The Baby Steps Blog: January 2011

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Bye Bye Mommy! ♥

Tonight...I am leaving my girlies for my first ever mommy's night out! I know I am going to miss them like crazy, but I guess after almost two years...I deserve some "me" time :)

...and...I'm off! Eeek!

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Home to Me ♥

this song was playing today when I was snuggling with my girls, so I jumped up for a couple quick pics to remember it by!

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Mini Pizzas!

I rant and rave about these pizzas quite often, because I really do LOVE love love them! It's really simple to make a big batch--freeze them, and pop them in the oven when you need a quick lunch! I know I could do regular frozen pizzas, but I try to keep miss Ava's processed foods at the bare minimum, so here's what I do:

http://www.favoritefreezerfoods.com/how-to-make-pizza-dough.html
I got the base recipe from this site, she has lotsss of other great freezing recipes too!

Pizza Dough Recipe (makes 2 medium pizza crusts)OR I do 12-14 mini pizzas!
•2 ½ tsp yeast (or one package)
•1 tsp sugar
•1 cup warm water
•1 tsp salt
•2 ½ cups flour
•1 Tbsp garlic powder
•¼ cup olive oil
I use all these things, but I substitute the flour for whole wheat flour. And I use rapid rise yeast, it rises faster!

•Heat water until it's warm to the touch, but not hot, then add the yeast and sugar. •The yeast will start to foam, I let it sit for about 10 minutes.
•Mix the flour, salt, garlic powder together. Now add the olive oil and the warm water and mix together.
•Mix or knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic, it shouldn't stick to your hands! Form it into a ball
•If it's too sticky, add more flour. Too dry? Add water.
•Lightly coat a bowl with some olive oil and place the ball of dough inside. Cover it with a warm and damp kitchen towel and let it sit for about 45 minutes. It should double in size. Letting it somewhere warm helps it rise faster, but I normally just set mine inside the oven (turned off).
•So once your time is up and your dough has doubled. Uncover it, punch it down to remove the air. Now, preheat your oven. I do 400, her recipe says 500. Whichever you prefer!
•While the oven preheats, I get all my dough ready. I seperate it into about 12-14 mini balls. I then flour up my counter, my rolling pin, and roll each one out.
•Then, once the oven is preheated, I bake them. For probably only 3-5 minutes, they won't take long so just keep an eye on them! I put a little corn meal on my pan so they don't stick.

Then you just basically take them out, let them cool, then top them with your choice of toppings, and freeze! I use ziploc vacuum seal bags. I normally set them in the bag, put them in the freezer for maybe an hr BEFORE I vacuum seal them. It works better in my opinion (otherwise the sauce gets a little messy, lol).

If you're feeling extra crazy, like I was today, you can make your own sauce too. I used this one: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/marinara-sauce-recipe/index.htm

it uses wine, but if you don't want to use that, you can use apple juice, or broth, I've done both juice and wine, both are good!

Then, when you want them, you can just bake them on a cookie sheet. I do 375 degrees for about 15 minutes! Normally on the day I make them, I give Ava one for lunch, I just do them the same way, but instead of putting it in the freezer, I just pop it in the oven when it's still at 400 degrees for about 5 minutes!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

First pic of the new year!

I read this disgusting article/video on all the stuff that gets stuck/dirty in bath toys. Ava didn't even have any of the types of toys in the video--but, it still creeped me out, so we threw out her old toys and got some new ones!