Double Digits

J turned 10 on Sunday. We had scheduled a slumber party over break but the flu canceled it. Since his party was canceled, he requested green egg pizza for this birthday. No way I could say no to that.

I got up early to get started in the kitchen.

First up, pizza dough for 14. I wasn't sure how much I had made the last time we made pizza for a crowd. I ended up with 3 double batches of dough.


It ended up that SIL & family were sick so we only made pizza for 11. I had 13 individual balls of dough left over. Two double batches would have been fine either way. I need to remember that for next time.

After dough was left to rise, I churned a batch of chocolate almond ice cream. I made the vanilla ice cream the night before.

Finally, I started on the vanilla-vanilla cake he requested. I picked a recipe that I tore out of the December Southern Living magazine, mostly because it called for whipped egg whites and I would get to use my copper bowl.






I put some thought into the pizza making process. I used a couple of cookie sheets that have no lip plus some parchment paper so I could have 5-6 piece of dough pre-rolled. I bought more corn meal and used it liberally to stop the dough from sticking. DH got a wooden pizza peel for Christmas that greatly improved the process of getting the pizza off the grill.


Over all, it was much less hectic than our last pizza party.

J got cash for his birthday. We went to the Apple store on New Year's Eve and he purchased a new iPod touch. He's hardly put it down since he got it.

A Big Birthday

My baby sister (S#5, Mims, Mimi, Mairz, Mary, etc) turned 30 yesterday. I remember the day well. My sister woke me up that Saturday morning to let me know Mom went to have the baby. Mrs. Schaffler was going to take me to my soccer game. About halfway through the game, they pulled me out and told me that I had a baby sister. I said something to the effect of, "Great, but you could have yelled it from the sidelines, you didn't have to take me out of the game."

I can't imagine what our lives would be like without our Mims. She wasn't planning on celebrating, just another birthday, just another day. We couldn't let her do that, so we had a birthday dinner for her.

Here she is leaving a message for S#1 thanking her for her chocolates. She is now old enough to get a fancy box of caramels and could deny all children a piece of candy, because they are too precious for children.  She's holding the lamb pillow we gave her. Her nickname as a preschooler was "Mary had a Little Lamb" and she still gets lamb/sheep stuff. Our mother loves collections!


For dinner we made green egg pizza. I decided to pre-roll the dough. I used every single sheet pan I own.


It worked okay for the most part, but I was running low on corn meal and was stingy. It's not good to be stingy with cornmeal when your pre-rolling pizza dough. I learned that lesson and we worked around it. We also learned that the $10 pizza stone from the grocery store won't make it through two sessions of pizza making. At least, the break left about 2/3 of the stone intact and we were still able to finish cooking the pizzas. Now, I know what to get DH for Christmas this year, that and a pizza peel.




Everyone had fun making and eating their pizzas. The kids and DH ate the regular stuff: sausage, pepperoni, bacon, mushrooms, onions, and cheese. The women had fancy ingredients, prosciutto and arugula. Yum!




I debated making a cake for her. There is another celebration planned for Friday, so I decided, cake for Friday, ice cream for the actual birthday dessert.


It was delicious!

It was a great celebration of 30 years of Mary. Here's to another 30!

green egg pizza

DH said he wanted to use the green egg for dinner tonight. The kids voted for pizza. We weren't sure what we were doing but we gave it a go.






It was a lot of work but well worth it. YUM!