Spilled My Soup

Just caught up on last night’s Glee. Thank you, Hulu. I want it on record—I love Kurt Hummel’s character the most of all. Is he not just the best character of all time??

Baby Made Her Debut

Last Tuesday, Baby G made her appearance. 

She was born May 15th at 1:08 PM, 7 lbs 9 oz., 20.25” long. 

Today she is one week old, and we’ve all survived! We all look like this a lot of the time. Giant yawn. 

But that’s okay because even at 1 AM, 3 AM, 5 AM (you get the picture!), she is the cutest baby ever! Love her!

Baby Room, Part II

Baby G is set to arrive kind of like any time now, so it’s a good thing we finally have everything ready in her room. Just wanted to share a little update because it now looks a little more complete. Here are some updated pictures: 

Will built this bookshelf, and it looks perfect in the room. Bins came from the Container Store. The runner across the top was made by a friend as part of a table decoration at a baby shower. I decided to reuse it for some extra color. 

Will also built this toybox/window seat. He’s so crafty. 

I found the cushion on clearance at Land of Nod, and then he made the box to fit. The goal was to have another place to sit and a place to eventually hide toys. He says that Baby G will most likely hide herself or maybe the dogs in here, so we’ll see. 

The dresser got a little update with a cool mobile from Frazier & Wing. We tried hanging this over the crib, but it was too long, so there’s no mobile over the crib. It’s okay…cribs are for sleeping. I kind of like how this looks over the dresser better anyway. And as you can see, Moinseur  Le Squeak is still on guard…diaper guard apparently. He’s the cutest mouse and has a Swiss cheese blanket. A gift from Will’s mom. So cute. 

It’s been really fun decorating this room, and I couldn’t be happier with how everything came together. Now I just really hope this baby loves some grey and yellow as much as I do. I’m quite aware that she’s not going to care, but at least I’ll enjoy hanging out in there with her! 

barackobama:

“Same-sex couples should be able to get married.”—President Obama 

Are y’all watching this show? If not, you should be.

Kitchen Adventure

This post could also be titled Kitchen Fire. 

Last week, I read this post about how to make pizza at home that’s actually worth the effort. Pizza at home can be a giant disappointment—bland dough that won’t cook all the way through, soggy toppings if you use vegetables, a not-so-crunchy bottom, a crust that won’t crisp, the list goes on. 

After reading about the Lottie & Doof guys’ pizza, though, I had a new vision for homemade pizza and set out to make it happen. I ended up using this as my guide. The dough required 18 hours—this was a commitment. The end result was a tasty pizza, but along the way there was a ton of smoke in my kitchen, smoke detectors all over the house going off, Will running in to make sure I hadn’t injured myself or damaged the house, then running to the garage for a fan to prop in the window, me waving a dish towel in the air as if that would help with the ridiculous amount of smoke pouring from my oven, and me running in and out the back door for big gulps of fresh air (as a paranoid pregnant lady, I was sort of panicked about Baby G’s oxygen supply being full of pizza smoke). It was crazy people. Crazy. 

And from all the craziness, we ended up with some pretty awesome pizza. I’m not sure if it’s worth all the chaos/smoke inhalation, but it was good pizza.

This is what the dough looked like after 20 hours or so on the counter. Isn’t it crazy how yeast makes things come alive!? It started out as just a tiny little ball of dough.

And after I pulled it out of the bowl. Unlike lots of dough I’ve made before or bought at the store, this was super soft and easy to shape. I tried not to handle it too much because I wanted some bubbles. I just sort of held it and let it hang until it stretched itself into a pizza-like shape. Thank you gravity. Oh, and as you’ll see next, I don’t care what shape my pizza takes. At one point it looked like the great state of Texas, but then I smooshed it around so it was more rectangular-ish.

Pre-bake. Okay, at this point all was still well. The oven had been preheating with the pizza stone in there for about 15 minutes at 550. That’s hot, maybe too hot. I’m now aware. When I opened the oven door to sling this pizza in, a ton of smoke rolled out, and I almost collapsed. This is where chaos ensued. 

The finished product. I made two of these, which was still more than we could eat. I think one key is to use smaller portions for a more even bake of the crust. At least that’s my current theory. Another big difference for me with this way of baking a pizza is that right before you put the pizza in, you switch your oven to broil. I wasn’t convinced this would work and thought the middle of the dough might still be soggy, but the crust was actually baked through, crispy bottom, crispy crust, bubbles in the right places. Finishing it off with sea salt and parmesan was a good idea too. 

I will be attempting this again in a couple of days with the leftover dough. Instead of the pizza stone, I’m going to try a cookie sheet, which won’t require the preheating situation that led to the mayhem. Pretty much the pizza stone just can’t get that hot. It smoked like crazy because of the excessive heat, and really I have to remind myself that my Kitchen Aid oven is not a brick oven in a fancy pizzeria, which I now wish it was because that pizza was good!

Okay, that’s a whole lot about some pizza baking. Even though this situation turned into a Sunday night adventure in my kitchen, I really would recommend this method of making dough/baking a pizza. It actually worked and tasted closer to pizzeria pizza than I’ve ever made before. So if you are up for the possible challenge, you should try it. Just maybe wear a gas mask and some goggles, have a fire extinguisher on standby, and go ahead and prop open your windows.