pizza!

It's Friday, so it was pizza day.

It's always an adventure cooking anything in someone else's kitchen; I've been mainly confining myself to simple things like French toast and roast chicken. Pizza is something of a production, as my Mom would say. Early in the week I made my mental list of ingredients and went around the kitchen ticking off what was there and what was missing, so I'd have everything to hand come today.

Well. At dough-making time I discovered that the (unopened) flour had expired in December 2002. That threw me for a bit of a loop, but I trundled the kids out to the car for a quick trip to the local market where they even had my favorite brand, King Arthur. Then it was home to make the dough by hand for the first time in forever, which worked out much better than I expected it to.

I wasn't sure how the kids would respond to this same-but-different pizza: different oil, different pepperoni, different tomatoes in the sauce... I needn't have worried. They each ate two pieces more than usual and declared it "the best pizza ever."

My brother and his wife arrived just past dinner time, and they enjoyed the grown-up pizza (pepperoni, sure, but also fresh mushrooms, roasted peppers, and calamata olives) just as much as I did.

Best part: leftovers to eat on the beach tomorrow. Weather's supposed to be perfect, and I feel I've really earned a beach day.