Easily Distracted

The phone rang the other night just as I was starting to make David a tiny little pizza for dinner. We rarely use that household appliance - it's always a little discombobulating when it starts making that noise it makes.

Much to my surprise, it was my good friends G Money and Super Crafty serenading me with "IIIIII'm coming up so you better get this party started..." See, they're coming to visit next week and thought it would be a good idea to actually speak on the telephone appliance machine, which turns out to be handy in these situations.

I was excited to chat with them and went about making David's pizza while enjoying a lively conversation, talking about all the things we might do while they're in town.

By the time I hung up the phone, the pizza was in the oven and I was cleaning up the kitchen. I kept thinking there was something I'd forgotten.... Hmm... what could it be....

Pizza sauce.

I'd just made a nice pan of cheesy bread with pepperoni on it. Cheese I could see through the oven window was all melted and way beyond catching to fix my mistake, and that was the last crust. I could have scraped it off and started over... but that seemed like SO MUCH WORK.

Wondering how I was going to fix this blunder, I skipped into the front room and explained to David that he was about to enjoy a very satisfying festival of cheese with the spicy kick of pepperoni and who in the world wouldn't love that!? My grandmother used to nick the cheesy bread from Sizzler all the time! He gave me a weird look.

I found the pizza sauce and doctored it to make a thick, tasty dipping accompaniment. If Little Caesar's can do it, anyone can.

When the pepperoni cheese bread was done, I sliced it into narrow, dip-able pieces and assembled it on a large plate around the ramekin of sauce - it looked like a perfect pub snack.

I brought it into David and said, "Hey, check out THIS fun dinner!" I thought he'd be kinda peeved but he busted out laughing. He loved it. This is when I love his inner teenage gamer side.

Shiny and Cheesy

I'm not sure what day it is - the weekend went by in a blur. Saturday was spent running errands where each store seemed to hold us hostage, keeping us from getting home to relax.

In CompUSA (compoohsah) I found a handy gadget for my laptop and then I lost David. Looked all over that damn store and he was gone. Whenever this happens I think, This is it, he's been kidnapped by super secret top agents who go looking for game designers with programming and Flash skills. I'll spend the rest of my life searching for him and my story will end up on Lifetime, re-enacted by Jo Beth Williams.

It did become frightening because that store (in Emeryville) isn't very big, not like losing someone in a Costco where if that happened, you'd have to make fliers to post on the registers. Of course I found him, but then it was off to the next stop where again, it all seemed to take too long.

Today I took a drive out to Walnut Creek to a jewelry store looking for The Band for The Day of The Event. The band I thought I wanted didn't work at all, but we just happened to be at a case full of very sparkly shiny things, natch, and the manager spotted something he thought I should look at. Blam. Sold.

After that I took a mini road trip to San Jose to see if the parental units were back from their trip to Antarctica. Had a nice chat and soon it was time to head back up the highway. But first... a stop to pick up dinner. Frankie Johnny & Luigi's was kind enough to make me one of their delicious pizzas to take home to bake.

Got the pizza home after stopping at Home Depot for a giant terra cotta saucer - a $7 pizza stone. And you don't have to use it just for pizza. Just having it in your oven when you bake helps maintain a constant temperature.

And it's true that you can do anything when you have the right tools. I do not have the right tools for pizza baking. The $7 stone - great - if the pizza had fit on it -- but first I had to get the doughy pie out of the cardboard box. Had I been thinkin Ida told them to put it on top of a sheet of foil. Live & learn.

Finally got the bastard out of the box & onto a large cutting board & shimmied it onto the oven rack. It smelled divine - FJ&L's crust is fantastic. When it was done cooking I took out the entire oven rack with the pizza on it - easy enough, right? No.

I tried to get that thing off the rack and of course it stuck just a little in all the wrong places. One half was successfully rescued while the other half separated into a glop of doughy cheese and pepperoni in the center and perfectly baked crust at the edge. Whatever. I like the crusty end better anyway.