Suck up that lower lip Mom!

Yesterday,

About this time, we were doing this:

Sun Shining, fish jumping, Peeps happy,

(all except for corn dog, who is laboring a diamond-sized molar in back.

Not the cheap diamonds,

the ridiculously huge diamonds, straight up from South Africa).

We found this:

Is it a leach?

It looks like a worm for the most part,

except....

It has eyes!

rounded head, flat suction cup mouth.

If you know, please do tell.

There's a prize to be won here folks.

It moved and swam like a snake!

Back to my moaning.

Today has been quite different.

Let me first set the stage:
Claire's still molar-ing today, slight temp.
very fussy.

both of the work trucks are broken down.

making my car, the new stand -in at work.

I have no car.

I am sure my floor board is littered with sunflower seeds

and sausage Mc Muffin sandwiches

just asking for mold.

Also, we have people coming over for dinner tonight

to a house who's walls are bowing outward from excessive junk (garbage).

All remnants from what was once a three day weekend.

Alicia said my laundry room looks like a tornado dropped by and left a bunch of stuff in its wake.

I love good,

honest,

blunt friends.

If you have one,

keep her.

By four o'clock, I was inwardly in shambles,

And The house still could have been shut down by the state.

Seriously, it was that bad.

I don't think I ever mentioned that

I cleverly washed out our paint trays in the bath tub?

Well, that was a few months ago,

And it still haunts me.

The thing clogs like I poured cement down it.

I think next bath tub will be custom color ordered

something like 'earth tone.'

Anyway,

back to four o' clock.

still no shopping trip.

still no dinner ingredients.

You could have dragged my pouty lower lip

off the floor with a snow shovel.

So the menu started out as

sirloin steaks with garlic parsley butter,

salmon/albacore/trout shish kabobs

and

orange and arugula potato salad.

4:30- time for a new idea.

Just got lucky I guess.

Its good to be a baker for sport.

You don't run out of ingredients too often,

and often times have just the right ingredients to make most things.

Just happened to have a block of mozzarella cheese

tomato paste,

and flour.

Can you see where I am going with this?

Hear the Italian music?

See the chubby man with the chef's hat and black handle bar mustache??

Pizza to the rescue!

Here's what I love about pizza:

The sauce
My absolute favorite sauce recipe comes from the

Pizza Place (RIP)

It was our favorite place to get pizza.

The Place was conviently located down the block from us.

They made a few special late night deliveries for me

(when Lauren went through her flu stage).

That got them extra points in my book.

And, it was super family friendly

We were so sad to see them close.

Before they closed,

Monty (cool pizza guy name huh?)

gave us the secret to the sauce:

tomato paste, oregano, water, Salt, garlic powder, mix.

Its outrageous how good this sauce tastes.

Try it, and then (like me) wish you had known about it sooner.

A good dough

I'd love to type the whole recipe out

and present it as my own,

because really, I modify it enough to call it my own,

but its just way too far past my bed time for that.

And I don't know if you remember or not,

but I'm a runner now (wink).

And runners need their beauty sleep (wink wink)

Here's the link

Pizza dough
There's only one thing I will correct about this crust:

It needs to bake for longer than five minutes before it's topped.

Bake it until it is golden brown.

That's up to fifteen minutes depending on the oven and density of the crust.

I ended up having all the toppings on hand

except one,

and really, I could have done without it.

Thankfully, Daddy had to go to the store.

So here's the scoop:

I wasted WAY too much energy stressing about the food today.

The house pulled together nicely (last minute -thanks to my big kids).
We lounged on the floor and couches and ate pizza and salad.

If I had made steaks, shish kabobs, and potato salad,

I would have needed to set up an extra table for us all to sit around.

We were so much more relaxed.

Our company was great and entertained us!

Really,

I wish the 'chill pill' actually exists for times like these.

Or maybe an out of body experience would have given me a better perspective.

Either way, what a waste of some good energy.

I must bank this thought.

Remember the time Claire was teething,

Cars weren't working,

Claire's Screaming,

House is code orange alert disastrous,

Claire decided to go postal when set down on the floor,

To just let it go and toss some pizza dough!

Consumarlo!
(Eat it up!)