Fire roasted pizza...at home!

 Tonight was a beautiful night to have supper on the deck... We tried something new--grilled pizza. Dontcha love it when you try something and it turns out amazing the very first time? I sure do! Tonight was one of those nights, so I thought I'd share my inspiration with you because pizza on the grill is definitely a new family tradition at the Amundson's! Here's a little tutorial...  Setup: Start by placing your stone on the cold grill and heating it as you would in the oven: 

(By the way--this is actually an "after" picture since I forgot to take a before one.  This is what your stone will look like after the intense heat and smoke.  I happen to like the rustic charm--but if you're attached to your pretty brown seasoning then you might want to get a separate stone for grilling...) I tried to maintain around 550* on the grill thermometer (the grate and stone were much hotter, I'm sure).  Our infrared grill can exceed 700*--if yours isn't that hot, it should still work, but will take a little longer to cook the pizza. 

 Finally, to give a touch of that smoke-kissed, fire-roasted flavor, I put a couple of wood pieces on.  Our grill is designed for easy smoking, but I figured out how to do it just fine on our old grill, too.  You can put a wood chunk right on the grate--or even right on the flavor bar/briquettes.  I wanted quick smoke/short duration so I didn't soak the wood. 

 Cooking: So, once you have a hot, smoking grill, you cook the pizza very much like you would on a stone.  We did small-ish pizzas for our first attempt since they were easier to manage getting on and off of the stone.

Rather than rolling/shaping the dough, I went for a "rustic" look, so I just stretched the dough by hand.  Most of our pizzas were sort of oval.

Tonight, we did barbeque chicken pizza.  I had previously seasoned/grilled some chicken tenderloins and chopped them.  We added the toppings in this order:  Trader Joe's barbeque sauce, freshly grated mozzarella cheese, bacon, chicken, onions and sweet freezer corn.  After cooking, we drizzled the pizza with a raspberry sauce that I made (which was basically seedless raspberry jam, a splash of balsamic vinegar, touch of oil, and a couple pinches of cayenne pepper). 

 

Mmm...

The options are endless.  We just used a basic homemade crust...

The crust was what made this pizza so amazing.  There's nothing special about my crust--any crust would do (generously coated with cornmeal to prevent sticking).  The crust was crisp and a touch smoky on the bottom, but the top was so soft and bubbled.  It will be hard to make homemade pizza in the oven again!

The pizza only took 5-7 minutes on our grill.  I removed it when it started to brown on the bottom, and the toppings were heated through.  It was very hot off the grill.

Introducing our "little chef":

I'm already planning to get a bigger stone so that we can do this for company.  They sell rectangular stones that would cook 2-3 of these pizzas at once.  I'm picturing "do it yourself" wood-fired pizza. 

Want to come for a pizza party?  :-)

Rochesterfest Parade!

 Our friends at Words Players theatre were kind enough to invite Beth Marie to join them in the Rochesterfest Parade this evening... She was passing out candy, literature and kazoos to advertise their summer productions, "Much Ado About Nothing" and "The Music Man". 

 She made an adorable "band member"...  

Here she is with our sweet friend Kathy:

Look at the happiness on that little face...  She was so honored to have a part in the parade.  :-) And I was a proud Mommy. Can you blame me?  I'm pretty sure she was the cutest little band member in the parade...  ;-)  

What would you do

 if you had an extra toilet sitting around?  I happened to have one, and it seemed fairly obvious to me what should be done with it: 

Welcome to our fire pit:

This is the area down behind our garage where we enjoy cookouts. I just couldn't help myself... Now, I must confess that I wanted to put the toilet by the fire pit for a spare seat. But my husband wouldn't let me. So, we compromised. If you're standing near the fire pit and you turn around, you will see a retaining wall with a picnic area: 

And... a potty:  

I love it.

If it ever stops raining, maybe we'll actually have some cookouts.

And when we do...

I'll enjoy the surprised/confused expressions on my guests' faces when they see my pretty new planter.

Remember this guy?

and remember how I said that everything healed remarkably well and we lived happily ever after?

Well...it wasn't that simple after all.

As if a wretching dog wasn't enough...

Mike decided he needed to add a little drama to our lives last week as well. 

We thought the eye injury was over and done when Mike's eye started to bother him again.

The irritation got worse...and worse...until eventually his eye was all bloodshot and he had tears running down his face.  This was making church and work and pretty much any public life rather awkward.  And while "awkward" is a way of life for me...for a guy who doesn't like to draw attention to himself, Mike doesn't "do" awkward very well.  But more importantly, his eye was sensitive to light and his vision was deteriorating and so we ended up here:

His eye doctor did a thorough examination, some sort of a dye test, and swabbed under his eyelid to be sure there weren't any foreign objects in his eye.  It really wasn't that bad, but if you know Mike, you probably know where this is going...  Yeah, this attendant shows up in the waiting room.  "Mrs. Amundson?  Could you come with me?  Your husband isn't feeling well." I walk into a dark room where Mike is reclining in an exam chair, eyes closed with a cool cloth across his forehead and a glass of water in his hand... That was awkward...  Ha!  ;-) It wasn't that big of a deal--this is nothing unusual for Mike.  But you could tell that Dr. Johnson and the rest of the staff were quite concerned.  Apparently they don't have patients black out in the exam chair every day... There were no foreign objects in his eye after all, and while we're not exactly sure, it appears that he must have scratched his eye when he fell which apparently caused him to gradually develop a sensitivity to his contact lens solution.  At least, that's their theory.  They gave him some medicated eye drops and told him to stay out of contacts as much as possible till he's symptom free. So, he's been to the eye doctor twice last week and once this week.  His eye improves every day and he should recover completely. I feel like we've sorta been in the Twilight Zone the last week or so... We have some fun things planned for the next few days, and I'm looking forward to some "normal" family time again...Lord willing...

 This sweet girl gave us quite a scare... 

Last Tuesday night, at supper time, the dog started vomiting...

Not the kind of vomiting like a dog does when they eat a little grass or something and hack it up...

She vomited her food, and then vomited bile, and then continued to wretch and heave until there was nothing left but drool.  It was awful.  :-(

We cleaned it all up and washed her face and assumed it was a fluke.

But then, she continued to wretch daily for the next 3 days.  It was so strange.  She would be fine for several hours, and then suddenly she would vomit violently all over again.  Finally, Friday morning I took her to the vet first thing. They weren't able to find anything wrong with her.  No parasites, and everything seemed normal when they examined her.  They sent us home for the weekend and said if she didn't improve, they'd have to do more x-rays and scans on Monday.

Meanwhile, I had been cooking her plain rice because it was the only thing she kept down long enough to do any good.  Saturday was probably about the worst.  She finally went off all of her food and water and just laid there.  The sparkle was gone from her eyes and as I stood in the shower that morning I actually let myself wonder if she was going to be okay.

She hadn't had anything to eat or drink the entire day Saturday, so I took out one of her precious Chicken and Sweet Potato dog treats to try to entice her to eat something...

We discovered these treats at Trader Joe's a couple months ago, and they're Gretchen's favorite thing.  We always gave her one when we left her home alone (which is quite a bit in the summer).

She devoured the treat, and I was very thankful.  After eating the treat, she actually showed an interest in some food and water, too, and I was hopeful.  And then...it all came up all over again.

Finally, I started to think back over the last week, and how Gretchen had several Trader Joe's treats on Tuesday...  I thought about how she seemed to be able to keep plain rice down, but vomited everything else, and then it occurred to me that she always got sick within a couple hours of having a treat...  In looking at the ingredients, it would appear that Gretchen developed a sudden and severe allergy to wheat.

(Well, in hindsight, it was probably actually gradual, but the vomiting was very sudden.)

We eliminated all gluten from her diet, and she has been a new dog ever since!

We are SO thankful!

It's amazing how much pets become a part of the family.  Hearing her eating and drinking again is like music to my ears.  The little kibble crumbs that used to drive me crazy in my kitchen are treasured reminders that we still have a teddy bear to cuddle and love.  She is a gift, and I hope she will bring joy to our home for many years to come!

The lost post...

I found a little time to update the blog tonight and I found this long lost post from a couple weeks ago that apparently I never published.  I don't know if I thought it needed tweaking or what, but whatever...   

It used to be when we'd take a trip that we had to plan most everything ahead of time...

We'd print a map to our hotel...

We'd look up area restaurants and print out maps...

We'd look up area attractions and print out maps...

 You get the point. Navigation has changed our lives--especially our travels. (Yeah, we know...  We're technologically delayed.) We've taken a couple road trips lately, and guess what?  Not a single map was printed.  And for the most part, it's been great.  We decide what kind of food we're hungry for, look for the nearest restaurant location, and press the little navigation icon.  And, it guides us right into the parking lot...most of the time. There was one night on our trip when we wanted to visit an outlet center near Wisconsin Dells.  I made the mistake of typing in the name of the store I wanted to visit and the name of the town that we thought the outlet center was in...  Apparently, it didn't recognize the business name so we proceeded to drive 15 miles directly into the middle of main street in Baraboo, WI where it said that we had reached our destination.  Hmm...not exactly what we had in mind.  So, I looked up the outlet center by name instead, but by this time, we were cutting it really close on time.  We raced the 15 miles back to the Interstate and it says, "Your destination is on the right."  And it was.  But the exit was behind us.  Grr!  After all this, we realized that the outlet center was only about a mile from our hotel in the first place.  If we'd just looked at a map, we would have known this... On the way home, it was amusing to drive through construction zones where our route was altered.  Sometimes, our little arrow would be driving around the ditch on the screen.  Another time, there was a highway bypass and the map showed us driving east in the westbound lane.  Strangely, the program never said anything when we went off course.  We decided that the navigation is far too polite for its own good.   We thought it would have been a whole lot more fun if you could choose your "navigation personality".   A hillbilly voice could be like, "Well, I never!  Y'all drove off the road back thar!  Git back on the road before ya get yerself killed, ya hear?" Or, you could have a sarcastic New Yorker, "Uh, excuse me, when did I tell you to leave the road?  Get back on the right side of the road if you prefer to live..." Or, you could have a navigation geek, "We have evidence to suggest that you have driven off course.  In a minority of cases, this can be fatal.  Please proceed back to the proper lane of traffic to ensure safe arrival at your destination." Hard to believe such a thing doesn't already exist...  Maybe there's an app for this that we've not yet discovered. :-) Anyway, speaking of GPS...  This reminds me of a comedy segment we saw awhile back on this subject that's pretty funny and I thought I'd share it:  

 



Homemaker in training

It's so much fun when you have a little girl, and you see her begin to beautify little places with her own personal touches. We had some strong storms approaching the area awhile back, and Beth rushed out in the yard to rescue the last of our spring blooms and she arranged them in the kitchen for me: 

My Dad built her a playhouse a couple of years ago, and while it's always been very special to her, this year I've seen her begin to truly appreciate being able to "make it home".  It's her own space, and I really don't give her any rules or boundaries.  She's free to create and display anything she wants in that space.  She can make as big of a mess as she wants as long as she cleans it up when she's done...and the cleanup is all part of the fun.

She sweeps her floors and drags a bucket of soapy water out to wash her dishes.  I love seeing her rugs "hanging out" on the swingset. 

She makes her way around the yard finding various "greens" to cook with...

Care for salad?



 Most of the decorations in her playhouse are things that I didn't need/want that she's scavenged from around my house: 

Occasionally, she'll invite us over for supper or tea. We're always warmly welcomed: 

If it's chilly outside, there will be a fire in the stove:

 I really like what she's done with the place.  :-) 



When this playhouse arrived in our yard, I really hoped it would be put to good use--especially since it dominates the view from our back windows!  But I can see now that it will not be wasted on Beth Marie.  She loves to have her own little place to entertain friends and have the freedom to develop her own style of homemaking and hospitality.  In the years to come, I can see this little place becoming her own quiet retreat where she and her friends will get away together. 

I'm thinking this loft will hear lots of secrets... 

Hmm.  Scary thought!

Daube's cake

 Awhile back, Mike was given an award at work. I'm always careful because I never really know how much I'm supposed to say about my husband's job...so I guess I'll just say that we have been so thankful to see the Lord direct Mike's career.  Our God has shown us time and again that we are where He wants us to be for this time, and He has placed Mike on a path of blessing in his job.  In times like these, it is such a comfort to know that our heavenly Father is directing our steps and providing for our needs. So, apparently, there were several of Mike's co-workers who challenged him to bring something "better than doughnuts" to work to share.   With Bethany's wedding in recent memory, the first thing that came to my husband's mind was Daube's cake. Beth Marie and I delivered the cake one day shortly after lunch... 

...but we weren't invited to the party, so Mike was nice enough to snap a picture on his cell phone so I at least got to see the cakes.  :-)

 Mmm... Now, I don't know much about my husband's job.  And if I did know something, I probably couldn't tell you anyway...  I've rarely ever wished that I could see him at work, but on that particular day, I did sorta wish I could have been a fly on the wall.  (I would have been a good fly and I would have even tried to stay off the cake...)  I was so excited for Mike and I just kinda wished I could have been invisible so I could have seen him enjoy spoiling his co-workers with Daube's cake.   My only complaint is that they didn't even save me one little sample of the chocolate carrot cake... It must have been good.  :-)    

Wisconsin Dells!

 Many months ago, we promised Elizabeth a trip to a waterpark at Wisconsin Dells... ...and she had not forgotten. Things came up and the trip got postponed, and we figured we had better go before the kids got out of school or the crowds would be overwhelming. Here's Beth Marie and Paddington all packed and ready to go: 

 (If you don't know the story of Paddington...  He arrived at our door one day holding a sign that said, "Please look after this bear" and a note informing us that he wished to come with us on all of our trips...and that he wanted us to be sure to take pictures of him so that he could keep an album of all his travels.  Paddington has already been in several states and seen many things, and so when the time comes for the Amundson's to venture away from home, it's very important that he not be forgotten...because he would be very disappointed.) We arrived in Wisconsin Dells and decided to do some outdoor activities on the first day both because we thought it would be good to give Mike's eye (previous post) an extra day to heal and also because it appeared to be our best weather day of the trip. Our first stop was the Original Wisconsin Ducks: 

Beth Marie and Paddington:



Our tour was full, so Mike got to ride co-pilot:



Dells/Lake Delton:



The site of the breach during the 2008 flood when all of Lake Delton drained into the Wisconsin River:

Bummer I didn't have a blog back then because I would have told you all about how that flood turned into quite a weekend adventure for the Amundson's.  But...  I didn't.

After the Wisconsin Ducks, we went on a horse-drawn wagon tour through the Lost Canyon.  (I would highly recommend this half hour tour by the way--it was fun and very affordable.)

We had a little time to kill before our tour, so we had a look around the place...

They had a nice bridge over a creek.  Mike thought he'd give Beth a closer look:

(This picture was staged, but the look of terror on Elizabeth's face was not. :-)

Can you find Paddington?

This is Beth Marie greeting Bill and Bob:

She adored these horses...

Here's Paddington ready to board the wagon:

Our view of the Canyon:

Our plan worked to perfection because the entire second day was cold and rainy.  But that didn't matter, because we were here:

We spent several hours as a family in the indoor waterparks of the Wilderness Lodge.  Beth Marie made fast friends with a sweet little boy named Reilynn.  I wish I'd have snapped their picture.  (I didn't take a lot of pictures in the waterpark because it was so humid in there that I thought it might be bad for our camera.  That, and it's dangerous to have my husband nearby with a camera while I'm in a bathing suit...)

There were a lot of places you could eat both at the resort and nearby.

We really enjoyed this place:

So, being us, we went there twice.  :-)

The first night, we went for entrees.  I had a creamy chicken pesto, Beth had fetuccine alfredo, and Mike had chicken tikka masala.  All were excellent.

But we figured it was only right to go back and try the deep dish Chicago-style pizza.  So, we did.  :-)  We shared appetizers and a pizza...and the plan was to share a dessert as well.  But, we had no room.  So, if you go, you'll have to try the bread pudding with salty caramel sauce for us and let us know how it was....

Before heading home, Paddington wanted to be sure that we visited the location of the original Culver's in Sauk City:

Culver's has been our favorite burger spot since Beth Marie was only big enough for mashed potatoes...

(Paddington thought the restaurant was pretty nice, but the food wasn't quite as good as our Culver's...)

And, that would be the highlights from our Wisconsin Dells trip...better late than never!