Domesticity Abounded

We had a domestic flurry this past weekend--on Sunday, I made homemade pizza using this recipe for the crust. The recipe is pretty annoying to read, and I didn't feel like the dough really superior to any other dough that I've ever made, so I'm not necessarily recommending it. It did set the smoke alarm off, however, since I was preheating the oven with the baking stone in it at 450 degrees, which caused a bit of smoke. Ryan waved stuff in front of the smoke detector and it stopped quickly. For toppings, we had cheese (of course), Italian sausage, onion, green pepper, and tomatoes. Oh, and I broke the rolling pin when I was rolling out the dough. While I was making the pizza, Ryan was busy designing a skirt for me based on the one skirt I wear all the time (all the time being the 3-4 times a year that I bother to wear a skirt), thereby taking part in the domestic flurry. After we ate, I helped (not much) him cut out the pieces. When we were done cutting, we'd had enough domesticity for a while, so we went to play tennis (we are both terrible!).

On Monday afternoon, I decided to sew my skirt together. However, my sewing machine hates me and has tension issues whenever I use it. Ryan has no problems with it, however, so he took over when I got frustrated (which was basically right away. I think the sewing machine likes him better because he's a boy and the machine is blue. My sister has a pink machine that has no problem with her--and she doesn't even like pink--not that I do either...). I needed to do something useful, so I went downstairs to make key lime pie. Now, if you're like me, you look at that recipe and think, "Oh, a pie that has only 4 ingredients in the filling and three in the crust. This will be fast!" There, my dear reader, you would be wrong. Well, the crust is fast, but key limes are tiny things with many seeds that do not produce much juice. "But you only need a half cup of key lime juice," you say? Ah, but a half cup of key lime juice took me at least half an hour (at least!) and at least 20 key limes (good thing they're so light and were only about $1.29/lb). And then there's the lime zest. Yes, you only need two teaspoons (I checked that twice before I started just to make sure it said "teaspoons" and not "tablespoons" and then, once again, thought, "Oh, this will be fast"). I grated almost all the peels from the limes that I used for the juice before I had two very scant teaspoons and declared myself done. I now understand why some people have juicers (I was cutting the limes into quarters and squeezing them--it's easier if you cut them the opposite way that I normally do--that's a good description, isn't it? Okay, the opposite way of the little membranes inside)...if I were to make this pie again, I might actually invest in one...or at least borrow one. I'm not sure if a zester would be that helpful having never used one myself, but perhaps zesting before squeezing would be more effective (I didn't want to do that when sqeezing by hand because I was afraid that the weakened rind would not get the juice out as effectively). Now, having complained about the work, I would like to say that key limes are actually quite juicy; it's just that juicy when you're the size of a small bouncy ball does not quickly translate to a half cup of juice. Overall, the pie is good, and we are still enjoying it with real whipped cream (whipping cream was on sale and we're mad at Albertsons for no longer selling the cheap brand of the squirty kind, so I bought and whipped real whipping cream). The skirt is almost all done (I sewed a little bit on it after the machine got warmed up, but Ryan did most of it). Our domesticity has ended, however, seeing as it is 105 degrees outside and 81 degrees downstairs in our house. We're living on fruit, salad, and cheese and crackers these days (okay, it was a little less hot yesterday--like, 3 degrees--so I made a "pizza burrito" for lunch using a sundried tomato and basil tortilla and the toaster over and Ryan made a pork stir fry) or anything we can grill--we practically don't have to turn the grill on to cook things!