Weeknight Pizza Dough

It was so strange to see all of the school buses driving past the house this morning. Landon was amused for awhile watching all the little ones walking by hand in hand with their Mommy's, backpacks on their backs, and ready for the first day of school. It's so hard to believe the summer has flown by that fast and kids are back to school again. From what I can remember - the summer's always felt so long when we were kids! Well now is the time you start seeing the magazine covers and blog posts about quick and easy weeknight dinner meals. Those actually help give us the extra free minutes in the day that really do matter and make a big difference!

Even though my kids aren't in school yet, (and I don't even want to think of that bittersweet day anytime soon!) I'm still down for a meal that's quick and easy on a weeknight. I don't know about you but secretly I've always been intimidated by making homemade pizza. Just the words "homemade" and "pizza" already sound like so much work. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for baking or cooking something that takes time and effort - those dishes usually end up tasting the best! But sometimes easy dinners that require a crock-pot and require no effort are the best for us Mom's. Am I right or am I right? And who says a quick meal can't taste delicious? Ok back to the pizza. 

I found this recipe for fool proof pizza dough on Friday and figured I'd give it a shot. I've never tried a no-rise pizza dough before. But after making this recipe and tasting the results, I kid you not - I'm never going back! Often times we just stock up on frozen pizza's to throw in the oven on a busy weeknight, but I don't see much reason to do that anymore when you can have fresh pizza dough in such a short period of time. 

If you could choose between this...

Or a frozen pizza which would you choose? Yup, I thought so...

 Anywho, enough rambling here. Just wanted to share my new obsession with you all! If you guys are thinking ahead and looking for dinner ideas for this week, maybe add this one to the list. You'll love it! 

No-Rise Pizza Dough

2 1/2 cups flour

1 Tbsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

1 cup hot water (120-130°)

1 Tbsp. Rapid Rise or Bread Machine yeast

2 Tbsp. olive oil

Preheat to 475°. 

Mix dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Add hot water and olive oil. Mix for five minutes and then let the dough rest 10 minutes.  Roll out dough onto pizza stone or a baking sheet. Prick dough with fork and add sauce, cheese and toppings. Bake at 475° for  12-15 minutes, until cheese is bubbly.

Thanks for reading! Enjoy your week everyone!

S

London Meetup

On Saturday we packed up the kids and made the spontaneous decision to drive to London for a meetup with my parents, my brother Rob, our sister-in-law Laura Beth, and our sweet nephew Evan. We planned to check out the Children's Museum there and spend the day together.

It was a great time exploring the different exhibits and we enjoyed a delicious dinner together afterwards! We try to take in every minute of our time together since we don't get to see each other as often as we'd wish to. What made the day extra special for everyone was that this was the very first time we had the kids/grandsons/cousins all together in the same place at the same time. It was so nice to be able to give Evan so many kisses and cuddles yesterday, and to see his constant sweet smile! I think we all agree that we'll have to make this happen again very soon!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Fresh Tomato Soup

It's no secret that everyone has noticed the change in the weather. Of course it's bittersweet that the summer's end is creeping up on us - but I can honestly say I'm not in a state of panic like some of you might be. I'm enjoying the crisp cool breeze flooding into my house windows and bringing in that freshness that we all love. The moments when I can throw on a comfy sweater and my jeans to go for a nice evening walk with my boys is absolute bliss to me. We all knew this time would come. So in cool days such as these - make soup. At least that's what we did anyway. 

Tomatoes and basil are a few things that we definitely haven't been without this summer. Ben loves heading into the backyard in the mornings and coming through the door with handfuls of tomatoes. I'm sure if it were up to him he would turn our entire backyard into one huge garden. I'm sure Landon would have something to say about that if he did. 

Of course we love eating them in salads and just fresh of the plants - but there is nothing quite like homemade tomato soup. For those of you that have an overabundance of tomatoes...try this soup out. It's delicious!

Ingredients:

3 lbs of Fresh Tomatoes, halved

1 large onion, peeled and quartered

10 Cloves of Garlic, peeled

1 cup of Fresh Basil

1 Tbsp of Balsamic Vinegar

1 tsp of Sugar

2 tsp of Dried Oregano

4 Tbsp of Olive Oil

1 cup of Vegetable Stock

Salt and Pepper, to taste

Pinch of hot pepper flakes (optional)

1) Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

2) Cut tomatoes in half. In a 9x13 inch baking dish, add all your ingredients except the vegetable stock, toss all together to make sure the oil has coated all of the veggies.

3) Roast the tomatoes for about 1 hour and 15 minutes making sure to give them a toss a couple times.

4) Leave the veggies to cool to room temperature, place your mixture in a blender and puree until smooth, you can also use an immersion blender for this but it might not be as smooth.

5) If you’re using a powerful blender, you won’t need to strain the soup, if however you have big pieces of tomato peel throughout your soup, strain it.

6) Place the creamy mixture in a saucepan, add the stock (add as much as you would like, it’s up to you how thin you like your soup), bring to a boil and let it simmer for about 5

Thanks for reading! Have a good week everyone!

S

A sleeping baby is...

Peaceful.

Soothed.

Content.

Innocent.

 Soft.

Precious.

Soundly.

Warm.

Calm. 

Cuddly. 

Lovely.

Sweet.

A special thanks our brother David Dietz for capturing these very special moments for us.