Some of this and a little of that

Hello! We've been a little busy around here lately. I have made no new progress on the understanding of my old fashioned (and lovely) sewing machine. But I DID get another family heirloom. My husband's parents were in town this last weekend and his mom brought a family heirloom to share with us. It's a rhubarb plant. I guess it's been in the family for several generations. It's from Illinois and belonged to my husband's great grandma. It has traveled many miles and lived a long time to make it to our house here where we've begun to baby the thing. Not expecting much off of it this summer, but hoping for a lot next year!

We also have begun to recognize the scope of the work our yard is planning to be for us....and it's a bit daunting. Our goal this year is to simply return the yard to a workable place (of course, learn a bit about gardening, too) and make it something we can start to really make positive changes to next year. This year's basically all groundwork. The video really explains it well, I think. The front yard's a bit more put together, but it needs to change a lot, too. For one, we'd really like to be the kinds of homeowners who can park their car IN a garage. It'd be cool, especially since we have massive hail storms that move through the area from time to time. Our siding is a testament to that!

I figure if each day, we make some part of this home stand up a bit straighter and shine a little more, eventually, the whole thing will come together. It's already come SO far!

We've been experimenting with pizza dough recipes, too. Found our all-time favorite, I think. It's called a stracciatella pizza crust. It's basically crispy where it should be and chewy in the middle and really pretty easy to use. We make the entire recipe and divide it into pizza-sized lumps of dough and freeze them. Best pizza dough yet, and we are kinda turning into homemade pizza officionados. I would rather make pizza than buy it for SURE. I am never disappointed by the homemade stuff any more and I know what's in it. I should be more clear, the homemade pizzas are better than anything else and I don't have to take the risk of going out and paying for something I don't really LOVE, plus, some of those really delicious pizza places charge like $3 per topping...I mean, really?! A good pizza has to have at least 5 toppings. Who wants to pay $15 JUST for toppings? Not us. So this is the new thing. My husband does the crust and I make the sauce and assemble the toppings. I love cooking with Jason, so this is quickly becoming one of my favorite meals.

Best toppings we have found for pizza: fresh (very thinly sliced) jalapenos, home-roasted red peppers, some of a fresh pineapple all cut up, fresh mozzarella (that comes in the containers with water), kalamata olives, and fresh basil when the pizza comes out of the oven. Trust me, it's amazing! A white-sauce pizza is also really amazing with some olives, artichokes, thyme, cream cheese, and pineapple. Wow, writing about pizza is making me pretty hungry. I started this post a few months ago, and now that I am smack in the middle of a juice fast, this sounds unbelievable. Well, in a month, it will be!