Pizza Night

We were feeling a little cash poor this last weekend (saving up for an upcoming family vacation) and I hadn't been to the grocery store in a while. We love to have pizza as a family, especially on the weekends...so we made pizza! We had enough resources in our pantry and growing in our garden to have quite a feast! We had local grown red onion that we got from the farm we visited this week, we had basil growing in our garden, and plenty of tomatoes to make 100 pizzas.

I've slowly been sneaking more and more wheat flour into my home baked goods and this night was no exception. I made the usual pizza dough, but with half wheat flour. My kids didn't even skip a beat when they were chowing it down.

Pizza Dough

In a bread mixer combine 1 1/4c. water, 3T oil, and 1t. salt.

Add 3 1/2 cups flour. Make a well in the mountain of flour.

Pour 1 T. Instant Yeast into the well and cover with flour. Mix all the ingredients together. It will knead into a ball, let knead for a few minutes. Oil the ball, place in a bowl, and cover it (towel or plastic wrap) letting it rise for at least 1 hour. Pre-heat the oven to 450 (pizza stone should pre-heat inside the oven as well).

This is my pizza making station. I have all my toppings already chopped on the pan in the upper right to make preparation much easier. I also have my pizza sauce from our garden tomatoes, grilled chicken breast, Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (why make your own when there's is truly divine?), my dough mat and rolling pin, and my zero edge pan covered in corn meal.

You can put just about anything you want on a pizza (I've even had pasta and broccoli pizza- yum), but tonight we had garlic tomato, chicken, and cheese pizza, pizza margarita (tomato slices, mozzarella, basil), and BBQ chicken pizza (BBQ sauce, chicken, red onion, cilantro, cheese). Another favorite is BLT pizza- mayo, bacon, cheese, fresh lettuce and tomato (not the healthiest of pizzas, I admit, but very tasty)

After you roll out your dough, transfer it to the corn meal covered pan. Shake the pan to make sure the dough is not sticking. Add your ingredients, shaking the pan after each ingredient is added. As long as your ingredients aren't too heavy or too watery, your pizza should slip nice and easy onto your pizza stone in the oven.

This should make 3 10 inch crusts. So while one is in the oven you can start preparing the next one. After 10 minutes or so, your crust should be crispy and your cheese should have a little brown color on the top. Pizza anyone?

"Field" Trip

Our family visited a local farm last week for a quick little "field" trip. This family lives in a beautiful house on about 15 acres of land. They grow all sorts of fruits and veggies, but what they're known for is their rows and rows of delicious sweet corn.

People used to be able to pick their own corn, but apparently this caused too much damage to their stalks, so the corn is pre-picked and just waiting for you to pick it up. Jeepers was just going crazy over the collection of tractors though.

We brought our corn home and boiled some, grilled some, froze some for later. Did you know that corn has lots of starches (duh, corn starch), but because of this you should eat it or preserve it quickly after picking or it will start molding? Did you also know you can't make popcorn out of regular eating corn? Popcorn has a different shape, moisture content, and more that make it specific to popping. Bummer, that would have been fun.

So, in an effort of learning how to preserve our harvest, we decided to try drying. We boiled the corn for 5 minutes, then dipped in straight into icy cold water. Once it was cool enough to handle, I cute off the corn and it all went in the oven.

After 3-4 hours at 170 degrees, the corn was dry and a little chewy. Four ears of corn only filled half of my quart size jar. We'll have to go to the farm next week to get some more. Next time I make soup or chili with corn, I'm going to use this dried stuff and see how it works. (Of course, I'll let you know!)

Of course, nothing beats fresh picked corn, but it's not always in season. I think next time I'll try a bottling recipe that I just found.

Dehydration

Here in the scorching Arizona summer sun, one thing is most important to avoid- Dehydration. At suburbia farm, however, we are all for the idea! We have been doing some trial and error with dehydrating fruits- strawberries, grapes, bananas, tomatoes, and apples. Here's Jeepers with the Dehydrator layered full of our goodies.

On the left we have strawberries and apples. The apples have been dipped in lemon water to preserve their color. On the right we have bananas dipped in diluted honey and lemon to preserve color and add sweetness. The honey made the bananas oober sticky, but very tasty. These dried beauties are nature's best fruit snacks- it's like a dried fruit salad. They also make a great addition to oatmeal, making a bland breakfast staple full of variety and flavor. I think next time I'll put the bananas in a low temp oven to make them crispy.

Now, the grape/raisins gave us some difficulty. Of course, Jeepers wouldn't stop eating the grapes before I could even get them in the dehydrator. Then, they were taking a long time in the dehydrator, so I put them outside to use up the sun's free energy. The first batch blew away, then the chickens ate the second batch (stinkin' chickens). But we finally got some sun made raisins and let me tell you, they are the most delicious, juicy raisins we've ever had!

We've been growing delicious cherry tomatoes, more than we can eat at once, so I thought we'd try sun dried tomatoes. They also took a long time in the dehydrator and ended up drying outside. I haven't tried them in a recipe yet, but I'm imagining pasta, chicken, and feta with a drizzle of EVOO...?

Yummy fruit snacks!
I tried to dry corn to mimic this amazing salad from Wildflower Bread Company, but it didn't turn out at all. Maybe it would be good in a soup though...I'll keep trying.