"Bon appétit!" part deux

I did it!...Sort of. If you'll recall, I vowed a couple of weeks ago that I would make "something" using my cookbooks. Well, after the business of Christmas and purchasing gifts I realized that I didn't have the funds to make something from scratch before the year was complete. But to quote Samwise Gamgee, "I made a promise, Mr. Frodo. A promise." And not wanting to renege on my vow, I figured out that I could still make a new dish but an inexpensive one. That way I would feel as if I at least tried fulfill my oath. ☺

So what did I make? Homemade pizza! My experience with making pizza has always involved my presenting a steaming cardboard box to my diners (with flourish, of course), opening the lid and saying, "Ta da!" ☺ We consume a lot of pizza at our house, so this seemed like a perfect fit.

Yesterday I purchased the ingredients I needed. (Thank you, Wally World aka Wal-Mart.) And today I made the pizza for lunch. Here are my core ingredients. You'll notice that I opted NOT to make the crust from scratch. (It's safer that way.)

I used the entire jar of pizza sauce. In hindsight that was too much. The pizza looked very "saucy". And I bought finely shredded mozzarella cheese. Again, hindsight is 20/20, and finely shredded is the wrong way to go.

Ready for the oven

Complete! And how did it taste? Well, Dave came inside for lunch, he sat down, and started to eat a couple of pieces. After a little bit, he said, "What kind of pizza is this?" (Told you we eat a lot of pizza. ☺) I said that it was homemade. "You made this?!" That made me wonder if that was a good question or a bad one. "Yes," I said, "How is it?" "It's good." he said. I think he then said, "I noticed it was different, but it's good."

I think I just added another item to my list of "dishes". Excellent!

I'm no Julia Child, but it can't be THAT bad, right?

I cook the same foods every week. I rotate between preparing chicken several different ways to making spaghetti, tater tot hotdish, tacos, pizza, and I recently added lasagna to my repertoire. A few weeks ago I decided to make breakfast foods for supper, just to add some flair. I had quite the spread: scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, and french toast. I (emphasis on the I) thought it was pretty tasty, and everyone cleaned their plate so I figured that was a good sign. Afterwards I asked David, "So, how was it?" He was silent for 3 seconds, and then he responded, "Well, it's something to eat." I laughed heartily.

Now tonight our main course was beef roast and carrots that I had in the slow cooker all afternoon. I made some stuffing to go along with it, and we had pickles and fruit, too. Emma and Paige weren't exactly thrilled about eating the carrots and beef, but after sampling it Emma declared, "This is better than cat food!"

You are all invited over to my house for dinner. I'll make mac 'n cheese.