Homemade Pizza...35º

For someone who has made as much "dough" as I have over the years, why does pizza crust give me fits?..I've looked at many recipes on line, Utube videos and asked friends for their favorite recipe and as near as I can tell it is pretty basic...Flour (either bread or all purpose), water, salt, oil and yeast...Some make a quick dough and others rest the dough in the fridge overnight and the best pizza crust I've ever eaten was made with sourdough...The frozen pizza I like best has the rising crust, when I try that, at home, it doesn't get cooked and does not puff up like I want...Could be I pile too much stuff on it or I don't get it rolled thin enough...So last week, I resorted to making a quick crust, rolling it very thin and prebaking it for 5 minutes, then added the toppings...It was okay but not drop dead, best pizza ever!..My kids would say, "Mom you need more practice!"

My niece and husband came for an overnight visit last fall and talked about the pizza oven they built in their back yard and the pizza parties they host for family and friends...They are talking a bunch of pizzas...Blanche makes and shapes the dough, adds the toppings and Chris bakes, sometimes as many as 30 pizzas...They talked about an unusual pizza, that people love...A crust is covered with thin layer of whipping cream, add slices of lemon (use a mandoline) and bake, that's it!..I want to try this pizza, but I think I must practice more, will it be once a week, try using my sourdough, prebake or raw dough and different toppings, I really like chicken/garlic/artichoke with Alfredo sauce but Blanche said, "Just use whipping cream, its much better." I wonder, 'do I use parmesan cheese on this?'...Enough of my blathering, Hugs to All...OWAV:)

Before I prebaked.

15 minutes in the oven

pizza and salad for dinner

Leftover dough made into a loaf.

in the freezer for garlic bread

or a submarine sandwich on 

another day.

More about food...25º

While in La Grande on Friday, we shopped at Grocery Outlet...I think it is our favorite store there...I love it for the unusual bargains, while some people hate it because they shop from a list and "GO," seldom has the same items on the shelves...Usually though I have good luck finding bags of tiny avocados, bagged sweet onions, bags of either large or small, red, orange, yellow peppers and sometimes bags of apples and oranges and lemons and limes are cheap...Then there is the specialty aisle, organic, gourmet, quinoa, hemp meal and milk, olive oils, balsamic vinegar, all kinds of energy bars and some things that are indescribable...From there we move on to the "chocolate aisle," OH MY, I resisted, but only because I have a few of my homemade mints left from Christmas...It is a good thing that we have to drive 70 miles home or I would be shopping in the ice cream aisle, they sometimes have "smoking deals" on Hagan das ice cream bars and even in a cooler they don't stay frozen for long and you could only eat so many of those on the way home!..Pam picked up a can of pepsi for the drive home, intending to keep both of us awake...

My best bargain of the day was 4 quarts of "real apple cider vinegar," less than $10.00, ($7.00 a quart in Wallowa County), that I found on the sale rack...Sell by date is 02-20...Hmmm I wonder what happens to vinegar when it reaches that magic number, does it get more sour, or does it become hard cider?..I guess I will find out when I use it to make dill pickles this coming summer!

I intended to write about making pizza today, but somehow I got sidetracked, at GO I bought an assorted package of Italian meats, perfect for pizza...Maybe tomorrow....Hugs To All...OWAV:)

Dinner?

Not much snow so far this winter.

Strange winter weather...30º

We get a few inches of snow, then it warms up, turns to rain, making for slick roads and hazardous travel...Last week, more days were reminiscent of spring and we always wonder, "Is this our spring and what will March and April bring?.."...So as usual we enjoy each day and are very thankful for the days with sunshine.

Pam and I had our scheduled haircut appointments in La Grande last Friday and it was like a warm, sunny spring day...Even La Grande had very little wind and shirt sleeve temperatures...As usual we did whirlwind shopping, visited a new community thrift store, had lunch out and got home just after dark...Herb kept the home fire burning, so good to come home to a comfy house and a husband who encourages you to leave but happy to have you return.

We had an "appetizer" dinner last week...I was hungry for chinese food, such as sweet and sour, deep fried, and take your breath away hot mustard...Sweet and sour meat balls, crusty fried shrimp and "healthy" spring rolls dipped in peanut sauce found their way to our plate...I got so involved with prepping everything that I forgot to cook the rice!...AND I will never figure out why it takes 2 hours to prep a meal and 15 minutes to eat it!.

Spring rolls, meatballs and sauces.

Fried shrimp

Yesterday I fixed comfort food at its best, oven roasted chicken and veggies...The potatoes, carrots and onions came from our garden, we relish every bite...Looks like we are in for a dusting of snow today and more sunshine...Hugs To All...OWAV:)

Chicken and home grown veggies.

More Memories...25º

Since my blog writing has been sporadic for the past few months, I will take this opportunity to catch up on some stories and memories.

My friend Margaret passed away last July at age 94...She had lived the last year at the Alpine House assisted living, here in Joseph...I drove by the Alpine House and saw Margarets family busily moving her belongings from her apartment and took this chance to visit with family members...As I was leaving, Raelyn ( granddaughter) said, "Idella, would you like "GG's Christmas cactus?" "Of course." I said, thinking to myself, not sure about this, I've never been able to keep a cactus alive.

Our front porch houses all of the indoor plants for the summer, so I named the cactus "Maggie," added it to the lot and then forgot about it, except for an occasional drink of water...In late September,  we moved all the plants back in the house, including "Maggie."... I noticed a tiny bud starting to emerge, but since it was a long time before Christmas, I put it in our cool laundry room and watered it occasionally...By mid October, buds were forming on all the leaves and by Halloween it was in full bloom, does that mean it is a Halloween cactus, instead of a Christmas cactus?..And now in mid January it has put out 3 new blooms...Maybe if I keep neglecting it, it will keep reminding me on a regular basis, of all the good times Margaret and I had in our many years of friendship...Hugs To All...OWAV:)

Margaret 90th Birthday Party

"Maggie" blooming on Halloween

Memories...20

One of my "Hotsprings Buddies," lost her Mother over a week ago...I din't know her mother but the circumstances of death were similar to almost 15 years ago when I lost my Mom...Ninty+ years old, a fall, a broken hip, a flight to Boise, surgery, my Mom lived for 6 weeks after the hip was repaired, her Mom didn't make it through surgery.

I know how she feels but find it difficult to express sympathy in words, so I resort to baking bread and delivering it warm, along with a jar of huckleberry jam...I hope that conveys my feelings...I also want to tell her to keep busy, and she will, she is not one to sit still.

In the year following Moms death, I found my answer to keeping her memory alive and for me to move on...No more weekly trips to Elgin, where she lived, only one garden for me to take care of, it left a hole in my life...A notice in the local paper, caught my eye... "Needed, vendors for an afternoon market in Enterprise." When I called the number and asked if they could use a vendor selling "homemade bread,"...The lady said, "Really, you want to make and sell bread, that's a lot of work?"

That summer "Oma's Grainy Bread" was born...We started with a card table and 20 loaves of bread, that soon bacame 40 loaves (had to buy a new mixer) a bigger table, canope to shelter us from the sun/rain, and we added extra large carrot cake cookies to the table...Two days a week Herb and I made and sold bread and cookies for three summers...It left us exhausted, but we met new people, brought smiles to many faces and they came back week after week...It was a grand adventure.

I get my love of dough from my Mom...I don't remember very many times when she resorted to buying a loaf of bread from the store...On that fateful day when her hip gave way, she had just spent a week in the hospital for her congestive heart problem, but she was up that morning mixing a batch of bread because she wasn't about to eat a loaf of store bought bread...Hugs To All...OWAV:)

Warm from the oven.