Happ-eeeee

Last weekend, we celebrated the Fourth of July, fireworks, food, family (those with us, those away from us and those above us), and two new additions to Bobby's vocabulary:
Home.
And ...
Happy.

He first said 'home' when we were bike riding on Friday evening. The outing had gone too long for his rumbling tummy and he was getting fussy. He slowly rounded his lips, huffed out an 'h' and drew out the o-o-o-o-o-me. H-o-o-o-me, h-o-o-o-me, home, he said over and over again, proudly confirming that he had conquered the imperative word that meant food, milk, and his cherished owl named Hoo Hoo. 'H-o-o-o-me, Dadda, Dinner.' (Dinner was a newbie too.) So home we went. 

***

Despite his somewhat serious stare at times, Bobby is generally a very easy going, happy, albeit wild little boy. And there are many things that make him extra enthusiastic.

Like birthday parties.

His daddy. And getting too close to touching his 'hot. hot. hot.' grill.

Picnic Food.

Snack Food.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner food.

Treats. And more, more, more treats.

Company and saying cheers to them.

Water. He loves water.

Hugs and squeezes and most of all the tickle machine. He loves being tickled and laughs for the world to hear.

While his smile and giggles have communicated his contentment to me for the past 17 months, he said, 'happy' to me while we were driving in the car last weekend.

I responded, 'Are you happy, Bobby?'

'Happ-eeee, happ-eeee, happ-eeee.' he said, over and over again, because it takes repetition to own that word once and for all. I wondered if he truly understood the emotion associated with it; his smile told me, yes.

While he's been learning a new word or two each day, he's also been tying together the ones he already has into coherent statements.
Hi Mommy.
Hi Daddy.
Bye, bye, Bunny.

Big bear.
My turn.
Show. Show.
My turn.
Wa wa.
My turn.
No, No, No!

Up airplane.
Up moon.
Nigh, nigh.
Nigh, nigh.

Train choo choo.
Truck, beep beep.
Tunnel, echo!
More tunnel, echo!

Donut. Donut. Donut. Donut. (Thank you, Debbie.)

So I'm hoping it's just a matter of time before he'll figure out that happy and home go together. That despite the crazy, uncertain, complicated, and yes, scary world that we live in, home will always provide happiness. Which in today's society is no small task. It's not easy to strip away the stress of the work day, the grief from the headlines, and the uncertainty of what's next. But you have to try.

Keep it alive through date night, summer reading, a morning run, sleep, more sleep, breaks, more breaks, find the comedy and irony in it all (if you can), grasp onto your faith, share your views of hope and above all love everyone in your sphere of influence as much as humanly possible. Because if not from home, if not from your community, where else are the seeds of happiness and love going to come from?

Lo.

Onward to Victory

On Monday night, we had pizza for dinner.

These personalized, prosciutto topped portions were actually supposed to be the finale of a celebratory brew and bake day in honor of Notre Dame's historic 12-0 season on Sunday. However, there was a delay of game.

About three quarters of the way into brewing Peter's Irish Stout, I checked on my blanketed dough. I had kneaded, divided it, shaped it into little balls, and covered them about four hours ago, so by now, they should have been pretty puffy. But they hadn't moved - not even an inch. Each of the little balls looked lazy, lethargic, and stubborn. I got mad at them, opened up the garbage, and threatened to end their existence. But Peter stopped me. He told me to give them a chance - maybe they just needed more time to grow. So I tucked in the little balls of dough for a good night sleep, hoping they would work their magic by morning.    
 
In the meantime, we called in reinforcements from Baldinelli's Pizza in Hinsdale. Pizza was on my mind - pizza was for dinner. It just wasn't as good as the homemade kind, especially at their Hinsdalian price point. 

The next morning, I woke up to the pleasant surprise of expanding dough. And when I got home from work, those little balls had reached a perfect consistency. I had never seen this happen before. Perhaps it had something to do with the aging packet that I drew a 1/4 teaspoon of yeast from, but in the end, against all the odds, those little strains worked. The spotlight was now on me to toss and top the dough, shaping each ball into an edible masterpiece. I went with an unlikely combination of prosciutto, frisee, spicy tomato sauce, jardiniere and mozzarella. The results were back to back wins. And a very happy crowd.

In a way, the delayed satisfaction of this pizza dinner on Monday night was a more fitting way to celebrate the Fighting Irish. All season long, it took a certain formula for them to win - the same kind of formula that Peter and I used to design a winning pizza play. It took outstanding coaching and decision making at critical moments. It took teamwork - even the unlikely kind. It took a will and a determination to get it done. And it took a very patient fan base, who after 23 years can tout their team as not only relevant, but dominant and on their way to the National Championship Game in Miami.

Our Irish household is so proud of this amazing team and their amazing season.
Go Irish, beat the SEC.

Lo. 

Prosciutto Pizza
(Makes four personal pizzas) 

Ingredients:
Pizza Dough
28 ounce can whole tomatoes, crushed with your hands
1/4 cup yellow onion, chopped
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon sugar
Salt
Crushed red pepper
16 slices prosciutto
Several bundles of frisee
3 big balls of fresh mozzarella, sliced 
1/4 cup jardiniere in olive oil  

Directions:
In a medium sauce pan, saute onions and garlic until tender, about three minutes. Add tomatoes in their sauce and seasoning. Let simmer on low heat for 45 minutes or until most of the juice has steamed off. Puree into a smooth sauce using a food processor. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Place a pizza stone in the oven and heat through.

Spread out a ball of dough and assemble your pizza. Sauce first, then about four prosciutto slices, then frisee, then mozzarella, and top with jardiniere. Use some of the olive oil in the jar and brush the edges of the crust.

Place pizza on stone and bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. Repeat this process with the remaining balls of dough.

Pizza, Beer, and Boobs

It was an innocent mistake.
She was only two - she didn't know better.
I won't cry.
There's no crying in the kitchen. 
It's okay.
Think of something to say in response.

The last night we were in Montana, we went to a great restaurant in Bozeman called Blackbird. It was simple Mediterranean fare, with an emphasis on wood-fired pizzas. As we sat at the bar, overlooking the kitchen and its central hearth, we witnessed the prep work, process, and waltz of chefs and servers moving through a galley kitchen, from station to station to assemble pizzas, toss salads, pour beverages, and top cobblers with house made ice cream. While sitting, sipping, and drooling in anticipation of our own dinner to arrive, we added new ideas to our dream gastropub concept, built on the Brewer's beer and the Bee's food. Pizza started playing a larger and more prominent role in the epicurean fantasy.

So this weekend, we did a little menu testing and invited Bill and Meghan along with their adorable daughters over for grill-fired pizza. I made four varieties: a Nicoise, a Margherita, one with smoked Italian sausage, mushrooms and herbed goat cheese, and one with smoked shrimp, jalapenos and mozzarella. Peter's Kolsch was on tap and later in the evening there was a vertical Dogfish Head tasting, starting with a 2008 and ending with a 2012. 

It was a lovely afternoon and evening in our yard, on our porch, and around our new Bavarian table. Beyond the fun though, I learned a thing or two about the kind of prep work, process, and waltzing that could serve us and potentially you well someday.

1. Prep work should start and end before the Brewer flips over the sign to read, 'Open.'

2. Sausage stuffed jalapenos should never be served as an appetizer to the chef responsible for removing the pizza from the oven. The mind numbing spiciness is bound to throw off his timing and  lead to burnt pizza.

3. As functional as the grill is, I want a baking hearth in my yard. And in my restaurant.

4. Dessert will be made in house too and there will be three daily: the cupcake du jour, the cobbler du jour, and the Brewer's float du jour. 

5. And most importantly, there will never be crying in my kitchen. (Only laughing.) Not when the Brewer refuses to listen to timing instructions, not when the Shun misses the tomato and does a clean slice of one's index finger, and not even when a young customer confuses your chest for a baby bump. Okay, the conversation went something like this.

'You're going to have a baby like my Mom.'
'I hope so.'
'I think you have one in there.'
[She reaches up and points to my boobs.]
'Uh ... no.'
'Oh, are those your boobs?'
[There was astonished, shocked, almost scared look in her little eyes.]
'Ummm, yes. And there's not a baby in there.'

Thankfully, I was too embarrassed to cry. And I laughed as a million thoughts started racing through my head. Like, why did I ever ask our 300 pound real estate agent how much she weighed when I was four? This was obviously payback. Where in the world did my bizarre gene mutation come from? Why am I the only person in La Grange without an A cup? And oh lord, if I open a pizzeria some day,  I'm going to turn into Nona Italia or worse, the image of one of those ancient art history Earth mothers with the most exaggerated curves, padded by years of eating too much olive oil brushed crust.

Then I developed tenet #6. We will have a closed kitchen, so customers can focus on the pizza and beer and not on the purveyor's boobs. 

There's more to this story, but I'll save it for another day.

Lo.

Pesto Pizza Please

It has been a week colored with closed conversations - passionate offline dialogue that isn't ready for the public's attention. So as a blogger with too much to say, but under the guidance to hold off for now, what to do?

I'm guessing, just talk about the other things that happened this week, which for us, of course centered on food. That and the many hours I have spent watering the garden.

It has been a remarkable summer in Chicago so far - remarkable in that the heat indexes have consistently soared above 100 degrees, the humidity makes the neighborhood feel like a sauna, and we have reached drought status. We've only seen about an inch of rain in the last 30 days. The lawns are scorched, except for my neighbor down the block who must have a permit to produce a rain forest climate in his yard. The hostas, hydrangeas and lilies around the block have browned. And there are trees that are already changing color and losing their leaves.

While I let our grass go an au naturale brown, I refused to give up on the garden. I had worked so hard on it at the beginning of the summer, and I was determined to make it thrive. I've probably spent a good 40 hours alone watering plants - a labor of love, dedicated Double G and Dad, my gardening role models. But it has worked. This week, the tomato and butternut squash vines started showing more and more young fruit, I harvested the first round of jalapenos, the herbs got fuller and fuller, and the flower beds showed bigger, brighter colors. I felt like I could finally say that I had traded in my dirty thumbs for green thumbs. (And I was pretty proud.)

On Tuesday we added the jalapenos to the beef kebobs. And last night, I gathered basil, Italian parsley and a little bit of mint to make pesto for the first time this year. 

We used it as a base for one of the pizzas we made. On top of it, we stacked shrimp, sun dried tomatoes, and goat cheese. Then as we've been doing a lot this summer, we took the cooking outside. We baked the pizza at 525 degrees in the gas grill, which resulted in the best crust yet. Airy and a little bit chewy on the inside, crisp on the bottom and around the edges.

(This photo was taken about 10 minutes into baking, we let it bake another 5.) 

The next best thing besides food to keep your mind off of things is traveling. So I'm off to Park City for my first blogger conference. Now this should be interesting ...

Lo.

Pizza Dough

3 1/3 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon yeast
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 cups luke warm water

Mix together flour, yeast, and salt. Add water and stir until shaggy. Using your hands, bring dough together until it just forms a ball. Cover it and let is rest for 10-15 minutes.

Take dough out of the bowl and knead for 5-8 minutes, until smooth and supple. Do not add extra dough - use a dough scraper if need be.

Using the dough scraper, divide the dough into four equal pieces. Roll each into a ball. Then one at a time, roll each ball of dough up like a carpet, then turnover and seam side down, roll up again, and then one more time. Mold the dough into a tight ball from there, roll in flour and set on a tray. Repeat this folding and rolling process with the remaining balls. Cover the dough, and let rise for 5 to 6 hours.

When finished rising, either heat grill or oven to 500 - 525 degrees. (I can never get my oven hot enough.) Top pizza with desired toppings. Tonight we went traditional: Garlicky roasted tomato sauce (roast garlic, shallots, tomatoes with juice, salt and pepper in 2 tablespoons butter for 30 minutes), pepperoni, mozzarella. And gourmet: pesto, roasted red peppers, shrimp and goat cheese. And bake for 15 -18 minutes.
 
**Tips**

* For this dough recipe, you really do have to wait 5 or 6 hours, don't skimp because that rising period adds so much air and dimension to the dough.

* Using the grill made the best pizza crust yet - we cranked it all the way up to 525 degrees. If you have an outdoor oven you will get the same effect, but in my experience, using our indoor oven hasn't cooked the crust as evenly as possible.

* Brush the edge of the crust with olive oil - it gives the crust a nice brown color and makes it taste even better.

Dirty Thumbs

There are green thumbs on both sides of my family. Double G was an avid vegetable gardener, in essence, producing a yield to feed a family of ten. And my Dad has tamed, planted, and tended a half an acre arboretum of a yard, filled with perennials and annuals that my Mom doesn't even know the names of. So, I'm thinking the genetic probability that I inherited some verdant digits is pretty high.

However, when it comes to gardening, some might argue that it's not so much nature that determines your capability to grow, it's the way you were nurtured. And luckily, I have some of that going for me as well.

Every year, I got lessons from Double G in tomato planting, zucchini growing, and asparagus harvesting. And applied them to the small vegetable garden that my Dad cornered off for me. My Big Boys were never as big, juicy and plentiful as Grandpa's, but they seemed to improve each season. I also received annual lessons from my Dad on the floral side of gardening - how to turn over the soil and prep it for planting, how to perfectly space Impatiens, how to prune and trim the perennials, and how to patiently water each bed until their thirst was quenched.


When we moved, I had given thought to the amount of work it would take to renovate the house. There were priorities: The chimney, exterior facade, asbestos tile to cover. And long term projects: the bathroom remodel, champagne room build-out, replacement of windows and doors. What I failed to factor in though, was the yard. I failed to do a diligent surveillance of exactly what was out there and what kind of man power it would take to tame it.

For the past couple weeks, I feel like I've been playing Secret Garden at my house, bringing a plot of land, neglected for a decade or more, back to life based on what is wick and what is not. My evening hours have been dedicated to yanking and digging up the root systems of Jurassic weeds, figuring out where one lethal bush ends and the other ones begin, waging the battle of the green ivy, and cursing the laziness of my neighbors who apparently don't garden and instead hire western suburban labor to do everything for them.

I have scratches up my legs, pollen swimming in my nasal passages, and dirt embedded in my nails.  I've tried to scrub it out with the nail brush, but it won't budge. My weed war has produced a new form of irritability in me. And unfortunately for Peter, dinner keeps getting later and later. You could have rounded up to 9:00 PM this week. There is always one more monstrous weed to pull - one more 10-foot (yes, 10 foot) poke weed to murder with my trusty shovel.

However, in gardening, there tends to be a wonderful reward on the other side of your labor. The beauty and bounty that you have produced with your own hands can be mesmerizing. Bed by bed, I've been able to celebrate my progress, and as I surveyed it on Wednesday evening, the little girl next door told me that I had done a beautiful job.
'Well it was a lot of hard work,' I scoffed.
'It was worth it though.'
Ah, how wise that one is.  

My verified green thumb is yet to be determined, but I believe, given my perpetually dirty hands, that I'm on the right track. Double G always used to have a little dirt under his nails - a sure sign that he had been tilling and toiling in the garden. Perhaps, the soiled-hand look - the one that comes from people who like to get their hands dirty, and can't help but get them dirtier the minute after they've cleaned up - is the first step to fulfilling my green DNA.

Off to say good morning to the yard and to give my vegetables, herbs and flowers a drink. 

Lo.