Day Fourteen: Pizza Night

 This was our second Saturday night of home cook challenge, and we would normally have gone out to dinner somewhere fun.  The beat the doldrums, we had some friends come over for dinner.  Tricia, Mike, and their son Trip recently moved into our neighborhood.  I grew up going to church with Tricia, but we haven't seen each other much since leaving for college years ago.  Their son is four months younger than ours, and we were eager to see if the boys would play together.

Since we were going to be herding toddlers all night, we figured it would be best to keep the cooking easy and family-friendly.  Pizza it is!
I was excited about this because it would be a lot less expensive than Mike's usual plans that involve copious amounts of steak.  I was so happy I even agreed to let Mike do the grocery shopping.  Things were going well.

Then Mike got home from the store.  I suspected trouble when I saw him toting eight grocery bags.  When I unpacked the bags, I was shocked.  I shouldn't have been shocked.  He does this every time.  This is the reason I don't allow him to do the grocery shopping.  Mike had bought enough groceries for us to open our own pizza store.  Why buy a bag of cheese, when you can buy three jumbo bags? Why buy one can of pizza sauce, when you can buy four!?  Argh!
Despite the overload on supplies, we ended up having a great night.  We got all the toppings ready in advance.

I made the pizza dough using the Pronto Pizza Dough recipe from Sassafras.  This was my first try at making pizza dough, and I was surprised how fun and easy it was.  Mike showed me a recipe from one of his grilling cookbooks that required the dough to be made 10 hours in advance.  Ha!  My quick Sassafras recipe only required 45 minutes to rise, and making the dough took about 5 minutes.  I'll definitely be doing this one again!

Plus, I love it when I get to use my rolling pin.  Jack liked playing with the rolling pin, too.
We made two pizza crusts, and it took us a while to decide how to decorate the pizzas.  Ultimately, we decided it would work best if we made a pizza for the girls and kids, and one for the men.  Jack and Trip liked putting the cheese on top.

As you no doubt already guessed, the men loaded their pizza with every meat they could find.

Mike and Mike (yep... it made things confusing), stepped on the deck to grill the pizzas.  Tricia and I stayed inside and played with the boys, who were more taken with their mothers than with each other.

When dinner was ready we were able to all sit down together and enjoy pizza and salad.  Jack is a big fan of the salad serving pieces.  He doesn't like lettuce or spinach, but he associates salad with good things (croutons, Craisins, almonds). 

Trip did a good job banging on the high chair, which inspired a little dinner-time drum recital from Jack, too.

After dinner the men did their best to be bridge the gap between football-watchers and attentive daddies.  Here they are hovering in the doorway between the hearth room, where football was on t.v., and the living room, where the boys were playing with their toys.

Tricia brought these amazing chocolate cupcakes that were the perfect ending to our meal.  These are another Sassafras recipe, and proof that everything in that cookbook is good!

We had a fun, laid back night.  This is about as exciting as our Saturday nights get, and we're good with that.  Kids playing on the floor, football on t.v., beer in hand, pizza on the grill, and great company.  We call that a good night!