't do on Saturday. Hooray.

Tomorrow Peter is leaving to go to a conference in California for a couple of days. It will be great for him and I hope he has fun, but I'm not really happy that he's leaving. I guess I'll live.

Last night we made bananas tempura for dessert, and it was amazing. It was really easy, too. We mixed together 1 cup bisquick, 1 egg, and enough milk and water to make a thin batter, dipped the sliced bananas in, and fried them in a little oil. We ate them with vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup. If you've never eaten bananas tempura, I highly highly recommend it. :-)