The Stressed... Make Pizza

I don't know about you, but when I'm stressed, I cook. Some people watch HGTV, iron shoe laces, color their hair, fold laundry, go for a run, yell at their kids... Me, I bang around in the kitchen. Along with playing the piano, it's my release. But seeing as I don't yet have a piano at Freeman House, cooking it is.

Let. There. Be. Food.

With this week being what it is, I've been itching to crawl into the kitchen and stay there. So tonight, after a meeting, then another meeting, then a business call, I hit the stove. I was hungry for pizza, but determined to stick with my diet. Lotsaluck, I thought, consulting my mother's old recipe for pizza dough.

But by George, Bess, and Sally... I did it. By 8 p.m. I was munching on a half- whole wheat flour and flax seed dough, topped with fresh-from-the-garden carmelized onions, garlic, and fennel. (Of course, I have the gal over at Farmgirl Fare to thank for the topping ideas.) The sauce and cheese were just bonus. It was toe-curling yummy. (And this coming from the girl who previously viewed anything aside from Meat Lover's pizza as a waste of time and calories.)

Of course, fresh herbs always help. I'm growing 19 herbs at Freeman House this year. One is a creeping oregano, which I'm convinced made that health-nut pizza taste not healthy at all. (Here's what the herb looked like, prior to its planting and creeping. I cheated and skipped starting it from seed. Besides rosemary, I grow everything from seed. It's cheaper and I still get a kick out of watching seeds sprout. Must have missed that seed-in-a-cup day in kindergarten or something.)

So... in non-pizza related news, the kid brother is doing better. We hope. He has a surgery tentatively scheduled for tomorrow. Apparently there's a little internal bleeding that is of some concern to doctors and major concern to us. I'm headed to his bedside tomorrow. I was thinking of dressing his Texas Ranger bobbleheads in Barbie clothes and having them sing to him. Or dressing up like Tom Hanks and reenacting scenes from A League of Their Own, yelling, "There's no crying in baseball!". Oooh... The Sandlot would be cool, too. Or something. Hopefully between now and then I'll think of something brilliant...

In the meantime, I'm scampering off to bed. Can you believe it is MARCH FIRST already? How did that happen? Just thinking of the rise and fall of February 2007 makes me ...

...makes me...

...makes me want to make another pizza.

[Smile]