The Dinner Project - Pizza

My first post in The Dinner Project is, by far, my favorite dinner. I mean, who doesn't love pizza?! It is a family favorite as well. My household excitedly repeats "Ooo! Pizza Night!!" when they see it on the menu at the beginning of the week. We do individual pizzas so we can make exactly what we each want.

Admittedly, this one can be a bit time consuming, especially if you aren't familiar with making basic bread dough. However, you can make this dough ahead and keep in the fridge for a few days or freeze it for a couple weeks. Just make sure to wrap it well so it doesn't dry out and leave plenty of time for it to get back to room temp before you make your pizza crust. Once you get the hang of it, making this simple bread dough is pretty easy. (If you have a good mixer with a bread hook it is a snap!)

This recipe for the basic bread dough that makes great pizza dough is a slightly modified version from a recipe in "The Naked Chef Takes Off" by Jamie Oliver. (I LOVE Jamie!!!) This recipe will make 3-4 individual pizzas or one big family-sized pizza. The three of us always have leftovers for lunch the next day. I don't have a pizza stone so we use our cast-iron skillets to bake our pizzas. You don't need either of those though. This will work just fine on a good baking sheet. We each like different thickness of crust so the different sizes of our skillets work well.

Basic Bread Dough:

1/2 lb whole wheat flour

1/2 lb unbleached white flour

1 cup warm water (not hot or cold as it will kill your yeast!)

3/4oz active dry yeast (1 and 1/2 envelopes of the 1/4oz dry yeast packets or, when taking from a jar, it is 3 3/8 tsp. If using fresh yeast then it is 1oz.)

1 tbsp sugar (I use raw sugar but you can use honey too.)

1 tbsp salt

Directions:

Weigh out your flour and set aside. (When baking, measuring flour by weight is much better. If you plan on making bread regularly I strongly suggest getting a kitchen scale. They are about $20 for a decent one at any

kitchen store. It has made me much more successful in baking!)

In a mixing bowl, combine water, yeast and sugar. The yeast should start to foam up a little after a minute or so. This is called "proofing." Basically, you are making sure your yeast is good. If it doesn't foam up then your yeast is too old/dead and your bread will not turn out. Add the salt to the mixture and stir until dissolved.

Now you are going to combine the yeast mixture with the flour. There are a few ways to do this. I use my mixer with a bread hook and slowly add the flour. Some people mix in the flour slowly to the yeast mixing bowl using their hand. (I've done that before too.) The fancy way is to make a little pile of flour on your counter, create a little bowl in the center, pour the yeast mixture into the little well made into the flour pile. You then slowly incorporate the two. I suck at doing this and always make a huge mess. Don't worry if you don't do this. Your bread will turn out fine being mixed in a bowl.

Keep mixing until you start to get a nice, elastic ball of dough. You may have to add a little more water if it looks a little dry and flaky or a bit more flour if it looks too sticky. Different kinds of flour and the temp/humidity will effect this so you just have to eyeball it each time. If you are using a mixer with a bread hook then just let it keep mixing. The bread hook will do all the kneading for you. If you are doing it by hand then plop that beautiful lump out onto a floured surface and KNEAD! (I won't go into proper kneading here. There are plenty of instructional videos on the web to help you along.) Giving your bread a good knead is very important for creating that fluffy texture. Not enough kneading means tough bread.

Set aside your bread dough, in a floured bowl, in a warm place with a damp cloth covering it to rise. For first rise should take an hour or two for the bread to double in size. Once it has done that, punch it down, knead it well again and place it back in the bowl for second rise. The second rise always takes less time. (Mine takes about 30 minutes usually but on really cold days it can take longer.) Punch it down, knead it a little and then you are ready to make your pizza crust.

I usually sprinkle some fine ground cornmeal on my pan but that is just optional. I'm not going to tell you how shape your dough because, to be honest, I kind of suck at it myself. I do my best and it always comes out good.

Put on your toppings and bake at 450 for about 25-30 minutes. If you make your crust really thick it will take longer. If you make your crust paper thin it will be done quickly so check often!

The sky is the limit with homemade pizza toppings. We try to keep it healthy so there are lots of veg and lean meat. We use skim mozzarella cheese and keep it to a couple ounces each. We plan adding some different cheeses as toppings this summer. The most popular toppings in my house include lean Canadian bacon, fresh basil, baby spinach, mushrooms, green peppers, roasted garlic, artichoke hearts (not marinated in oil) and olives. For sauce we each have our own favorites. I use a tablespoon of basil pesto. Monkey uses a mix of spaghetti sauce and feta dressing. Author uses straight up red pizza sauce. If we have it, Monkey and I will sometimes use a touch of truffle oil. (REAL truffle oil, not that chemical shit.) We all keep it very light since the best sauces are never low in fat. We usually sprinkle a little fancy salt and maybe some dried parsley or oregano to finish it off.

Dinner is Ready!

(This is my pizza. I forgot to take a picture before I started eating! It has pesto sauce, mozzarella cheese, fresh basil, Canadian bacon, spinach and a couple mushrooms. It is finished with some Sel Gris (French gray salt) and dried oregano.)

The Dinner Project

I am a foodie. I love to eat. I love good food, fancy and simple. I love to cook even though my skills are pretty down-home.

However, I also have a problem with food. Years of out of control Binge Eating Disorder added with a typical American diet/lifestyle made me morbidly obese. I was lucky enough to hit my mid-thirties with no sign of obesity related diseases but I knew it was only a matter of time before my luck would run out. Thankfully, I've managed to get what I needed to deal with my eating disorder and get my weight down before I lose my health. Last January I started both a cognitive behavioral therapy program and Weight Watchers Online. To date I have lost 51lb.

The other night I was sitting down for dinner, looking at this amazing taco salad that I had fixed my family, and thought "Why didn't I realize I could be healthy and still eat this good!" I grew up going on diet after bland diet, wishing I could just eat something that had some kind of taste. In the end, I always broke my diet because I missed the joy in eating good food. I still see images in the media of people on diets eating plain celery sticks and looking longingly at some one else's plate. Or, even worse, dieters chowing down daily on prepared meals filled with salt and chemicals. (Not to say I don't pop in a frozen lunch every once in awhile but it is pretty rare.) We are told that dieting is either suffering or replacing real food with some synthetic food alternative.

The truth is eating healthy and eating well really go hand in hand. Even when you are living this truth it can be easy to forget. I eat better now than I ever have in my life! I still get shocked at the dinner table sometimes when I realize how much I've already lost while still eating great. To remind myself and share it with the interwebs, I have decided to start The Dinner Project on my blog. I will post a picture and the recipe for my favorite meal of the week. (I'd love to do it almost daily but that would be a lot of work!) Mostly I am doing this to remind myself but I hope some one out there stumbles upon one of my dinner posts, gives the recipe a try and enjoys a healthy, tasty meal.

Let's eat!

The best laid plans

This past weekend was suppose to be our first grand outing since all the crap with Monkey's old work went to hell, his certification studying, him working 50hr weeks and then getting really sick from being overworked. It should have been a short but carefree trip up to Seattle for a dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant and the Daft Punk laser show at the Pacific Science Center. There should have also been plenty of time for "adult activities" and maybe even a little boozing (since I'm not ttc-ing right now.)

Our trip did happen however it involved dragging my sick ass around behind Monkey and Author. I caught Monkey's cold. A sick Bear is often grumpy. I'm afraid wasn't the best company. I also couldn't taste a bit of the wonderful lamb curry and mango lassi I always have. Nor could I focus much on the laser show since I felt like utter crap. There were good moments of the show where I was able to lose myself in the music and the visuals but not many. Even sick it was an awesome show, I just wasn't able to enjoy it. I couldn't taste any of the treats we had ready at the hotel for late night noshing and picking apart the show. I couldn't have any of the wine. Breakfast out, a rare event for us, was no better. By the time we were on the road home I was even sicker than I was when we left.

Today I haven't been up. I moved from bed to the futon downstairs and slept all morning. I think going on the trip might have been the wrong call considering how sick I am now. But we all so needed the outing. If I had stayed home then Monkey and Author would have refused to go so they could take care of me. Even today Author stayed home from work to keep and eye on me.

I know I'll get better soon. Chances are next weekend I'll be fine. I just wish the first trip of our travel season hadn't been marred by my being sick.

And to top it all off...I gained 3lb this week. I didn't exercise much because I was trying to fight off the beginnings of this cold. I didn't realize how important my exercise routines had become in my weight loss. I'm guessing I wouldn't have better results this week since I won't be working out any time soon. ::sigh::whine::grumble::

The hunt

The time has come. Monkey is no longer working 50 hr weeks. He is down to just his full time job. The cold he came down with while stressed to his limits is starting to fade away. His first real weekend in about 3 months starts tomorrow night.

It is time to hunt for a new sperm donor.

Monkey and Author are my sperm wranglers. Well, Monkey is the wrangler and Author helps with separating the good from the bad. We consider this a division of labor. He deals with the sperm and I will deal with..well..the labor ::chuckle:: plus everything else that goes along with the whole pregnancy package. As a result of this deal I'm not involved in the first few screenings of potential donors. When we use frozen we have so little control that we actually don't care who we get as long as they have a history of pregnancies. Known donors are a lot more complicated but there are other advantages. The one time I actually did get pregnant (I miscarried) was with a known donor. I wish we still had access to him. Damn dream job offer in the UAE. Pttht.

Anyway, Monkey is on the lookout again starting this weekend. We aren't counting on finding some one for summer inseminations so I have a back up plan. We have two Clo.mid cycles left with my NP. She will only do them if I go for monitoring and do a trigger shot. I think it is time we took those last couple tries. We'll use frozen and do the IUI at home. (Yay for having a nurse practitioner for a partner!) I'm aiming for the cycle in mid-July. August has too many concerts and out of town things so that will be my rest cycle between medicated cycles. If by some amazing chance we have a donor by then, well, we may just do one anyway but with fresh.

I'm so tired of this. I just wish I knew what the result would be. I wish some one could tell me "Keep trying! You will be a mama bear yet!" Or "It is time to hang up the speculum and move on to accepting that you won't have a baby." I guess since I'm not so tired of ttc to give up then all I can do is keep trying until I get that pregnancy.

Some things don't change

In a previous post I talked about how my new combo of psych meds had made some surprising changes in me. I also listed some basic things about me that haven't changed. This point in my life seems to be all about discovering things that were buried under the fog of sub-clinical (for me) treatment of my depression and anxiety. Even the things that are just truly me, not my illness, are discoveries.

There was one thing that I always wondered if it was just me or if it was my mental illness. I have never been a particularly engaging person. I am curious person and I like to watch people but I'd really rather not interact with them. There are notable exceptions, some situational and some universal. Monkey is a universal exception. I always feel comfortable with him. After a bit of "getting to know you" time with Author (and accepting that I can not read him at all) I found that he is also a universal exception. Past lovers and a couple friends have been situational exceptions. These are people I am temporarily comfortable engaging with. Those ones come and go depending on situation and my mood. Beyond that I'd rather be left to my watching.

Some things don't change. Though my tolerance for crowds and stimulation has improved it seems I'm still the classic non-engaging introvert I've always been. Check that off the list as a truly Bear characteristic. I still like watching people and, now, I can do it for longer and in more varied situations. I would still rather they not talk to me and I have no interest in talking to them. I have no drive to find more friends or spend more time with people I already know. I'm interested in going to more events (queer, leather, Jewish, concerts) but I don't hope for interactions or socialization there. I just want to watch...like I always do.

With everything that is changing for me it is kind of comforting to find the things that are the same. It is nice to know that my identity as an introvert is real and true.

Getting impatient.

After 4 1/2 years of trying to get pregnant I think I'm finally getting impatient.

That isn't entirely true. I haven't really been patient by choice during that time. If we had the resources to get my ass into a fertility clinic I think we would have. If our insurance covered more infertility treatments/IVF or we could have gotten into a study. We could have the resources if we wanted to change our lifestyle and choice in work. Monkey could go work for some private clinic than only takes rich or over-insured people. I could go back to work full or part time to bring in more cash. But we like the way we live and what we do. Some people will pay any price, monetarily or emotionally, for a shot at having a baby. I guess Monkey and I have lower line. Life is too short and too unpredictable for us to make choices that would mean we'd be miserable.

Anyway, back to the main subject. Impatience. I'm ready to give those last two Clo.mid/monitor/trigger/IUI cycles a try. This isn't much of a big deal to a lot of infertility people but for me it is big. This will be the most intense thing I've done. I've done 4 Clo.mid/IUI cycles before but we didn't monitor or trigger. We plan on doing it in July/August.

We keep looking for a known donor. Well, we are kind of on hold until Monkey stops working 50+ hours a week. That should happen in 2 weeks. He'll get back to it again then. The summer cycles will likely be frozen sperm though.

::sigh:: I'm feeling a little hopeless...and very, very impatient.

Who are you?

There is a common argument against psychiatric medication that we are using them to change people's personality. I hear it over and over again "I don't want to pop a pill to change who I am." (In fact, I heard almost exactly that on the latest episode of Glee.) My partner, a Psych Nurse Practitioner, hears this from his patients constantly. I never really understood this argument because I never experienced a huge change in behavior from taking psych meds....until now.

I've always identified more with the dark places. I've always been pessimistic. My music and art of choices tended to be more about the emotional agony that life sometime contains. I've even, without really admitting it, leaned toward the stereotypical dark-colored clothing. I never celebrated these aspects of myself. I knew that a huge part of my affinity to this kind of stuff was my faulty biochemistry. I did accept it though, assuming that nothing could ever change it.

It seems I was wrong. My latest psych drug therapy, along with a good dose of cognitive behavioral therapy, has started to show signs of changing my taste in some things. I've started buying and wearing bright colors. I own a teal hoodie now and a growing collection of bright spring-colored t-shirts. I've also found my usual goth/industrial/angry punk music to be getting less rotation. Instead, I've created a Daft Punk station on my online radio that plays a constant mix of electronic dance music. (My fave has been Daft Punk's Tron Legacy soundtrack.) I enjoy doing yard work. I look forward to sunny days. I smile more. I'm more likely to think things will work out rather than believing every situation will crash and burn. (The one great exception is ttc/infertility. No amount of pills or therapy can lessen the pain of 4 1/2 years of trying to get pregnant and continuing to fail.)

So am I going to be one of those people who say that the pills changed who I am? HELL NO! I've got a bold line between my disease and my identity. I still wear my black t-shirts, choose skull patterns in decor, enjoy a good rain storm and Nine Inch Nails will never leave my iPod, ever. There is room for change and growth in my interests. That room wouldn't exist without the meds and the therapy. My teal hoodie is a trophy of successfully managing my illness. My veggie patch in the yard will be my own kind of victory garden.

This is who I am. This is who I was meant to be if my brain biochemistry hadn't gone haywire. I'm a skull button on a teal hoodie. I'm blue-haired, freckled, kinky, hippie, freak armed with knitting needles and a belief that I can change the world for the better just by being healthy.

(Glee fan side note: I was rather impressed that Glee went on to draw the same line I do between identity and illness. Yay for talking about and properly addressing mental illness without shame.)