Five on Wednesday

1. God bless Costco precooked chicken. One of them feeds my family of four for three nights. Two night of straight chicken eating and a third night of chicken enchiladas or chef salad with chicken or taco soup.

2. Someone asked me the other day, "Where did you adopt your boys from?" It was actually a really refreshing question. Because I've always wondered why most people assume Garrett is biological just because he's Caucasian. And, yeah, sure, the kid looks exactly like me but most people--and all their extended family members plus their mailman--think he's a spitting image of his father who usually isn't with me when adoption questions come up.When I answered, "Well, Garrett is biological and Matthew was born in California," the response was a somewhat surprised, "Oh! Okay." Again, it was just nice that someone realized that just because Garrett is Caucasian doesn't mean he came from my body. Even though, in this case, he did.

3. I started watching that new show Revolution. I have a very strong feeling that I will waste five years of my life on it and then throw something at my television during the finale. Much like I did with Lost. That being said, I have to know why the lights turned off!

4. I really like autumn in Utah. Except for the fact that it's just a pretty transition into winter. And I don't like winter in Utah. December in Utah is fine. But the long, cold months of January, February, March, April and part of May can just fall right off the calendar for all I care. So basically, what I'm saying is that seven months out of the year I'm pretty happy with the weather patterns. I guess it could be worse.

5. I'm trying to buy my kids one fun thing at the grocery store when we go. This is difficult because GOODNESS have you seen the price of food these days? But I don't want my boys to grow up and say things like, "If only my mom had bought us cookies every once in a blue moon." I say no so often. Take today, for example. They wanted canned strawberries. They wanted cheese shaped like Mickey Mouse. They wanted donuts. I said no to all of those. But I bought them Little Debbie Fall cakes. They were pretty excited. One of them pumped his fist, howled, "Yes!" and then followed it up with, "I love you, Mom."

Last week I bought them each a packet of Kool-Aid. My husband informed me that Kool-Aid was a staple for him growing up and that I was probably going to be responsible for my kids growing up maladjusted because I'd never made it. (Just kidding. He totally didn't say that.) We had it as a rare treat but I do remember enjoying it. So I let them each pick a packet. It was the first time, in Garrett's six years of life and Matthew's three, that I'd ever bought Kool-Aid. So I got home, completely under the impression that I added that little packet to some water and called it a fun drink. Then I read the directions.

AND OH MY GOSH DO YOU ALL KNOW THAT YOU HAVE TO ADD AN ENTIRE CUP OF SUGAR TO THAT CRAP? I truly did not know this. So I added way more water than it called for because I do not need those boys hopped up on that much sugar, believe me. And then I had a slight panic attack that I was completely polluting their systems. I mean, their bodies are TEMPLES for crying out loud. But I shook it off and was met with two perfect smiles when that drink hit those tongues.

Although, thankfully, a week later, most of that Kool-Aid is still sitting in the fridge. They simply don't ask for it. And for that there is much rejoicing.

So Good

Confession: I could eat an entire bag of Lay's Kettle Cooked Sea Salt & Cracked Pepper chips.

You wouldn't want to smell my breath when I was finished but that's neither here nor there. The point is that I could.

Thankfully, I have a smidgen of self control.

Our Pizza

Disclaimer: This isn't going to turn in to a recipe blog. I promise. The reasons for this are twofold.

Reason One being that there are 80,000,000,001 cookbooks and recipe blogs out there so the world definitely doesn't need one more. Although I suppose that the same can be said for mommy blogs and mommy memoirs and that hasn't stopped me.

Reason Two being that while I can follow a recipe--as long as it involves fairly basic ingredients--I would never, in a hundred thousand years, define myself as a cook, chef, or culinary expert of any kind. In fact, just the other night I saw a commercial for a Salt Lake cooking competition. That very night I had a terrifying dream in which I had somehow managed to get myself involved with this competition. We were given only four ingredients in which to make an award winning dish. What a nightmare. Just thinking about it gives me hives.

So Ree Drummond I am not. I'm convinced that rancher's wife could make a masterpiece using only basil, flour, barbecue sauce and goat cheese. I have her cookbook. My mom gave it to me for Christmas and we proceeded to trash my kitchen with a fryer chicken, enchilada sauce, beef, noodles, and an assortment of herbs and spices. I'm convinced that you can't cook a Pioneer Woman meal without a great deal of mess. Troy is convinced that her recipes take forever to prepare and clean up so that she has an excuse not to wrangle cattle all the live long day.

So not terribly long ago I went through the cookbook page by page and wrote down all the recipes I wanted to try--someday. There are things in there that I'm never touching with someone else's tongue. Things like Guacamole. Because I remain convinced that avocados are the food of the devil. Another thing I'm never making are the Cheese Grits. Because while Hell may serve guacamole for an afternoon snack, grits are likely on the breakfast menu. Anyway. From time to time I pull out the cookbook and put one of her recipes on my list of things to do that week.

There are a couple recipes that I've flagged that have huge question marks next to them. One of them is Hot Artichoke Dip. I hated artichokes as a kid. So much, in fact, that I haven't touched one since. My friend and her family would annihilate an artichoke in a matter of minutes, sucking the flesh right off and giddily working their way to the heart. It was almost barbaric. But I feel like I haven't given the artichoke a fair shake. Maybe hot artichoke dip is the way to go to reintroduce myself to the perennial thistle. The other question marked recipe is for Potato-Leek Pizza.

I was in Winco a couple week ago and I spied leeks. Or, rather, I spied the little tag identifying something as leeks. There were so many vegetables I'd never seen before, lying all on top of one another like I was interrupting something special, that I couldn't figure out what was whom and which was that. Too self conscious to ask which one was a leek--for fear that this was something I should have learned about in a picture book when I was two--I walked away. I was never actually going to make Potato-Leek Pizza? Was I?

Yesterday I went to WalMart. As I put bananas and apples and grapes and tomatoes into my cart I saw them. Leeks. Leeks upon leeks upon leeks. And I figured, why not?

This prompted the checker to say, "What are these?" And when I informed her she questioned, "What are they used for?" To which I replied that I'd never used them before but I had a recipe that called for them so we'd see what they were all about.

The woman in line behind me supplied, "They're delicious. They are like a really enormous onion." And my stomach sunk. Because I don't like tiny, almost nonexistent onions. You can all point and laugh now. I had no idea that a leek was anything like an onion. Or, if I knew, I blocked that traumatic piece of information right out.

I decided to just go along with this silly endeavor and send Troy out to Little Caesar's if I couldn't choke the end result down. I mean, my firstborn thinks potatoes are the worst invention ever and that wasn't stopping me. Fair is fair. I suppose.

So Garrett helped me make Ree's pizza dough. (Yeah. We're totally not on a first name basis and if I ever met her I would probably look down a lot and stumble over my words and eventually say something about Rocky Mountain Oysters.) Something bad happened with the dough. It didn't really rise. The yeast was not expired so I don't have a clue what happened but I'd be lying if I said that whole "yeast spore in pancake mix killing people all over the place" thing didn't cross my mind. But this wasn't pancake mix. It was starchy, oniony pizza and we were committed. And by we I mean just me. Because I'd apparently gone insane.

My pizza looked nothing (Read: NOT A SINGLE THING) like Ree's. It had way less leek-age. I figured that, what with me being a hater and Garrett, likely, going ballistic that I put potatoes on an otherwise perfect pizza let alone smothered the thing in onions, we'd better just limit those leeks before they went all crazy-like on me. I did recently find out, as in right now, that the leek joins the onion in the Alliaceae family and is, therefore, not exactly an onion but this hardly has any effect on my story. My pizza also didn't have fresh mozzarella. No. It had shredded mozzarella. From a bag. Because that's how I roll. I also abstained from the goat cheese because, well, I didn't have any.

I called my mom and asked which part of the leek to use. She didn't really know but we worked it out together. I decided to cut mine into tiny pieces. She asked me what on earth I was making and, when I explained, asked what my husband and son thought of this little kitchen experiment. I told her they were not privy to this information. They don't have high enough kitchen security clearance to have such knowledge. A takeout pizza was in my future, I explained.

First, I fried bacon. Next, I sauteed the leeks in some of the bacon grease. Then I sliced the potatoes paper thin. I placed the potatoes directly on top of the rolled out dough. No sauce involved. After that, I covered the taters in mozzarella. Then I put the sauteed leeks and the bacon on top. Finally, I topped it all with Parmesan cheese. It looked like this.

Which I actually didn't think looked half bad. Then I baked it for ten minutes.

And it smelled delicious. And we ate it. Potatoes (on pizza no less!), leeks, and all. Troy bit into it and tried to determine what it was. So I spelled it, unwilling to tell the four-year-old that potatoes were involved. "I like it!" declared The Husband.

The Rock Star wolfed his down with somewhat wild abandon. Although, in fairness, he did get a curious look on his face with each bite as he moved it around in his mouth and said, "Something is on this. Something like...eggs." The Little Buddy eventually ate all of his. It's hard to say whether he wasn't a fan of the pizza or was having a coronary over the pair of flies that had snuck into our kitchen. He has a serious fear of flies.

Garrett called his Grandma on the phone and exclaimed, "We just had yummy pizza!" Of course, he never knew it was covered with potatoes.

I thought there was something wrong with the dough. It was heavy and thick when it should have been thin and crispy. The bacon was slightly overcooked. But, overall, I declared it perfectly edible. Maybe, even, a little short on the leeks.