Tidings and Such

Confession: You may have already realized this, but I have been a bad
blogger as of late.

No worries, the blog still fills me with bloggy glee and bliss and I have no
plans on shutting down business anytime soon. 

The holidays and the end of the semester just have me bogged down something
awful.  My last class takes their final on Friday and then I am free and
clear of all things teaching (and paychecks) until the end of January.

In the meantime, I have been busy trucking Pman around to look at every
strand of Christmas lights in the Tri-State area.  Be it, a stray string
of blinking lights twisted around a chain linked fence, tasteful white lights
and evergreen wreaths or the life size bright pink flamingo down the street, P
is in love with them all.  He ooo's and ahhhh's with the best of them and occasionally
throws in a, "SOOO PITY!" 

Josh also has been keeping me occupied. 

For example, the other day he got the bright idea to make pizza using the
Pillsbury pizza dough in a tube.  You are suppose to open the tube, as you
do with any Pillsbury tube o' dough, which is carefully followed by gingerly
rolling the dough out evenly on your work surface. 

You Pillsbury veterans will know when one edge of the dough touches any other
dough-like area, you are instantly left with a sticky ball of useless.
Josh found this out the hard way.

He opened the tube.  The dough rolled out onto the greased sheet. He
balled it up in his hands and started pounding and slapping it like you
see every stereotypical Italian do in any movie involving a pizzeria.

I could see where this was headed, so I pulled some thawed
chicken out of the fridge and a box of helper.

In the time it took me to cut raw chicken and cook it, Josh worked that
dough into about a 6" rounded square.  It was suppose to about
12".  He tried to fit it into 3 different pans, each one smaller than
the previous.

While I added the water, milk and powdered cheese seasoning to my
dinner.  Josh had nearly half a jar of pizza sauce on the counter and the
other half on the semi-stretched out dough. (success?!).

My dinner was almost finished congealing, he was just starting the sprinkle
the cheese on his...well I don't even know what to call it.  I do know,
pizza is not the word.

After about 15 minutes, because that is the part of the directions he did
read, he pulled his tomato/cheese/olive/pepperoni loaf out of the oven. He
looked defeated.  I did not want to rub it in, so I put my dinner in the
fridge saying that we would eat it the following night.

The three of us sat down to enjoy daddy's homemade pizza. 


The crust was crusty. 
The cheese was melted. 
The sauce was so hot we all got third degree burns on the roof's of our
mouths. 

The center of the pizza was fresh out the tube raw.  It was so raw you
could not pick up the pizza, in order to eat this, a fork and knife were a
must.  I choked down one slice.  Same for P.  Josh soldiered
through and I'm not sure how much he ate, but there were no leftovers.

So as you see, I've been busy.