Baby Quilt by Maru!

Yesterday I received a very special baby present in the mail from my good friend Mary (aka Maru). She is an amazing quilter and all around crafty type and you can see some of her work on her blog http://maruskicreates.blogspot.com/

When Mary heard I was pregnant she contacted me about doing a custom baby quilt. I was over the moon about this! We talked briefly about what colors and styles I liked and she sent me sketches of the whole process and later photographs.

Well the quilt arrived yesterday and I have to say that it is absolutely breathtaking! It is such an honor to have hand made gift of this quality from someone who is dear to me, I know it will be treasured forever.

Doesn't it look so pretty on Echo's crib?

I am already having to fight to keep the cats off of it, they want to claim it as their own :-) I can't wait for little Echo to get here (6 more weeks!), I will definitely be photographing her with this as a backdrop.  Words can't express how grateful and touched I am by this special gift, thanks so much Mary!

Grilled Pizza

I am slow to post things lately, sorry everyone :-) With my pregnancy nearing an end (7 weeks to go!) I keep waiting for my nesting instinct to kick in in the form of cleaning but so far not so much. Cooking however is in high gear, not sure what that's about but I'm hoping after my maternity leave starts in a few weeks I will feel more like getting this house in shape for the baby.

In the mean time, here is another recipe! Since we got the fabulous grill for Eric's birthday I have been scheming up some ideas of what we can cook out there. It was a little problematic at first since a lot of grilled recipes are for meat and as I mentioned before we are cutting back on the amount of meat we eat. By the way, changing our diet has drastically improved our finances, we had our lowest spending month of all time in July and that is with two birthdays to shop for. But anyway, that's another story :-) I came across this recipe for grilled pizza dough and was amazed! Grilled pizza? Can you do that? Turns out you can and it's delicious! Though dough is incredibly easy to make (no kneading!) and once that part is done the rest takes 10 minutes tops. It was also fun because we each got to make our own individual pizzas and top them however we wanted. We have made this recipe twice so far and it was huge hit both times. I see it becoming a regular thing with us. Now if only it wasn't too hot to eat outside.

Here is the recipe I used for the dough:

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp sugar
1 package active dry yeast
1 tbs olive oil
3/4 cup warm water

Proof the yeast in warm water. In a separate bowl mix flour, salt, sugar and oil. Make a well in the center of dry ingredients and pour yeast/water mixture in. Mix thoroughly until the consistency of an elastic ball (if the dough seems too dry add a bit more warm water).  Cover and allow to rise for 1 1/2 hours.

Divide dough in half, flour surface and roll out the dough  in to two personal sized pizzas. Grill on high for about a minute on each side, just to firm up the outside a little bit. Next add your sauce and toppings. Return to grill and grill with cover down for 5 minutes or until the toppings are melty.

We think these taste amazing and it's nice not to have to heat up the kitchen in the summer. I encourage you to try them, here are some pictures.

raw dough, going on the grill

after the first grilling, ready to add toppings

toppings added

All done, ready to eat!