Spinach & Humiliated Cranberries Pizza

Ingredients:

• Dough:
  Flour
  Salt
  Unsalted butter
  Sugar

• Toppings:
  Approx 1 tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
  Some coarse kosher or sea salt
  4-5 oz fresh spinach
  1/4 cup sliced red onion
  4oz of crumbled feta cheese (or more if desired)
  4oz of grated mozzarella cheese
  1/4 cup of cranberry raisins

This one is really easy, especially if you have a breadmaker. Just use a basic dough recipe that works for you.  Water, flour, salt, butter, sugar & yeast. Run through the dough cycle. After it’s finished, go ahead and knead it down again. If you’re me, that means starting the dough cycle again for a couple minutes and then unplugging the machine.  Roll it out into your desired pizza shape.  I have a handy dandy pizza stone someone gave me when I got married, so I just sprinkle a little cornmeal on that and transfer the dough to rise in a warm oven for 30-40 minutes.  Then a pour a little oil on it, and sprinkle some salt (the amount depends on how sweet I made the dough). Cover that generously with fresh spinach. Then some sliced red onions, feta, mozzarella, and sprinkle your cranberries on top of that. I like to put all the toppings on in that order because the mozzarella will melt and hold it all together nicely so you don’t loose any goodness when you cut and serve it.  Cook in your oven 350′ until dough is slightly browned (usually about 30 minutes for mine). Enjoy!

In other news, my basil sprouted!!!!
I’m still keeping my fingers crossed, though.

Plants

Having managed to keep 2 house plants alive for 7 (whole!) months, it was time to attempt a transplant into larger pots. At the same time, I thought I’d try my luck at growing basil in my dining room. Wish me luck and a LOT of prayers….my green thumb tends to be more like a beigy brown thumb!

late september at the cutting gardens

If you were to go to the cutting gardens now, these are the flowers you would find. If you go next week, Jane will have her big pumpkin display with all the perfect little gourds for your fall table.

This picture shows two of my favorite little ‘weird’ flowers for bouquets. That fuzzy brainy looking thing in the middle-ish is called cockscomb, and I first saw it used in a bridal bouquet a little over two years ago, and it was amazing (they used the hot pink, which is also in this bouquet). It gives just enough odd texture to really round out a traditional bouquet. The other flower I love is the little red clover-like flowers a little higher in the bouquet. Group three of them together like I did here, and they make a nice little detail on a smaller scale. My mom and I also used these two flowers in what I think is the most beautiful bridal bouquet she’s ever done (and she’s probably done thirty or so). This was the bouquet for my friend Emily, who incidentally will be celebrating her 2nd Anniversary in about two weeks! Happy (early) Anniversary to Emily and Toby!

thistles

Thistles always remind me of this story by Nate Wilson, which I remember reading shortly after finding out we were pregnant with our daughter (you can guess that there were tears). These beautiful thistles are from our local university arboretum.

Roses

We had Ben & Abra and their kidlet over for dinner last week. This was my first time entertaining since I’d repainted, and I was a little nervous that they might walk in and go all bug-eyed at the pure yellow-ness of it all. So I bought these roses to put on the table to kind of tie in the colors and make the walls look a little tamer (the roses are only a hair yellower than the walls, so it worked well).

Fortunately, even without the roses, they liked the new paint job and so now I’m not quite so nervous about our next guests going into color shock.

In other news, it’s a lovely cool dreary day here and so I’m taking advantage of the natural air conditioning and firing up my oven to make Coconut-Pineapple Loaf Cake this afternoon. If it passes muster, I’ll post some pictures to go along with the recipe.

zebra rose

It’s actually a “Scentimental” rose and is greatly deserving of the name it has been given.

this week at the cutting gardens . . .

I was up earlier than usual this morning and decided to take advantage of the cooler hours by heading out to the cutting gardens in Pullman to get some flowers. This time of year (right around the 4th of July) is my very favorite time at the cutting gardens primarily because of the royal blue delphinium, the yellow rudbeckia, and the amazing lillies. With our crazy weather this year there were some flowers available this morning that are usually past their prime around the 4th, so I was pleased to get a few new varieties in my bucket. The greatest surprise was this blue veronica – I had to turn around and go get another bucket to fill up when I saw these beauties!

I was also pleased to find some lovely campanula (bellflowers) to make into a bouquet to welcome little Anthony who was born in the wee hours of this morning! He gave his mom a run for her money (as I’m sure most 10+ lb baby boys do!) but we’re all so happy to meet him. Who can resist a pair of chubby cheeks and loads of fuzzy black baby hair?

Here is the initial armload…

And here is my kitchen after getting them all divided out! My little helper (aka flower-bucket-carrier and-tipper-over-er) is in the bottom right corner.

After Anthony’s bouquet of bellflowers, veronica, and coral bells I set to work on my big bouquet. The colors that I bring home this time of year always remind me of the beautiful bouquets at Pike Place Market in Seattle which I absolutely adore. The vibrant colors just scream summer to me.

I didn’t have room in that bouquet for the snapdragons, so they got their own vase.

And then I took all the leftovers and put them together in a bouquet for B’s room (she’s very much into flowers).

flower crowns

We spent the afternoon at my parents’ house yesterday for Father’s Day. It was a beautiful day and so we spent a few hours outside in the yard. My parents have a hillside covered with Shasta daisies, so I thought I’d make B a daisy chain crown. The daisy chain crown evolved and gained a few more flowers and ended up in this:

I decided that that could be improved upon, so I grabbed a bunch of daylilly leaves and braided them together for a base and came up with this much improved version (and it’s a good thing because by this time the daisy one was in pieces on the ground).

euphorbia

spring at the cutting gardens

A number of months ago I urged you all to check out the cutting gardens over in Pullman. Now that the winter has passed and we are well on our way to summer, the cutting gardens are back in business. I went yesterday because I had some time to kill over in Pullman and I came back with these beauties.


Actually, I came back with a few more bouquets worth as well, but those flowers are still closed up. My goal is to get them to wait until this weekend to bloom so that I can give them as Mother’s Day gifts, rather than spending $30 a bunch at the store (despite being loosely connected to the flower industry, I despise their price gouging around the major holidays). There were still rows and rows of tulips in tight bud form, so if these don’t make it through the week I may go back for some more for my Mother’s Day boquets. Oh, and the flowers are still $6 a bucket. Not too bad.

This also turned out to be a fantastic outing for Little B. She had a great time hopping over the rows of tulips and carrying my bucket for me. She was also very helpful when it came to helping me ‘pick’ the flowers. So, in my mind, the above bouquets are my Mother’s Day flowers from her. It’s much more fun to make an outing of the flower picking than to get flowers from the store, don’t you think?