Homemade Pizza

Our kids LOVE pizza! We do too.

Here's a fun way to make dough from scratch then on a busy night, you just need to thaw it in the fridge before you leave for work and make a pizza (10 mins), cook it (15 mins) and ENJOY.  Less than 30 mins, and feeling like you rocked dinner - kids and you both love it.

Pizza Dough Recipe

Makes one thick crust or 2 thin crust pizzas

1 Tbsp active dry yeast

1 cup warm water

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

2 Tbsp Olive Oil (can use substitute)

2 1/2 cups Flour (we like whole wheat)

1/4 cup flaxseed (optional)

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water (temperature matters here).

Add the rest of the ingredients in and mix. Knead into a smooth dough (5 minutes or so).

The great part about this recipe is it takes the same amount of time to make one batch or four.  So I made four and froze the extra three.  Why make more work for myself later?

So with your ball of dough, roll it out on a floured surface to the thickness you like. If thick - poke with a fork a few times to prevent bubbles when baking.  My kids like to help with this part- I think mostly they played in the flour on the counter - but whatever. 

Take the extra dough and put it straight into bags and freeze.  

If you have homemade pizza sauce, definitely use it! If not, any spaghetti/marinara sauce will do. 

Add your cheese and other toppings.  You can see how adventurous my family is.  We are having cheese and pepperoni tonight.  I really like when we make individual pizzas then I can add my Pesto and fresh mozzarella with some tomato slices, peppers, and onions on top. I can't even wait until the goats have milk and we make goat cheese!  

Bake at 425 for about 15 minutes.

Let cool and eat.  Repeat with the dough in the freezer as needed.  

This is easy, really, and fun.  Great to try on a rainy weekend and get the family excited about dinner again. 

Freezing Greens

Posted by Cris

I love salads! 

And when we started our garden lettuce and spinach were must haves.  I had never tried kale or swiss chard so I planted it too, thinking it must be delicious too.  Only its not. It's an acquired taste.  It's MUCH more bitter and I prefer it raw, but again it's the end of the season and there is still so much.  So we need to freeze it. Only I do NOT like cooked greens.  Sorry, I'm clearly not southern.  (I don't like fried foods or cooked greens.)  

However, I can tolerate cooked greens in soups. So that is my plan to use them up.

First you need to cut the stem out of the swiss chard and the kale.  Our kale was super small this year, last year it was huge.  No idea why (this year we had lots more rain).

Blanching comes next.  Blanching is just boiling the greens for 2 minutes.

 

 Then straining them and dunking them into an ice bath.

Next, I threw them in the salad spinner to dry them off and then set them on a cheese cloth towel to remove all the excess water. 

I folded the towel up a few times and pressed to dry them as best I could. 

Onto the food saver, Jon doesn't kid when he says it's one of our most used appliances. Sorry, It kind of looks like we are packaging drugs, since I wanted small, soup portions of greens. 

If you don't grow your own, these greens are cheap and readily available at farmer's markets or grocery stores and can be easily processed the same way.  However, after cooking, they shrink WAY down. Buy a lot if you like them that much.  After all was said and done a 4 qt. bowl full of raw greens gave us about 5 cups of cooked greens. 

If you have any good soup recipes that incorporate a little greens, please share!  I'd love to have em.