From Scratch

I love to cook.  I love beautifully photographed and wonderfully written blogs like the Smitten Kitchen and Pioneer Woman Cooks. Maybe one day when my blog and I grow up, we'll be as awesome as sites like these (a girl can dream can't she?)....  In the meantime, you get this latest post.

I do not, have not, nor will I ever claim to be a nut of the health variety (although, I have recently reacquainted myself with the inside of the gym), yet as a mom I have become a bit more in tune to what is in the food we buy.  I am really careful about what Price eats (ok, maybe not thhhaaattt careful- I let the kid eat cheeseburgers anytime we go out to eat because I am sick of packing his meal think he's old enough to eat off the menu sometimes).  I was really careful (almost to the point of being obnoxious) as I introduced solids to his diet.  But, so far (knock on wood) he hasn't really shown any sensitivity to anything, and he likes to eat.  These days, he's really into meat- but that's another topic.  Once we moved in to our house, I bit the bullet and started letting him eat what we eat, rather than making him a separate meal.  He's done really well and has packed on some much needed poundage.  Knowing that he's eating what we're eating has made me more sensitive to what I am cooking.  I am not talking about fat content or counting calories, but looking at ingredients in the food.

When reading food labels, one should really have a dictionary.  I don't know what most of the multi-syllable words are, but I know they are preservatives or additives or dyes or corn syrup.  And I don't know how I feel about all of these things going into my child's body.  I know that foods with a lot of preservatives are usually easier to fix, but they also usually have a lot of sodium.  I know many people think organic food is a crock, but at least you know (or at least you think you know) what's in it.  Unfortunately, in Guam organic isn't really an option.  So, I've decided to try and make much of our food from scratch.  I won't do everything from scratch (because I do hope to have a life at some point), but I just think if I can make 1 meal a week with foods that aren't overly processed I'll be doing a good thing.  So, tonight I started my project.

My mom sent me a new Pampered Chef baking stone for Don's birthday (long story, not to be divulged here) that I've been dying to use, so I thought I would make a pizza.  At first I was going to buy a pizza crust at the store and just add my own toppings, but after reading the ingredient list, I decided that this would be the "from scratch" kick off meal.

I found a recipe for pizza dough on RecipeCzar.com.  Gathered all my ingredients (for the crust and toppings) and was off.

Ok, so I forgot to take a picture of ALL the ingredients- basically my plan was to make a BBQ chicken pizza with black beans, pineapple, cilantro, mozzarella cheese and diced tomatoes.

Once I gathered all of the ingredients, I realized/remembered that I didn't send any measuring devices in our unaccompanied baggage (Note to self- pillows, measuring cups and spoons should be sent ahead!).  So, I improvised- I used baby products that, thankfully, had the capacity on the bottom.  And I used a bottle liner to measure liquid.  I can be pretty thrifty when I need to.

The pizza recipe I used did call for yeast, which I had on hand, but only called for the dough to sit for 5-10 minutes rather than waiting for it to rise.  The recipe also only called for 6 ingredients compared to the 8 million listed on the packaged crust.

After I made the dough, I put it in the oven to cook for 5 minutes and got the toppings ready:  chopped the pre-cooked chicken, rinsed the black beans, opened the pineapples...

Pre-cheese, and I forgot to add the bbq sauce- oops!

Cheese=yumminess, I could eat cheese all day, every day.

All done! It turned out really well.  The crust could have used a little more salt and sugar (but I didn't have measuring spoons, so for winging it, I think it turned out well). And the overall taste of the pizza would have been better if I had added the BBQ sauce before baking, but it worked out ok, because it was the most processed of all the ingredients, so I was ok that Price didn't get any sauce.  The main thing was, both the boys liked it.  It was inexpensive and only took about 30 minutes from start to finish.  Now that I know how easy the crust is to make, I'll be experimenting with toppings.