Pizza Stone

We bought a pizza stone from one of Richard's coworkers who was selling Pampered Chef a couple years ago and for some reason I stuck it in a dark corner of the pantry and never used it.  I don't know why I thought about it today, but I felt like using it.  Total success!

I used the pizza dough recipe that only takes a few minutes to make, added some Mids pizza sauce, and asparagus that I grilled for a few minutes:

I topped it with Daiya cheese and prest-o, change-o:  Vegan Pizza!

The pizza stone worked out nicely... I don't think I'll go back to a regular pizza pan.

Meet Spot and Speckle

Meet Spot

Our newest resident of our backyard on Deerfield Lane is Spot.  She's been hanging out for the past 24 hours and we've noticed that she has a large spot on her side.  Is it just a mark?  Was she shot?  We don't know.  She seems to be getting around okay, but we think it's strange that she's hanging around so much.

Pretty Decent Vegan Pizza

I love pizza.  I know Richard *really* loves pizza, but I'm pretty fond of it, too!  I recently discovered that Tofutti makes are good frozen vegan pizza using Daiya cheese, but I can only get it from Mustard Seed, which is a bit far to drive for pizza.

Of course I've made my own pizza using the Pillsbury dough, but I really don't like that "Pillsbury" flavor.  I've avoided making my own dough because I thought it would take a long time.  Then I found this recipe for an instant dough that is pretty good.  It took all of five minutes to make the dough and you don't even have to let it rise.  I made the dough and used Mids pizza sauce and Daiya cheese.  Next time I'll add toppings now that I know that the dough is yummy.  (Most likely zucchini considering how prolific it tends to be in my garden!)

A couple new thingies

After getting our deck redone a couple years ago we've struggled finding just the right furniture.  At first we got some powder-coated metal furniture from Target, which was supposed to be rust-proof, but it collected water in the legs and when you moved the furniture around the rusty water would spill out and stain the deck.  A couple years ago I ran into a couple from Holmes Crafted Furniture selling at the Wayne County Fair and they seemed so nice.  Their furniture was just what I was looking for so about a month ago I placed an order with them.

The furniture comes in a variety of colors and is made from recycled milk jugs.  They can stay out year-round, which is a bonus because we have absolutely nowhere to store it.  We went with the brown color to basically blend in with the rest of the deck.

Here are the cafe-style chairs and tall table:

This is the glider and a side table.  The glider has a center piece that folds down with two cup-holders.

Here's a view from sitting in the glider.  If you face this direction the hill in the back yard is very nice and private.  Lots of critters pass through while you're sitting.

Well, the view from chairs facing the front of the house isn't as peaceful, especially since our oak tree is long gone.  Eventually we'll plant another tree so we can get some of our privacy back (in say, 20 years!).

One other purchase to mention... I have the WORST luck with pepper grinders.  I've gone through about 3 in the past couple of years, but I have to admit fault by continuing to purchase the same model over and over again.  The one I kept breaking matches the sea salt grinder on the left.  It has a lot of movable plastic parts as part of the grinding mechanism, which would easily jam on the pepper corns, breaking off plastic pieces.  The salt seems to work fine, thought.

So, on the right is my newest grinder and I have to say I absolutely love it!  It's made from Oxo, which makes a lot of other kitchen gadgets I really like. On the top you can control the size of the grind, which is a feature I especially like.  I picked mine up at Crate and Barrel, but you can also get it from Amazon.

OXO Good Grips Pepper Grinder

Scout vs. the Kitty Bank

Scout has a habit of sitting on Richard's night stand and knocking off coins to the floor, one by one.  So when I found this kitty bank I had to get it for Richard as part of his 40 gifts for his 40th birthday.  Here is a video of Richard demonstrating the bank, of course using all of the coins out of my purse.  So I guess Richard also got another few bucks out of the deal!

The bank is available at Amazon: Itazura Stealing Coin Cat Piggy Bank - White Kitty and also at Think Geek.