Contemplations and Concoctions

A Mommy blogging about life, love, food, and toddlers.

So I make pizza a fair amount at home, mainly because I like to know what's going into my sauce and what I'm feeding my little ones.  But I had never tried tossing the dough in the air!  It sounded like a step that really wasn't necessary to me.  I thought it would do nothing for the dough.  I was so wrong!  It made such a huge difference in the crust.  I would recommend trying it at least once even if your sure you'll throw it on the ground.  Took me a few times to get it sort of right (I am by no means a master yet!).  Here is the picture that was requested as part of the challenge of you tossing your dough, flattering don't ya think? :P  

Just in case you all had wondered why I hadn't posted in a long time!  It's because cooking isn't appealing 95% of the time.  Hopefully soon I'll be back at it.  I'm hoping to do my Daring Bakers challenge this weekend.  Wish me luck!

The weekend is only half over and already it's been one of the best in memory.  I love spending time with Tim and our son on the weekends.  It reminds me what is important and what really doesn't matter.  When I gave birth to Riley I remember looking at Tim holding him just after while we still waiting in the delivery suite for my room to open up and thinking "Wow! I really love this man" and ever since then I've been looking at him and he just surprises me more and more.  The way he is with Riley just reaffirms for me that I made the right choice when I decided to marry him (after dating for 7.5 years!).

I use to love this...  one of the restaurants Tim and I use to frequent had this on their menu and I ordered it almost every time.  Their servings were huge and I could normally eat it for dinner and two lunches!  It's basically fettuccini Alfredo with Chicken and mushrooms.  It also normally has green onions sprinkled on top but I used parsley from my garden herbs.  I made the pasta from scratch purely because I think it tastes 100% times better than boxed dried pasta.  Although, I do still use it for those extra lazy days or when I just don't have the time to make pasta. 

Homemade Pasta:

100 g of all-purpose flour

1 egg

This past week has been a pretty good week. I know I say that all the time but I guess it's my "normal" answer for when things go well but not super duper fantastic.

For the longest time I use to organize what we would eat all week.  I found it very helpful and a good way to organize my points and keep on track when I was doing Weight Watchers.  I haven't gone back to WW since I had my baby.  I have thought about it but now that I live on a very tight budget I choose to spend my money on organic food for my son and almost anything else baby related. 

Bright and early this morning Riley, Tim and I all got in the car and drove down to Hawrelak park.  When I say bright and early I do mean bright and early.  Thankfully Riley was a trooper  and after a very hard night before and going to bed at 7:30 he was up bright eyed and bushy tailed at 7:30 am.  I wouldn't normally be thrilled about this but since we needed to leave around 8:30 it was good. 

I have completed my first daring bakers challenge!  It went very well and only took me three and half hours to complete.  I think thats a really good time.  I made sure that the little man was safely in bed before starting because it makes doing anything in the kitchen about a hundred times harder with him under my feet. 

I decided to make an almond cake with lemon syrup and a layer of strawberries, lemon-vanilla butter cream and white chocolate mousse and ganache.
 

This weekend was pretty good.  Tim, Riley and I all piled in the car on Saturday morning to go downtown for their swimming lessons at the YMCA.  It was lots of fun, Riley is finally (for the past two lessons) warming up to being in the water with Tim.  He doesn't reach for me anymore and actually giggles and smiles a lot now.  His friends C & C were there.  We've been taking lessons with them since the very beginning.  I've really enjoyed getting to know them they are great girls and the little one is so sweet.  She also gives me a reason to buy pink things!  My little one sure doesn't need pink!  Bedsides the fact I'm pretty sure that Tim wouldn't allow it.  He was the one that insisted Riley could NOT wear a "dress" to his baptism.