White Pizza and a New Cookbook

This has been quite a good week for trying out new recipes. Elizabeth and I have been dying to try making a white pizza ever since last Summer. We've thought about it a lot, but never actually got around to doing it. We bought some spinach --- and put it in the freezer. We bought some Pesto --- and put it on the shelf. Finally, we bought some Ricotta cheese, and it had to be used. Time to make the pizza. We didn't really have a recipe or anything. We just had ideas of what we'd like (or not) from the couple of kinds that we've had at restaurants. In the end, our pizza came out really well. We were a bit nervous, but it was so fun! We put Pesto and garlic on first, then we spread Ricotta cheese across the whole thing. Spinach went on next (nice liberal portions!), followed by some mozzarella cheese to hold it all together. It was quite enjoyable.



Yesterday, we went to the library and browsed through the cookbooks. That was lots of fun, and we hit the jackpot! We found The King Arthur Flour's Baking Companion book. It's some heavy reading, let me tell you. That is the kind of flour that I've used for baking for years now, so it's cool to find a book that is made for that flour. It was a bit hard to sort through all the wonderful choices and pick which of them to make. "Chewy Chocolate Chip Oatmeal" cookies won out. They were also listed as "easy" and "fool-proof", so it sounded like a perfect first try, right? Well, they were right. They're gorgeous, and they weren't even hard to make. Here are some before-and-after pictures:



All in all it has been a nice day! It's very rainy here, and we're having some flooding. It is supposed to turn to snow tonight though, and freeze tomorrow. Joy. Not. :) I got to call Naomi this morning, and that was fun! It's amazing that it doesn't take any longer to place a call to Wales than it does to call Florida. I don't exactly understand how that works, but it sure is cool. If only we could travel to Wales in the same time as we can travel to Florida!