Pizza Night

This fall my husband has been tasked with attending ALL the football games for the United States Naval Academy. He's the recipient of an odd job that almost no other football team in the USA has - the team chaplain. The point is that many weekends he is off cheering on the team while I am at home wondering whether to take the kids out to eat or try to cook a meal at home. Often I take the restaurant route. But sometimes we make our own and last night we had a pizza night.

I've tried many many pizza dough recipes and discovered my favorite comes from Cooks Illustrated. Surprise. Surprise. It's the dough for their grilled pizza although I've never actually done it on the grill. It makes a really wet dough and it makes a lot of it. So when I'm ready to put my pizza together I might divide it up to make small pizzas or use the whole thing in one huge pizza. The trick is to smoosh it out on a piece of parchment paper. I get my hands wet and just smear it into a roundish shape. If my hands get too sticky I rinse them and go at it again. It bakes up really nicely on a hot pizza stone and pops right off the paper when it's fully cooked.

Last night I made three pizzas. One big, one medium, one little. Just like the three bears. One for me. One for Jonathan. One for Adam. Mine sported pepperoni, peppers, mushrooms, and cream cheese. What? You've never put cream cheese on your pizza? Little chunks of cream cheese blopped on and smothered in mozzarella. You don't know what you are missing!!!!! Jonathan's had loads of pepperoni, mushrooms, peppers, and olives. I still can't understand why my five-year-old loves olives but hates chocolate. And Adam got straight-up cheese pizza.

After we chowed down it was time for some dancing to the Dixie Chicks. Then off to bed and some peace-filled Mama time!