Something new to try

Yeah, yeah, so this post isn't ground breaking and earth shattering. So sue me, I had fun doing it.

I'll start this post with a small confession. If I'm late coming home from work, the fridge is empty, and I'm just too damn lazy to go to the grocery store, I've been known to stoop to the depths of a frozen pizza. I know, I know, it's hard to believe that I would take the easy way out and go the dinner low road.  I'm aware that I've now disappointed everyone with my culinary transgressions, but I've given this some thought and I've decided to curb the frozen pizza easy way out.

Several grocery forays ago I noticed that Publix sells uncooked pizza dough in a bag. Imagine that, pizza dough ready to go. So this last weekend I waited until the bakery counter was empty and slithered up and luckily the lady immediately asked me if she could help. So I asked my dozen or so questions and did my purchase. Didn't want other people laughing at the newbie greenhorn.

Once home, that dough just sat there in the fridge and DARED me to give it a try. That's right, it DOUBLE DOG DARED ME! Not being the type to turn away from a double dog dare, I figured Sunday night was my chance. I had a backup plan (tomato soup and a tuna fish sandwich) just in case this whole episode failed miserably. So here I go, with both feet.

In typical engineer fashion, I assembled all interested parties.

Special interest to the bag of dough. I really had no idea exactly how to tackle this beast. I took it out of the fridge (according to the deli lady's directions) and let it come up to room temp. About then I noticed that it was growing!! See that big bubble on the top? Agghh!!! What do I do with that?!? She didn't tell me about that! I remembered watching a Food Channel show about bread and they said something about punching it down (whatever that means) so I figured I would 'pop' that sucker through the bag. I guess that was the right thing to do as it went back to normal size. Crisis averted??

When I was doing the fiendish deed of going to battle with the dough 'burp', I noticed the sticker on the bottom of the bag. I guess I didn't notice it before. Imagine that, explicit instructions! Exactly what I need!

Alright, get it out of the bag and lets roll it out. Slight problem. I don't have a rolling pin. Hmm, that's a problem. I guess a water glass will work almost as good.

I also couldn't just make a standard pepperoni pizza and call it good. I figured I could jack it up a bit by frying up a pan-full of pork lardons to go on it.

Yeah, ok, so it's not round. Relatively rectangular is a shape too!

Twenty minutes in the oven and she looks good to go!

This was really pretty easy, and it was really quite good. I thought it was better than the standard frozen variety and I could actually pronounce the ingredients that went into it. So maybe, just possibly it was better for me than the 'Buy one, Get one' frozen hockey puck.

So while I agree that this post wasn't a stop the presses type of thing, it was another step in my cooking education. Plus I get to eat my mistakes!

Dollhouse Update

Got a couple of requests about the dollhouse and what it looks like. I didn't realize that the original dollhouse update was one of the posts that got deleted last year. I don't have the text from that post but I do have the pictures although they don't show very much. Basically just what some of the stuff looked like in the kit.

The bag on the right are the shingles. The lighter piece of wood in the foreground with all the rectangular pieces stamped into it are the staircase risers & treads. I worked real hard to make sure that those treads fit perfectly into the staircase. Little did I know that once it's all assembled, you can barely see the staircase inside. All that work that nobody will see.

Anyway, those pictures were taken 9 months ago. Wow, has it been that long? So here's some pictures of what it looks like today.

This is the front of the dollhouse. I still have all the window 'glass' and frames, some door frames, all the gingerbread work, and the front porch still to do, but you can get an idea. You can just see the bottom of the staircase through the front door.

This is what I call the 'play side'. Where the back is all opened up for placing furniture, dolls, etc. As you can see, I didn't do any detail work on the inside. As this will be a played-with dollhouse, I didn't bother with interior details as they would just get wrecked anyway. Not complaining, this dollhouse was intended to be used from the very beginning. I'll do all the interior work on the next one which will be a show-only dollhouse.

Still have to do the fireplace mantles, bookshelves, and interior window & door frames.

This is the other play side.

Something I just noticed in these pictures, you can see every single glue joint!! Agh!! I didn't know that the flash would bring them out like that! You can't really see them in regular light! That looks terrible! I may have to paint the interior now. I can't leave it like that, that's just embarrassing.

Currently the top of the turret isn't glued down and I'm thinking about not gluing it. That way it can be removed and the interior space used as another room.

By the way, remember that bag of shingles? Well, that's them after countless hours of placing and gluing of each and every one. I then coated the roof with some Tung oil to give it that golden look. It just looked too 'blah' unfinished.

Oh man, those glue joints are killing me....