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Archive for February, 2017

Update

February 26th, 2017 at 06:08 pm

I know I have been MIA for a while. The rain/snow has been insane here. My parents and us (100 miles apart) both were on the verge of evacuation. Them moreso than us (there was a random flash flood a little too close to their home). We are about 35 miles from that big dam in California. So we have both had a little too much excitement this month.

The snow pack in the mountains was almost non-existent, but there's been enough snow this winter that the snow pack is 200% of normal now. I saw that camp (already completely snowed under) was getting another 4 feet of snow this week? If we can even go to camp (late June) we might be bringing our sleds.

March will probably be tense.

I've also dug my way out of a (work) avalanche. Phew!! There's another one not far behind at all (and a few immediately after that one), but I am taking a day to just relax. Catch my breath.

Doings

February 13th, 2017 at 08:55 pm

**On Friday we had a DIVINE lunch. We had a $50 gift card (credit card reward) for Ruth Chris. We had just planned to go for lunch sometime, but it's rarely open for lunch. So... At some point I put it on our calendar when we had a free Friday.

O.M.G. SO good. We spent about $20 out of pocket for an appetizer, a burger, a lunch special (steak/shrimp), and one dessert. No drinks, just water. I told MH I wouldn't mind going back for lunch for a birthday or something like that. Lunch prices were reasonable. I only got the appetizer because I wanted to spend our gift card. I had forgotten about dessert.

**Sunday we took the kids to the movies, at the fancy theater. We had a gift card, so we spent $12 cash.

**MH officially enrolled MM(13) for high school. It's probably a bit early, but MH has ants in his pants about it. He's been butting heads with the current administration so much on the math issue, that I think he is just ready to move on to greener pastures. I don't know that I am quite so optimistic. This is probably the only regular public school that either of our kids will ever attend. I can see pluses and minuses with the public high school, but probably more minuses (versus the charter schools).

{DL(11) is already enrolled in a charter school that is grades 6 through 12. About this time last year we had no idea where each kid would end up, so it's nice to have their high school paths somewhat set}.

I suppose everyone is also looking forward to ditching school uniforms. I haven't bought MM(13) any new uniform clothing since the summer. It's going to be close. He just has to fit for 4 more months! I usually buy more liberally since he always handed down all his uniform clothing. But now it's just him, and not for very long. Will see...

**MH returned to work today. THANK GOODNESS!

It's not been too bad, since the kids had so much time off in December and MH did end up working 9 days already this year. But... My 10 minute commute can sometimes be a *1 hour* commute when I have to take both kids to school. What a pain! I asked MH just to take DL to school on Friday, for my sanity.

I don't see why I'd ever have to take both kids to school again (this school year). Phew! Next year will be much better. Both their schools will be close together and we will be done with the "out of the way" school.

{When MH works, he just drops DL off on the way, just down the street from his job. MM's school is on the way to my office, with a 15-minute detour. It's all the driving in-between and often getting stuck at DL's school at the *worst time possible* that makes it so insane}.

Pizza

February 4th, 2017 at 09:22 pm

I have no idea why not, but I had never made pizza before. I don't know if that's entirely true since MH has some pizza recipes, but I guess I mean more traditional type pizza.

We are die hard Round Table Pizza fans. Between that and home cooking most our meals, we do NOT do cheap pizza. If the kids have a party we order Round Table. We've got comments about that over the years. I don't know what to say other than I am not going to buy my kids disgusting pizza on their special day. Wink

Round Table always has $5-off coupons that we use. So it's always been something we can squeeze into our budget if we want pizza. In addition, our grocery store had the BEST fresh take & bake pizzas. For something like $10. So we would often serve those pizzas for parties or if we had people over. They stopped carrying those 2-3 years ago. We've tried some others but they just aren't very good.

Every year I try to add at least one or two different dishes that I have never tried before (or different foods that I have never cooked before). For whatever reason I've been thinking about pizza recently and how we really just need to make our own. Since we've never found a suitable replacement for our take-and-bake.

& so that is what I did this weekend. I am happy to say that I nailed it! I choose a pizza sauce recipe that was 5 stars on the internet and everyone was raving about. Doesn't mean much, but I figured I'd start with that. In the end, I think it was very similar to Round Table's zesty red sauce. It's not exactly the same, but I think it's a suitable substitute. (That was a nice surprise!) I had enough for two pizzas and the second one came out kind of perfect. I cooked it for an extra minute so that it cooked more thoroughly.



I just bought pre-made dough. What is surprising to me is how *filling* it was. I only had a couple of small pieces and I was totally good. The kids otherwise finished off two small-ish pizzas, but they agreed that it seemed really filling.

I do want to make my own dough in the future. I just wanted to do it in steps. Get the sauce and everything else right, and then I can work on the dough in the future.

MH mostly can't stand pepperoni pizza, so next time I will ask him what kind of toppings he wants. I just wanted to start with something simple.

I am salivating just thinking about how it must taste with fresh dough. We will make future lunch and dinner guests VERY happy. Everyone always raved about the store-bought pizza. Since mostly no one cooks these days, everyone thinks we are like gourmet chefs. So I can only imagine their reaction to this pizza. & it was SO EASY!

P.S. I'd add the sauce recipe but the link doesn't seem to be working today. I will check it again later.