One Busy Friday

I had a busy but great day today. I started off with some marathon house cleaning so I wouldn't have to do much this weekend. Then I made some oatmeal raisin cookies (of which I have only eaten a couple of, yay me)! Then my BFF (as I affectionately call her) Christina came over and we made hairbows together. I only have a couple more to do and then my girls will be ready for spring and summer!

After school was out, the kids played outside in this beautiful spring weather, and I made homemade pizza for the first time! It turned out really good, I was very excited about it. I have been venturing into cooking from scratch more and more, because its so healthy (no preservative, chemicals), much cheaper, and tastes better...and it really doesn't take that much more effort than rolling out a pizza dough from a tube. And to be honest, I really enjoy cooking so its fun for me. Of course, I still love pizza from the different pizza places, but this one is a nice change, and now we can have pizza whenever we want!

For the dough, I combined a couple of different recipes to end up with what I wanted:

Wheat Pizza Crust
1) Preheat your pizza stone in a 450 degree oven
2) Mix one cup of warm water with one package of yeast (or 2 tablespoons)
3) In another bowl, mix together
*1/2 cup of olive oil
*1 teaspoon of salt
*1 tablespoon of honey
*1 1/2 cups of wheat flour
4) Add the yeast water mixture
5) Add 2 1/2 cups of white flour
6) Knead the dough, and add warm water a little bit at a time until it forms a nice ball...be careful not to add too much or the dough will get sticky
7) Cover with a towel and let rise, about thirty minutes
8) Punch down well, and roll out for pizzas
9) Place dough on hot pizza stone and top with sauce, mozzarella cheese, and toppings
10) Bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes
*This makes 2 pizzas

I didn't take a picture of the whole thing, but here's a piece!

I found a great pizza sauce to go on the pizzas, and here is the recipe. I changed it up some (of course), and here are my changes (I doubled the recipe because the reviews said it wasn't enough for two pizzas, but I had a lot leftover so I'm not sure I needed to):
*2 (6 oz) cans tomato sauce
*6 tablespoons of parmesan cheese (this was too much, next time I will only use 4 I think)
*2 teaspoons minced garlic
*1 teaspoon of onion powder
*1 teaspoon oregano
*1 teaspoon marjoram
*1 teaspoon basil
*1 teaspoon pepper
*Pinch of cayenne pepper
*Pinch of red pepper
*Pinch of salt
*Honey to taste

I actually did buy some anchovies (I couldn't find the paste), but I opened them, and picked one up, and this Southwest girl just COULDN'T do it!! They were nasty LOL! The pizza turned out great, Andrew and Abigail both ate it up (Andrew calls it "Pizzy"). So I am calling it a success=)