Summer Pizza

It’s been a long time since I put up any food/cooking posts and two years since I last did a homemade pizza post. I make pizza from scratch every week. It’s fantastic.😊 On a whim I’m calling this one I made for lunch today Summer Pizza; it’s got summer ingredients and a bit of heat. I won’t go through the whole step-by-step on how I made this but I’ll tell you what’s on it. I know not everybody wants to use the oven at the end of July but I don’t mind; it’s only on about 15 minutes & I get a feast for my trouble.

I make a combined whole wheat flour & white flour dough, roughly 2/3 to 1/3, with yeast, water & a very modest amount of canola oil. That’s it. It’s in the 90’s outside today and not much cooler in the kitchen, so that dough rose fast!

Toppings: a dash of olive oil, a few small pieces of sliced, sharp cheddar cheese, fresh chopped tomatoes, thin sliced red onion, halved black olives, fresh Basil, diced jalapenos, and salt-free Chili powder. The only salt is whatever salt is in the cheese but it’s not needed.

The key when making a pizza with wet ingredients like chopped tomatoes, is to bake the crust with the olive oil on it for about 5 minutes before adding the vegetables. This forms a “base” so that the moisture doesn’t penetrate the crust & make it soggy. You just have to remember not to bake it the full amount of time after adding toppings (about 10 minutes).

Was it good? OH-MY-GOD.

 

Short Thought #274

Remember the good old days when we worried about suspicious packages and lettuce recalls?

Don’t pick the broken one

I’ve written about an issue of mine dating back to childhood, related to what I deserve, or more pointedly what I believe I deserve.  I’ve gotten into this before, as I say, and I’m not going to totally rehash it now but the gist of it is I’ve been really thinking hard for many years about this issue – what do I deserve – and trying to correct its negative effects in my life.

I have not always thought I deserved a lot, or even much at all, in several areas of my life. It’s not a happy thing to discover this about one’s self let alone admit it, but as with other topics, I’m more inclined to share AFTER I’ve figured a bunch of stuff out. I need to process things alone.

In a book by Dr. Phil McGraw, aka Dr. Phil, whose title I don’t remember but would find if anyone is desperate to know it, he writes about choosing someone to be in your life, and says words to the effect that the first rule of choosing anything is don’t pick the broken one. That’s obvious right? Most of us would understand that as a reasonable truism. But the reality is, especially for women, that a lot of us DO pick the broken one, especially when it comes to choosing a person to be in our life.

Until I read it put that way, so directly with no namby-pambying around, I would never have thought about it in such hard terms. Lots and lots of people are broken in some way. Many women don’t think they deserve better and/or think they’re going to fix the broken person. Haha! I am in a position to scoff, having finally learned that no one “fixes” another adult. Love is NOT a cureall. Certainly not for major personality or character disorders in other people.😐

Let’s shift gears and look at this another way. The (semi) autobiographical movie, The Homecoming ( pre-cursor to the TV show The Waltons), Earl Hamner’s tale set at Christmas in depression-era rural Virginia, features a scene that had an impact on me. The many kids in the big family have gone to a church where missionaries are giving out presents. The youngest girl is delighted to get a gift, a wrapped baby doll. However, the doll’s face has a big crack in it, and the kids are disgusted and leave, dropping the doll on the ground as they do so. See, in the same position I would not have abandoned that doll. Oh no. I would have taken it home and kept it. Maybe I would have tried to use glue or tape to fix the crack. Whatever. It would not have occurred to me to throw it away nor would I have thought I was allowed to toss it out. A doll is a doll I would have thought, a gift a gift, even it’s a bit messed up.😕

I have a long history of trying to “make things work” no matter how shabby or defunct or defective or pitiful. I know where this comes from and the more important thing now, at this point in life, is simply recognizing it. Nobody but me will ever set the standard for what I deserve, for what is good enough and what is not, be it in things or situations or in people.

For instance when I meet someone now, man or woman, and they seem a bit messed up? I can be civil, even somewhat friendly, but there is no welcome mat into my larger life. You got yourself “a little drinking problem”? You lose your temper on a regular basis? You lie or obscure the truth? You have lots of legal troubles? Not for me.

I shop regularly on Amazon for many things and it’s really in the last couple years that I’ve gotten more into it. It may seem odd but it’s actually the impetus for this post. Now with the pandemic it’s been all the more important since I’m staying out of stores. Anyway, Amazon has been a training ground for me in terms of forcing me to confront what I think I deserve. I regularly send things back or ask for a refund for anything substandard. The “old me” wouldn’t have or not nearly as much. I would have “made it work” or settled for less than I expected. And this is a little embarassing, but I’d have done that so I didn’t bother them.😢 Or annoy them. Yep bother or annoy AMAZON. Sad but true. However, each time they sent me crap, crap I considered keeping, I gave myself a little talk. Would you select this pair of shoes that are scuffed up if you saw them on a shelf? Would you take this browning head of lettuce home from a grocery store? Would you be willing to re-glue a brand new pair of earrings? Why should you do any of these things and many others? (Note that as someone who routinely finds stuff others have cast off & takes them home to fix up, I’m not talking about that at all, which I do willingly and enjoy.)

I have felt like I’ve been tested. Tested & tested. You may have heard the idea that anytime you make an important or momentous decision about implementing a change, the universe will test you to see if you mean it. I do think I’ve had many opportunities to examine and investigate what I deserve in a variety of scenarios, perhaps a few more than was called for! Still, until it’s not even something I (have to) think about, I expect I’ll be challenged. IT HAS GOTTEN EASIER. Which tells me real progress has been made.

Summer signs

OUTSIDE

INSIDE

Short Thought #273

In my time I cannot think of a lower profile “First Child” than the President’s youngest son, Barron. Fess up, sometimes you forget he exists, right?