I had a great idea to go camping in our backyard over Memorial Day weekend since we couldn't really go camping due to the fact that work needed to continue on our house over the 3 day weekend. We could set up the tent one night and have a fire and roast marshmallows, totally fun, right?! Well Friday afternoon rolled around and it was cloudy and gloomy and rain loomed in the distance. The weather forecast said it all. I could just throw that idea out the window.
So I decided it would be a great night to try making homemade pizza for the first time. I've had many moms tell me they like to make homemade pizza as an easy and quick pull together meal that the family always loves. Perfect night to try it out then since Dwight was on his way to spend the night and help Nate out Saturday with siding our house. He was planning on arriving at our house around 7pm ish so by the time Nate got home from work it would work out to eat a quick bite of pizza and then get some work in before the sun went down. Or so I thought...
So I started getting all the ingredients out for the pizza making 'adventure' (who knew just how much of an adventure it would turn out to be) and I began to search for the recipe I had written down from Sheryll for the homemade pizza dough, and of course I could not find the paper. I had stuck it in my purse with some grocery list items also written on it and had thrown in away after I bought the items at the grocery store forgetting about the recipe on the other side of the paper. Great. And Sheryll was on vacation so I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get ahold of her or even if she'd remember the recipe off the top of her head. So I decided to call Twilla, from whom the recipe originated and she rattled off the recipe faster than I could write and when the phone conversation ended I hoped I had gotten everything written down, because who wants to ask for the recipe 5 times in a row to make sure you actually got it all written down correctly. Apparently not me. Okay, back to finding all the ingredients. This recipe uses baking powder and not yeast. I always have baking powder on hand. Except this time! I've already started making the dough, I'm out of baking powder. Completely. When did I forget to write that down on the grocery list?! And we're about 15 miles to the nearest store. Nate's suppose to be home in a little bit and everyone told me pizza was suppose to be easy to make!!! So off to my neighbors house to be neighborly and beg for a little baking powder. Thankfully they came through for me and the pizza making commenced. Then it came to a screeching halt. The dough was wet, like really wet. It totally didn't resemble any pizza dough I had ever seen. Now what was I suppose to do. I tried calling Sheryll who was in a low cell coverage area, just imagine that phone call... Who else could I call? Well my mom was calling me, Nate called and said he was running late and had to load up the bobcat to bring home, the kids picked this moment to completely fall apart and begin world war III and Dwight was suppose to arrive shortly, not to mention the 'bomb' that had gone off in the kitchen. Things were messy. I got ahold of another friend who suggested just adding more flour. Right. Why didn't I think of that?! Which thankfully solved the problem and in the meantime I did eventually get a house number to call Sheryll at and got the actual recipe from her. 1/3 C. oil not 2/3 C. oil! Problem solved. I assembled the pizza just as Nate and Dwight arrived home and aside from it taking longer to bake and the temperature of the oven needing to be a few degrees hotter it turned out quite well, and pretty and yummy. While the first one was baking I went about making a second batch of dough for the next pizza, and with the right recipe in hand it was made quickly and correctly. So I rolled out the dough on the counter and assembled the pizza right there and figured I'd just transfer the already put-together pizza onto the pizza pan once it came out of the oven and was done with the first pizza. All you who know about making homemade pizza please try and keep your laughter at a minimum! That simply doesn't work! We all pitched in and gave it our best shot at trying to transfer the second uncooked pizza onto the pizza tray but just ended up with a big fat mess! A calzone, Nate suggested. We did manage to get it transferred to the pizza tray in
After the kids were in bed I thought it would be a good idea to self clean the oven since there was a mess of pizza now fried onto the bottom on the oven. After searching, unsuccessfully, for the oven user manual I decided just to close up the oven and push the button for self clean and I figured it would do all the work. I mean, how hard could it be?!
By this time it was about midnight and because of the bad weather coming in and our house needing to be aired out, the inside temperature was cold! I had tried earlier in the day to turn on the heat but nothing seemed to happen. So Nate checked it out and to make another long story short, we had an electrician stop by earlier that week to finish up some electrical work so we could get our AC hooked up and working, but the HVAC guy never made it out when he said he was going to so everything never got sorted out so the heat wasn't working either. Poor Dwight, the pizza disaster and now a freezing house, I was sure he'd never come back... So we all bundled up with extra blankets and slept the night away.
In the morning Nate had the bright idea to check and see if our propane heat would work, which thankfully to everyones delight it did and our house began to heat up. And not a moment to soon because the next morning we woke up to rain. Rain! Dwight came all this way to help us put on siding and it was raining. I know the whole morning Nate was trying to come up with a plan B. But we hadn't really planned or prepared for another project to be worked on.
And after breakfast I went to check the stove and see if the self cleaning had done its job during the night. As I began to take out the racks so I could wipe them down I realized that maybe I should have searched harder for that owners manual. Yep, I don't think you're suppose to leave the racks in when you have your oven self clean. They aren't the pretty, shiny racks anymore. One specifically said to remove it before using the self clean and its a bit charred on the sides... ooops!
I quickly sent a text to Dwight's mom, my friend, that I would better feed her son before we sent him home that night after a days work, since Dwight had sent her a picture of our pizza disaster the night before. And really I should have known better than to open my mouth. Maybe I jinxed myself. (just kidding)
Thankfully the rain subsided a bit and after breakfast the guys bundled up and headed outside to see what they could do. And as the day wore on it cleared up more and more and they were able to get quite a bit done!
I figured I'd throw together one of our 'easy' meals since Dwight wanted to be home before dark and they would want to push and get as much done on the house before he left, so as evening approached I got the dinner together. The whole table was set and ready and all that was left was for Nathan to came in and fry up the taco shells and dinner would be ready. I headed to the fridge to grab them out so all Nate would have to do would be to heat them up and guess what I found? Like 5 taco shells! 5 Taco shells would not feed all of us! A nice little miscommunication between husband and wife, haha! So we decided to fry a couple flour tortillas to add to our 5 corn tortillas. To do that you have to have the oil really hot, otherwise they will soak up the oil and would be no good. Well Nate got the oil hot. Like really hot! Maybe a little too hot! Because the next thing you know our house is totally smokey again, the fire alarm goes off and this time there's a real FIRE! A grease fire! On our stove. If I thought the kids were freaking out before, I was wrong! So Nate's at the stove trying to figure out the best course of action with Dwight and I get on the computer to see what to use to quench a grease fire, because all we knew was that you "don't use water!". Thankfully within a short time, but what felt like a long time, the fire went out and we began trying to get our children under control, and ourselves for that matter! We had enough tortillas for dinner so we sat down to eat because remember, Dwight wanted to be home before it was dark and it was already late when they had come in from working. Needless to say, I think we were trying to destroy our stove this weekend. My stove top is a little sad looking and I don't know if there's any help for it but I do think it is still usable, but like the racks, it's just not as pretty as it use to be.
Well, we all ate our dinner, which still tasted decent by the way, and Dwight headed home. I updated our Facebook status about the fire and then we put the kids to bed. I cleaned up the kitchen while Nate headed back outside to clean up and when he came in around midnight or so we had no internet connection. I couldn't figure out why it just stopped working until he informed me that he had taken the box off the side of the house while putting up siding and he had just reinstalled it when he had been outside cleaning. Something must have gone wrong. So we called and they said they would send someone out Tuesday to try and fix it. Great.
That night I woke to the wind howling and thrashing the rain into our windows. Also, Nate had taken down the downspout of our gutters, so they could put the siding on, and it happened to be right by my head (outside of course) and the amount of rain rushing down and splashing out was a nice little added lullaby to my lack of sleep and already havacked nerves!
Morning dawned with torrential downpours, not really, but it was rainy and yuckie outside. And all I wanted to do was get out of the house after being stuck inside for the last couple days, not to mention everything else that had already happened. So finally after I had a mini breakdown, we loaded the kids up and headed out to do who knows what, but anything was better than being stuck inside the house for one minute longer! We forgot to bring the computer to check e-mails and update the blog. But we ended up taking a nice drive for a couple hours after doing a little shopping. The day turned out to be wonderful despite the bad weather.
And thus Monday came with a need to go grocery shopping but first needing to get recipes off the internet, so we headed to Qdoba to eat lunch while I gathered my list of needed ingredients from the recipes on Pinterest and off we headed to get our grocery shopping done.
And thankfully no other major tragedies have befallen us and here I sit, Monday afternoon, after our internet has been restored, updating you on our crazy, 'one of those' weekend!
How was your Memorial Day weekend? A blessed one, no matter what happened, I hope!
