Oh, the Places You’ll Go – Future Graduation Gift Idea

May 14th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Ideas - (0 Comments)
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Since the end of the school year is FAST approaching (hooray!), I wanted to implement and pass this awesome idea along. This one comes from Denise @ A Sprinkle of This. I LOVE it. Seriously, this ranks high up in fun gift ideas in my book.

For a baby shower gift, she gave the Mom-to-be a copy of Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go” for the Mom to give to the future baby as a graduation gift. Her idea was to have the Mom sneak the copy of the book to all of the child’s teachers from Pre-K through high school and have them sign a quick note, and then the parents then give this almost as a “teacher yearbook” to the child. That is so cool.

Also, if your kids (or grandkids) are already later in their school years, you could get some of their favorite teachers and some of their friends to sign it. I think that would be an awesome idea too.

I’m taking this idea to use for MY kids right now, but I may use this as a baby gift in the future as well (think nieces/nephews/friends/grandkids/etc.). My oldest is in 2nd grade and we have lived in the same place since he was in pre-K (miraculously enough), so I think I can still backtrack for his teachers. My middle one is in pre-K, so it will be easy to start this with him. And my youngest still hasn’t started school yet, so we should be good to go for her.

I just ordered three hardcover copies of the book (one for each child) from Amazon for $10.79 each (no, I don’t get anything if you buy from the link – I just wanted to make it easy for you to find). This qualified me for the free shipping, which saved me over $26 over buying it at the normal price with tax at the store. Good deal!

Thank you, Denise, for making a graduation gift that much easier for me to figure out. As long as I don’t lose the books along the way…… :)

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BEST Playdoh Ever. Really.

May 12th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Kids - (4 Comments)
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The other day as the kids were playing with Play-doh and I was weeding out the Play-doh that had dried out from the Play-doh that was still good to use, I sighed to myself and wished that I could find a recipe to make playdoh that would yield results like the good, soft, freshly-bought Play-doh from the store.

Then I got my lovely recipe holder from my 5-year old, and the recipe that his pre-K teacher had attached was one for Kool-Aid playdoh. She had very thoughtfully also put a packet of Kool-Aid on the recipe holder as well, so we were set to make some playdoh at home.

A lot of the recipes I have tried before either are really salty and leave your hands dry, or the playdoh ends up dry and flaky – no good. This one was a little different than the ones I had tried, and it was SPOT ON. Wahoo!

Ingredients

1 c. flour

1/4 c. salt

2 T. cream of tartar

1 envelope Kool-Aid

1 c. water

1 T. vegetable oil

Mix flour, salt, cream of tartar, Kool-Aid and water in a medium saucepan. Stir in the oil.

Mix over medium heat for 3-5 minutes until the mixture forms a ball in the center of the pan. This took me the full 5 minutes, and it takes stirring the whole time or it gets selectively clumpy – just a heads up there.

Remove from pan and knead until soft. I was afraid the dough would be hot, but it was just very warm and I could knead pretty much right away.

There you go! Awesomely perfect homemade playdoh. And the Kool-Aid packet makes very vibrant colors. I love preschool teachers – thank you very much!

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Potted Recipe Holder

May 11th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Ideas - (0 Comments)
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We just had Muffins & Moms at my 5-year old’s pre-K, and this was the sweet gift that each child had made (with a LOT of help from the teacher) for their moms.

It is a recipe holder! I thought it was a fun idea and needed to be shared. And it is definitely an idea that I appreciated and will use for my printed recipes.

Each child painted a little terra cotta pot. You can tell that my 5-year old is pretty meticulous by the fact that the pot is painted in its entirety. And he knows that I love red. Sweet boy.

The teacher then put in a styrofoam ball just the size to fit comfortably into the pot.

She then put a fork in, handle side down, covered the styrofoam ball with spanish moss, and added a bow for a finishing touch. I bent the middle two fork prongs backward a bit so the recipes won’t get bent when I slip them in.

Cute, easy, functional Mother’s Day gift idea – I love it. :)

 

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Pasta with Artichoke Hearts and Tomatoes

May 10th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Recipes - (2 Comments)
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I was having a conversation with one of my sisters a while back, and the subject of artichokes came up. Normal conversation, right? :) She was talking about how much she loves artichokes, and I was telling her that I had recently realized that I don’t know if I really have consciously eaten an artichoke. So she passed on this recipe for us to try from the Pioneer Woman.

That was delicious. And pretty easy too – artichokes and all. :)

Ingredients:

2 T. olive oil

1 lb. pasta (she does thin spaghetti – I prefer something with more texture)

2 T. butter

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 medium onion, diced

1 can artichoke hearts (14.5 oz.), drained

1 can diced tomatoes with juice (14.5 oz.)

1 c. heavy cream

1/2 c. chicken broth

1/2 tsp. nutmeg

salt and pepper, to taste

1 c. Parmesan cheese

 

Step 1: Cook your pasta. Drain, and set aside. (see? easy so far.)

Step 2: Put olive oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat & melt. Add onions and garlic. Saute for 2-3 min.

Sauteed onions have to be one of my favorite smells. And tastes. So good.

Step 3: Add artichoke hearts (drained) and tomatoes (with juice). Stir and cook for 8-10 min. I also chopped up the artichoke hearts before I threw them in so they wouldn’t be so hugely chunky.

Step 4: Reduce heat to low and add cream and chicken broth. Add salt and pepper, to taste, and keep cooking on low until heated through. Make sure you use enough salt so you have flavor. That means to test your sauce and make sure you can taste it.

Step 5: Place pasta in a large bowl, and pour Parmesan cheese over the top. Then pour the sauce over the top and toss to coat.

Done! That was very delicious, pretty easy and it made a LOT of food. My sister had told me that they usually have it for dinner, then for leftovers at lunch for a couple of days – which I interpreted to mean that my family would finish it off in one night. Nope. We also had it for dinner that night, and then happily had it for leftovers at lunch for a couple of days afterward.

Thanks Jen for passing that one on! And thank you to the Pioneer Woman for sharing this awesomeness in the first place. :)

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Picture Hanging Tip – and DSLR tutorial links

May 8th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Tips - (0 Comments)
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This is a tip for hanging those annoying pictures with the two hooks – the ones where they have a hook on each side to keep things level and distribute the weight evenly. Those ones.

I have a couple of larger pictures like that, and hanging them was a large pain – I measured the distance between the hooks, penciled in two holes that distance apart and hoped they would be level, and then did trial and error until it looked right.

This lovely tip from Aimee @ It’s Overflowing came to me right on time – my mom had sent a picture for our boys that happened to have the two hooks, so I could try it out while I still remembered it.

Hooray for timely tips – this was VERY easy.

You take blue tape (or scotch tape – just something that won’t ruin the backing) and cut a piece that fits from the center of one hook to the center of the other, like so:

Then you take the blue tape of wonder, stick it on your wall at the spot that you would like your picture, and hammer some nails into place (I ended up cutting my tape a little short, so I hammered one of the nails slightly outside of the tape):

Voila! Level, easily hung picture.

The great thing about this is you can actually check the tape visually (or with a level, if you prefer) to see if it looks level. AND you have the nails perfectly spaced. I loved that.

Thank you Aimee!

By the way, Aimee has a bunch of VERY helpful tutorials on how to use a DSLR camera in manual instead of auto. Start at the link I posted, and work your way through. I learned a lot! :)

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Cloud Dough (Homemade Moon Sand)

May 7th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Kids - (0 Comments)
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For those of you who have wanted to try Moon Sand, but maybe have wondered about the mess and have sat on the fence about it, this is a great way to try it out at home. I got this idea from Juggling with Kids.

Here is all you need:

4 cups of flour

1/2 cup of baby oil

That is IT, my friend. It makes a pretty good-sized batch, so you could even halve it if you don’t have a big container for your kids to play in.

Just mix them together in a large bowl, and you are good to go!

I was really impressed at how well this held up – when it was formed together, it stayed together really well, but it still held a good “powder” form when it was broken apart. My 5-year old actually wanted to make it all into balls at the very end when we went to store it in a gallon ziploc, and none of them broke on the way into the cabinet OR on the way out when he wanted to play again, until he was ready to break them apart.

Super fun! I will warn you, though, it can make a bit of a mess, so either have a sufficiently large container (mine was not deep enough t0 contain some of the overspill) OR just be ready to sweep up a bit at the end. To me, the idea of an “indoor dry sand” is totally worth having a bit of a mess at the end – my kids will play for a long time and love it, and that is awesome.

Enjoy!

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Finger Paint in a BAG

May 4th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Kids - (0 Comments)
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I decided that I wanted to try to find a good fingerpaint recipe. I was only able to find essentially two recipes (here and here), and I was not terribly impressed with either of them. They were both waaaaaaaay too sticky. The kids tried playing with the finger paint and ended up washing their hands within a minute of getting it on their papers. So, I am still in the search for a good recipe – when I find it, I will happily share it. If you have tried either of these with success, I’m happy to try them again because there is a chance that there was some human error. OR, if you have a different recipe, I would love to have it to try! :)

BUT, in the meantime I remembered seeing this idea from Amy @ Let’s Explore. She took finger paint and put it in a gallon-sized baggie so her toddler could work on writing letters. I love that it also means NO MESS. Best idea ever. I took the finger paint from the first recipe (the one with corn starch) and plopped it all in the bag and this is what I got:

Pretty good! I think it would be even easier to use with better finger paint in the bag – or tempura paint, as Amy suggested as an alternative. I think either way, my 2-year old definitely likes to not have gloppy fingers, so this is a good solution for her. The older boys are easily entertained either way.

**Note: I hot glued the top shut too. After the bag was zipped, I just glued the very top pieces together. It has stayed put nicely, even when kids were chucking it around the house and using it as a hat.

 

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My Cookie Sheet is CLEAN :)

May 1st, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Cleaning | Tips - (1 Comments)
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Yes. It is finally clean. (Cue heavenly chorus.)

When I was cleaning the drip pans from my stove, I remembered that I had read a comment somewhere in the middle of my many cookie sheet cleaning tips that had mentioned using ammonia to clean out her oven. My oven, oddly enough, is not very dirty. I gave it a wipe down with a wet sponge (no other chemicals) and it got most of what was in there cleaned out. I couldn’t remember if the commenter decided to stick her cookie sheet in her oven with ammonia, but decided it was worth a go.

I put my cookie sheet in the cold oven on the bottom rack, put some ammonia in a bowl on the top rack, and let it sit overnight.

Here is what it looked like before (after my 11 different ways to try and get it clean):

And here is what it looks like now:

Clean! Hooray! That used some steel wool and elbow grease too after I took it from the oven, but I had tried steel wool over and over again with many different products and I couldn’t get it all off. The ammonia worked great. It also took off some of the oil splatters on the glass on the inside of the oven that I couldn’t get off earlier with just the wet sponge.

Hooray! :)

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Clean Your Stove Drip Pans

April 30th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Cleaning | Tips - (0 Comments)
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For those of you who are fortunate like me to have a non-flat top stove, here is an easy $1 solution to get the drip pans CLEAN. I didn’t realize that was possible. But it is. :)

I found this from Jill @ One Good Thing by Jillee. Hers worked a little more easily than mine did – I’m guessing that is because hers look like they have some kind of teflon coating on them? Some of the stuff came off easily, but I still had to give mine a fair amount of elbow grease with steel wool. But it was worth it.

BEFORE:

Apparently we use the stove a lottle bit over here.

AFTER:

I could cry. Seriously. I love when things are clean, and I get frustrated when I can’t figure out how to get them that way.

And how do you do this?

All you need are four gallon-sized ziploc bags, some ammonia, and your drip pans. And, if you have the old school non-coated drip pans like I do, you may need some steel wool and elbow grease too.

Step 1: Put your drip pans in your ziploc bags.

Step 2: Splash some ammonia in there. You don’t need to cover the drip pans – the ammonia vapor is what does the trick. The vapors act to bind to the oil and fat in your drip pan grime and break it down. Pretty cool.

Step 3: Wait overnight (or, if you are doing this during the day, think 9-12 hours). The longer you let it stay in the bags, the longer the ammonia has to do its work.

Step 4: Get the rest of your stove top clean. Take some time to use toothpicks and Q-tips and get things cleaned out. I cleaned around everything with toothpicks and it looked MUCH better.

Step 5: Open the bag. This seems like a silly step to have alone, but I will tell you – AMMONIA IS VERY PUNGENT. It will make you want to curl up and cry to stand over that bag and get a nice waft of ammonia in your face. So here is how I found it to work best – get water running in your sink, open your ziploc bag a bit (enough for the water to get in), and fill the bag up part way with water. This will not destroy the handy work of your ammonia vapors – it WILL keep your eyes and nose from burning.

Step 6: Wipe the grime off with a sponge (if you are lucky), or give it some elbow grease. This got ALMOST everything off of my drip pans. What was left over may just be the pans aging and changing color or something (with the larger ones). They looked muuuuch better.

 

Ammonia can work very well with other things too – I tried it on something else and was SHOCKED at how well it worked. I’ll post those pictures tomorrow.

Happy cleaning! :)

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We Give Books

April 28th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Kids | Tips - (0 Comments)

I just had to share this website because it is pretty cool – wegivebooks.org.There are a bunch of books for kids that they can read online in their “print” format. I love that. A lot of these are the ones that you can find on the ever-popular book orders (especially the non-fiction), so you can even “test drive” some of the books before you buy. Or just enjoy them for free.

This is not only a great resource, but you actually GIVE a book each time you (or your child) reads one online – as in, Penguin Books and the Pearson Foundation will donate a book for each book read online. See? Super cool! There is no limit to your book-giving from your book reading, and if your child has a favorite that they read over and over again, each time they finish it counts as a new book to give away. (Here is a link to the FAQ.) They have given away almost 1,000,000 books since April 2010.

They have ongoing “campaigns” that you can support with your reading (here is a list of the campaigns, current and completed), so you can choose your “cause”, and you are free to switch at any time.

If you’re looking for a fun book to start out with, I would recommend Goodnight iPad. We just checked it out from the library and all got a good laugh over it. That grandma is great. The cultural references are hilarious too.

So – go read a book! And GIVE one too by doing it. It’s a win-win. :)

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The Greatest Granola

April 27th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Recipes - (0 Comments)
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While we are on a breakfast theme here, I wanted to share one more of our favorite breakfast recipes EVER. It came from my friend Melissa @ 320 Sycamore, and was given to her by her sister Kelsey.

This one is so good that my kids will eat it for breakfast, for snacks, for whenever. And my husband will actually EAT breakfast when we have this. That is saying something.

It is very easy, and – did I mention? – is super delicious.

Ingredients:

6 c. oats

1 c. coconut

1 c. craisins (or raisins or other dried fruit)

1/2 c. brown sugar

1/2 c. almonds (or other nuts on hand)

1/2 c. flax seed or wheat germ (we use milled flax seed)

1-2 T. cinnamon (to taste – we use the full 2 T.)

1/2 tsp. salt

2 T. vanilla

1/2 c. canola oil

3/4 c. honey

Directions: Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Put all of your ingredients in a large bowl and stir them together. Spread on a cookie sheet and bake for 10-15 minutes, or until golden brown. The longer you bake it, the crispier it will be, so you can bake to your crunchiness/chewiness preferences.

That is it. When I shared the recipe with my mom, she mentioned that she prefers to mix the dry ingredients together first to keep things from clumping, and then pour the wet ones in. I arranged the recipe so if you would prefer to do it that way also, you can just go down the list until you hit the salt, mix it together, and then add the rest.

Also, I like to pour my canola oil in first, and then use the 1/2 cup measuring cup for the honey and just do 1 1/2 of those (to get the 3/4 cup needed). Since the measuring cup is already coated in oil, the honey all slides right out – no need to scrape.

When we made the granola this time, we used blueberry craisins. One of my favorites was when we used orange crasins – that had a nice twist to it.

See? Happy boy. Thanks Melissa – and Kelsey! :)

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Breakfast for Dinner

April 25th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Recipes - (2 Comments)
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Who doesn’t love breakfast for dinner? Seriously – I could happily eat breakfast for every meal.

Weekend dinner nights seem to be the ones that are prone to turning into breakfast for dinner here, but really, breakfast for dinner is good any night of the week.

Here are some of our favorite recipes for “breakfast foods” – be them for dinner, or for a real breakfast:

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Grandma Rock’s Pancakes (family recipe) – this batter works great for waffles as well

Ingredients:

2 c. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

2 T. sugar

1 T. baking powder

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1/3 c. oil

2 c. milk

Directions: Preheat griddle to 325 degrees. Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl. Pour onto heated skillet, and flip over once there are bubbles that form, pop, and then stay “empty” (see below). Cook on other side until browned to your liking. Enjoy!

*The original recipe has you separate the eggs, put the yolks in the batter, and beat the egg whites. Then you fold the egg whites into the batter. We have found that they still get nice and fluffy if you just beat everything together for awhile, and then it is not an extra step. They still are super tasty either way.

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Homemade Pancake Syrup (from allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

3/4 c. packed brown sugar

1/4 c. sugar

3/4 c. water

1/2 c. light corn syrup

1/2 tsp. maple flavoring

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Directions: In a saucepan, combine the sugars, water and corn syrup and bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil for 7 minutes or until slightly thickened. Remove from the heat and stir in maple flavoring and vanilla. Cool for 15 minutes. We store the remaining syrup in a container in the refrigerator.

This recipe is legit – it has the perfect consistency (in our opinion – it’s not thick like the store kind, but has a little more substance than some homemade ones we have tried), and it tastes fantastic.

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Breakfast Potatoes (slightly modified from Our Best Bites)

Ingredients:

4 medium baking potatoes (or more – we sometimes fudge on that one)

1 small onion, minced

1/4 c. salted butter

Pepper and salt, to taste (Kosher salt is great)

Tabasco sauce

Directions: Bring a medium or large pot of water to a boil. While you are doing this, cut your potatoes into bite-sized cubes. Once the water is boiling, add your potatoes and cook for 5 minutes, or until potatoes are slightly softened, but not totally cooked. Drain and set aside.

Heat a large skillet (we use an electric one) over medium heat. Add the butter. After butter is melted, add your onion and cook for 1 minute. Add your potatoes in a single layer and cook for 3-4 minutes. DO NOT STIR THEM AROUND. Please. :) Sprinkle some salt, pepper, and a couple of dashes of Tabasco. Flip your potatoes, trying to get as many to flip at once as you can. This is just to minimize your potato touching.

Cook for another 3-4 minutes and give them a test to see if they are done and how your seasonings are. You can add more salt, pepper or Tabasco at this point, if desired. If they are still not done, flip them as before, and cook for another 3-4 minutes. Repeat cycle until they are done.

*These are also legit – they are so tasty! The original recipe calls for up to 20 shakes of Tabasco – 4 shakes about does me in and gives me heartburn for the rest of the night. It is all up to your preference. We usually moderate to around 3 – enough to have a “kick”, but not so much that you feel pain rather than have the sensation of taste.

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There you go – add some scrambled eggs and you have breakfast for dinner. Enjoy!!

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Scotch Tape Jar Leveler

April 24th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Tips - (0 Comments)
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I honestly have no idea what to call this, except to describe it. Sorry. :) This is a pretty simple tip, but it has made me very happy. I usually like to credit the people that I get ideas from, but I cannot find this one. Originally, they used a note card and tape on cocoa powder. If/when I find the source, I will link it here. I tweaked it a bit, but either way could work great.

I do not do well with things that are inefficient. For example, a ROUND cornstarch container with NO LEVELING DEVICE. Who designed that? Even Arm & Hammer managed to design a little cardboard leveler into the part that you pop open with their baking soda. With my cocoa containers, I can keep things close-ish to level because there are flat parts to the container, but not so with my ROUND corn starch container.

Usually my husband is the cornstarch user – and he only uses it when he makes gravies (he makes THE BEST), and the corn starch doesn’t seem to bother him. As I was using the corn starch for the watercolors, and also for a meatballs recipe that I will post later, it drove me crazy not to have something to level my tablespoons off with. So I remembered the tip I had seen and made my own little leveler out of scotch tape.

Take two pieces of Scotch tape – one slightly longer than the width of the lid (or opening) of the container you are adding your “leveler” to, and one that is an extra 3″ or so LONGER than the first piece. Lay them sticky side UP on your counter or table.

Take the center of your shorter piece and line it up with the center of your longer piece. Then FLIP the smaller piece over on your larger piece. This will give you a non-sticky center (the part you will put over your opening), and extra length on the sides you can then use to attach your new “leveler” to your container.

Voila! A cheap precision measurement instrument!

Happy LEVEL baking….or watercolor making. :)

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Make Your Own Watercolors

April 21st, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Fun | Kids - (2 Comments)
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I am fairly cheap. I think that can be a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that, for the most part, we live by a budget and don’t do anything crazy. The curse is that I have a hard time buying things that I know are going to get broken quickly or discarded or used unwisely. Like watercolors. Even though they are not terribly expensive, I still find myself cringing when they just become little colorful ponds for the kids to play in instead of being used for art tools.

Then I saw this idea from Jill @ Meet the Dubiens, which she found from Martha Stewart – how to make your own watercolors. Joy! I had everything on hand, and thought I should give it a go.

Ingredients

Baking Soda

Corn Starch

Vinegar

Corn Syrup

Food Coloring (Drops or Gel)

Containers

That is IT my friends. I found packs of 10 small containers at the dollar store when I was getting stuff for the light sabers – and they (obviously) cost $1.00 for the package. If you are looking for them, I found them by the mugs/ceramic plates/etc., NOT by the other reusable storage containers. You may try checking both places in your store – I’m not sure whether organization is consistent from store to store.

For one container size, you will need:

2 T. baking soda

1 T. vinegar

1 T. corn starch

1/4 tsp. corn syrup

My containers were 2.3 fl. oz. and were filled just under halfway with this recipe size, just to give you a gauge. I ended up making 8x the recipe, which gave me these measurements:

1 c. baking soda

1/2 c. vinegar

1/2 c. corn starch

2 tsp. corn syrup

Step 1: Mix the baking soda and vinegar in a LARGE bowl. Yes, as soon as my kids saw these ingredients together they knew it meant one thing – VOLCANO! So, plan your bowl size accordingly, even if doing a “single container” batch.

Step 2: Once your fizzing has stopped, add in your corn starch and corn syrup and mix well. This will give you some seriously cool stuff – Jill termed it as “Gak” or “Ooblek” consistency. All I know is that when I stirred it, it went from solid to liquid, and if I had some drip overboard that I could pick it up and it would be solid until I dropped it back into the container with its friends. Super cool.

Step 3: Separate into individual containers and add your food coloring. Jill used gel coloring; Martha used normal drops; I tried both. I think the normal drops ended up producing a better finished product as far as usability goes, but you have more color control with the gel. You may want to try both if you have them on hand and see what works best for you. Use a fair amount of color to get brighter results. The kids were great at stirring here.

Step 4: DRY OVERNIGHT. There will be a liquid left on the top when you go check on them in the morning. I just poked at the “solid” below to make sure it was firm, and then dumped the top liquid off. I figure if the bottom is solid, the liquid on the top will not do much to help things out.

I was excited to see if these would actually work – and they DID! I painted a rainbow like Jill’s daughter so I could see the colors in action:

One tip – make sure you add enough water when you are painting. We occasionally would end up with small paint pieces on the brush that would not brush color onto the paper well (see the yellow and green in the rainbow) – if you dip the brush slightly in water, it works like a charm. Just make sure you add water.

Here is a masterpiece from my 5-year old:

Pretty awesome! His colors were the ones that I used food coloring with – again, they tended to work a bit better, so he preferred them.

Since my boys did well with them and had fun, I decided to finally let my 2-year old use watercolors. She was very excited. And went straight for the pink.

She had a blast, and I didn’t feel like I had to stand over her and make sure she was using the paint “appropriately” – she could just have fun! I know how to make more (good thing too, huh). :)

And, for those of you who are curious, I washed out my son’s old watercolor container and decided to see how many wells a single container recipe would fill. Turns out, it filled an even 24 wells (the whole tray filled three times).  So you are essentially getting three 8-pack watercolor containers worth of paint for $.10 (yes, I priced it out). And you can make them from supplies at home. You could probably even do a little bit of food coloring in each well if you wanted to deal with a very small quantity and keep the “bought watercolor” look. Thanks Jill & Martha! :)

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Pizza on Fridays (& a GREAT crust)

April 20th, 2012 | Posted by Kat in Kids | Recipes - (0 Comments)
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We started a tradition several months ago where on every Friday night, we eat pizza and do something fun as a family. The fun thing can be watching a movie, playing games, pulling out our original 16-bit Nintendo and having a Zelda-fest, camping in the backyard – whatever. The pizza thing is HUGE with our kids, and they have come to expect it.

Sometimes waiting for the pizza is hard. :)

We have a family motto that says: “We work hard and are honest.” My seven-year old modified it to: “We work hard, are honest and eat pizza on Fridays.” Yep, that pretty much sums up our family ideals. :)

As part of having pizza every week, we typically will make the pizza. Occasionally we’ll have a pizza we’ve bought from somewhere, but I found a crust recipe from allrecipes.com that makes it hard to want to buy a pizza, unless the day has been too crazy to want to add something else to it. It is VERY easy, and the dough is really elastic and smooth and delicious. It’s everything you could hope for in a crust. We even have kiddo helpers sometimes.

Ingredients

1 cup warm water (110 degrees F – this means it’s more like warm-hot water)

1 T. sugar

1 packet yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp.)

3 T. oil (original recipe says olive, but I usually just use canola or vegetable oil)

1 tsp. salt

1-2 tsp. italian seasoning (opt.)

2 1/2 c. flour

Step 1: Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Combine warm water, sugar and yeast in large bowl. Mix.

Step 2: Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix. (See? I told you it is easy.)

Step 3: Knead. I use my handy-dandy kneading attachment to my hand mixer for this one. Once it is kneaded, it will have a FABULOUS texture.

Step 4: Rest the dough for 10 minutes. Then roll it out and place on a greased cookie sheet – or pizza pan.

Step 5: Top & bake for 15-20 minutes. Make sure if you use “wet” ingredients that you bake for closer to the 20 minutes or the crust will be cooked, but the middle will not be cooked through entirely. We have yet to burn the crust, but we have undercooked the middle when we’ve been impatient.

Yum. Yum. Yum. Yum. And, yes, I use cheddar cheese. It just tastes better (in my opinion).

Pizza! Hooray!

This is easy to do, and fun. What are some of your family traditions? Any fun types of pizza we should try?

Enjoy! :)

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