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!

Italian Chili or The Spaghetti Western's Long Lost Brother.

Tonight we took inventory of our pantry and found that we had about six cans of stewed, diced, or whole tomatoes, everyone different. Some how that inspired Rebekah to propose Italian Chili. We both think the best thing that Johnny Carino's has to offer is their Italian Chili soup so we were already sold on the idea. The recipe called for Italian sausage (out of it's casing), onions, and garlic (we added red peppers too) all sauteed until they were done. Next we added some leftover pasta sauce (roasted garlic) which Rebekah thought wasn't sweet enough so we added some sugar. While that warmed we added pasta (Fusilli Bucati, it would be better with something shorter though) and some beef broth. When the pasta was just about done we added zucchini (which is listed under "squash zucchini" in the Albertson's self checkout). Oh I almost forgot, basil and cayenne pepper. The results were exquisitely delicious!

Pasta

Our favorite pasta dish is a garlic or garden sauce with freshly grilled peppers (green, orange, and red) and onions on top of penne pasta. In addition we add sweet Italian sausage and a mixed Italian cheese on top. It is tasty and easy dish to make. We would prefer a hot Italian sausage, but they don't have as good a flavor as the sweet ones. So far we have been unable to find a sweet-hot variant.

Last week we were a host family for a couple of teenagers at drama camp and Rebekah decided to do a pasta bake version of our pasta dish. It turned out pretty good, not quite as good as the not baked version, but it ended up being more work. I think it would only be worth it with the leftovers from having it "fresh" the first time. The teenagers didn't mind though, they both had fourths.