Blessed

Shannon
2 weeks from tomorrow til I see your lovely face and drink tea in my favourite kitchen (no matter how it looks)! I foresee a madeline baking in my near future... X!


5 hours ago ·  ·  · See Friendship



This is a Facebook message from Shannon who, as you can surmise, is coming from South Africa to visit in 2 weeks.  I can hardly wait to hug her, hold her, bake madeleines and do what she pleases in the 3 days I'll have her home!

What is less endearing about this time is that, due to circumstances out of my control, I'm having to sell my house and eventually move.  It is one of those times in my life when I get out of bed in the morning and do what I have to do to get through what feels like is another crisis.

Only, I have the most stellar friends in the whole wide world helping me, again, and I don't know what I'd do without their counsel, help {physical and emotional}, support and love.  You should have seen my house bustling with my friends and Susannah pitching in this past week, and they all have such busy lives. I am humbled beyond words.  And I am so blessed.  I was describing this pure Grace to my mother who then said :: "I hope you're thanking God!"  To which my answer was :: "Oh, yes I am!"

I am on my knees.

As far as my blog and my creativity....it's slowing down out of necessity for now.  It's impossible to get creative juices going to sew, craft, cook, or whatever when you have the responsibility of a move from a home you've lived in for 29 years, raised 3 children in, truly lived very busy lives to the fullest in and have accumulated too much stuff to sort through and pack.  Period.  I hope that in a few weeks, when the dust settles, I can devote the time again.

'til then... XO

Pizza on the grill

Yep, you heard right – pizza cooked outside, directly on the gas grill grids, no stone or cookie sheet.  Let me tell you, it’s fabulous, delicious and a different social thing to do with family or when you have friends over.  By some miracle, the crust doesn't stick!  Last night was the 6^th time I’ve done it; the crust was perfectly crisp and the toppings gooey and melty and flavourful and simply the yummiest!

I’ve discovered Fleishmann’s Pizza Crust Fast and Easy yeast.   I’ve been using the recipe on the pouch at the back, starting with one cup of all purpose flour, and then adding the yeast, salt, sugar, oil and warm water.  I mix it up quickly and add enough flour so that it’s not sticky.  Then I knead it for a couple of minutes.  This is where I detour from the pouch recipe {which is not necessary, but I'm having better results doing this the last 2 times.}  I divide the dough into 2 balls per recipe, and let them rise for an hour in a floured mixing bowl with plastic wrap over and a towel to keep it draft free.  Then it goes in a warm place until it’s time to have the fun.

The toppings take a while to assemble.  Decide on a base sauce – a tomato base or a pesto base…last night my friend just brushed olive oil on hers, which was simple but looked really good too. Caramelized onions are something that hands down, simply make a yummy pizza, and lots of garlic too – so I definitely have those as a topping.  Sometimes I lightly cook mushrooms, other times I have them sliced and raw.  Gosh – really it’s whatever floats your boat.  I’m not much of a meat eater, so shrimp or prosciutto or chicken - that would be up to you.  Here are some ideas:  olives, buffalo mozzarella, artichoke hearts, roasted red peppers, torn fresh basil leaves, shredded cheese.

When you’re almost ready to cook, it's time to take the dough and flatten it out into personal pizzas.  I get 2 out of each pouch of yeast/recipe.  They are bigger than a dinner plate, so about 12 inches I’d say.  You’ll know how big to make them as you can’t make holes in the dough by stretching it too much {or else you’ll have a difficult time – that’s why!}  Place each ‘pizza’ on a plate or cookie sheet, and brush the top with oil.  This will be the side that you put face down towards the flame on the grill.

When the grill is ready {last night it was set on low, said 500°F and was perfect}, carefully turn the blank pizzas over onto the grill.  They may lose their shape. Yep, that’s just the way it goes.  With grilled pizza, they aren’t all round, and you just gotta get over it!  Close the top of the grill but don’t go away!  Peek in after 5 mins and lift up a corner.  You definitely don’t want to char your pizza at this point.  When it’s nicely browned, use a spatula – a nice big one really does help  – transfer to a plate and you’re ready to put the toppings on.  If you’re making more than 2, go ahead and start the other pizza’s on the grill.

Sauce goes on the cooked side, then cheeses and then toppings.  When the grill is  ready for these to cook, using your spatula, transfer them, close the lid and bake for about 5 to 10 minutes.  It varies, but do watch like a hawk.  

Your family and guests will have their own ideas of how to do it, and how much they like to pile on, and this is definitely the fun for them.  I love watching them enjoy the novelty of making their dinner....and then eating the results. 

I just remembered this!
                                 - have yeast will travel!


Last year I took some pizza yeast with me to South Africa when I knew I'd be staying in a self catering B&B with Shannon, my daughter.  We were in the gorgeous Golden Gate National Park's traditional Basotho village, staying in a little mud hut, and having a blast waking up to a host of zebra grazing down below us on a verdant pasture.  One night we had delicious pizzas, cooked over the coals that Shannon artfully prepared from firewood on a very windy night.  We waited for what seemed like utter ages for the coals to "cool down", and even so, the crust got a bit charred.  {Okay, it was bloody black on the bottom waiting for the cheese to melt!}  We enjoyed them and it was memorable mother-daughter evening with a daughter who lives very far away!

A good start ... again

It’s been a long time since I wrote. Four days ago I returned from my 16-day trip to South Africa, mainly to see my mother.  I don’t know if it was the nature of the trip being that my mom will be leaving her little cottage on my brother’s farm and moving into a nursing home in 3 weeks, so there is much anticipation on the horizon, or if it’s just happenstance, but my trip was fraught with niggly things that went awry along the way, both there and back.  


The day I left, my flight couldn’t land in New York because of dense fog {at 7:30 in the morning} so we were diverted to land in Baltimore.  By the time we returned to JFK, we had missed our flight. There were 8 of us on the South African flight so we were in this together, getting rebooked for the next day, waiting hours for JetBlue to find us hotel accommodation and in the meantime, I was making a really lovely friend. She’s a young woman from Asheville, similar age to my Shannon. She and I had the best adventure.  We took the train from our hotel into the city that night, and had a whole boatload of fun seeing the lights of Times Square.  Then the next day, we sat together on the plane all 16 hour flight long. Since I’ve been home, we’ve emailed and talked on the phone and are making plans to see each other – so, really I take that and think: Lord, in your grand scheme of things, you meant it to all shake out that way, didn’t you?

When I arrived in Johannesburg, a day late, I made a Plan B as far as my car rental went, abandoned my connecting flight and drove to where I was meeting Shannon, who lives and works in South Africa. More on that in another blog one day. We had a fabulous reunion . The mother-daughter kind that warms the very cockles of the heart after a long absence. It was short; 2 nights and a day. The main purpose of my trip was to see my mom who was so unwell when I made my travel plans, so on I pressed. While America baked in the heat, I drove in my miniature rental car through sheeting rain, and then… yes, snow for a brief period, on a mountain pass! The rest of my time, several tall mountains in the area remained snow capped and the temperatures were frigid every day. I wore all my layers as South Africa presented one of its 3 coldest winters in history for me!

The shoe was on the other foot for the mother-daughter reunion with my mom. There are no adequate words to describe how special it was to see her doing so well after her poor health in March. And what unadulterated joy to be received with such love and happiness! There is no one else on this earth who loves to see me more than that precious lady and I have to treasure each and every nanosecond in her presence.

I intend to share some more about my trip, but for now this is a good start. I came home to a neighbor hosting a party last night. I took an appetizer and I have the recipe for Layered Spinach and Basil Cheese Spread to share here. It’s a recipe that I like to take to Christmas parties because of its festive colors, but since the basil I left growing in a pot desperately needed plucking, this was a very appropriate use.

You win some, you break some

I had a wonderful weekend. Sunday was Easter and I spent a long weekend in Raleigh with Susannah. She’ll graduate in a couple of weeks, and I’m so proud of all her accomplishments. It was a great time to share with her right before she completes her final graphic design project for a student art show next week and then writes her finals.

She had special things to “show” me in Raleigh. One was a delightful bead and craft shop called Ornamentea.   I could have stayed for hours on end and quite easily spent $100. They sell the sorts of things that I totally groove on.  The wares in that store and the colors….oh man - they made the senses that are me go berserk to want to make something SO badly!

We also went to the relatively new North Carolina Museum of Art and poked around for a couple of hours having a gorgeous mother-daughter time. I asked Susannah, with all the learning she’s acquired in the arts, to teach me some neat things, which she did, and so it was a great learning visit for me.  Love-loved it!  The weather was amazing so we enjoyed meandering through the sculpture gardens and admiring the water lilies.

 Easter brunch was at Humble Pie, outside under the colorful umbrellas. As we left, our path home took us right by the Red Cross Disaster Relief team passing out Easter lunches to tornado victims whose homes and college dorms are still unlivable from the storms that were just one week ago. We also saw the heart rending damage.

Then tonight, back home, as I took down my Easter decorations, I was clumsy and I broke my favorite bowl, made when I took pottery.  I don’t know why I liked it so much – the sgraffito leaves and the greens and the yellow border I think. I don’t know how likely it will be that I’ll take pottery ever again, so I’m bummed about it. 

 Yet, really. 

I know. 

I'm so blessed.

It’s only a bowl.