Lets Go Out For Some "Zzaaa" - Stewie Griffin

Pizza pizza pizza!!!

Today I decided to make homemade Chicago-style deep-dish stuffed pizza. I don't know what gave me the idea, but I came up with it last night. So today, I went online to allrecipies.com and I searched for a deep dish pizza dough recipe. I found it right away! So off I went to Jewel, to buy some of the ingredients I didn't already have.

It was very simple. A few easy steps:

One: Mix some yeast, sugar, and warm water in a small bowl.

Two: Mix flour, corn meal, and salt in a food processor, then add the yeast mixture and some olive oil. Blend until it forms a ball of dough.

Three: Knead the dough a bit, and transfer to a large bowl.

Four: Sit back, relax, and let the dough rise!

Five: Once it is done rising, punch it, roll it out, and put inside two 8" round pans. Make sure you spray the pans with some oil, and sprinkle a little corn meal on the bottom before putting the dough in.

Six: Pre-bake the dough for 8-10 minutes. That's it! Now just add whatever you want to top it off! [Oh yeah, bake the two pizzas for about 20-30 minutes.]

Results: Well, it was very tasty! The crust turned out good, but a little crispy around the edges. I think maybe a little less pre-baking would be good, say, max 8 minutes. The cheese was perfectly melted inside. And you know, I forgot to add the olives, so we had a cheese + mushroom pizza. The mushrooms well, we really couldn't taste them, so next time I will use fresh ones instead, or a mushroom with a stronger taste. I topped the sauce off with thinnly sliced fresh tomatos, and sprinkled them with Italian seasoning. Yum yum!
4.5 out of 5 stars!

I am making it a new tradition to make homemade deep dish every Thursday night. Hopefully, I'll have the time once school starts again, but it actually is not so time consuming.

I call it,

"Eating Out At GioJenno's!"

Today I am planning out our future trip to Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. So far the plan goes like this:

Sat. Mar.18: Pack and get ready to go!

Sun. Mar.19: Drive to Quebec, stay overnight.

Mon. Mar.20: Night @ Ice Hotel! Brrrrrr!

Tues.-Fri. Mar.21-24: Night at hotel/hostel/YWCA with skiing and city exploring during the day.

Sat. Mar.25: Home!

There is a lot of stuff to do in the area of Quebec City. First of all, the city itself is very old, founded by the French in the 17th century. It is the ONLY walled-in city north of Mexico. Can you believe that? There is a "castle," which you can see in the picture I posted, and lots of other stuff.
Outside of the city, there are many activities like cross-country skiing, and snowshoeing, even dog sledding, but we are on a budget, so looks like cross-country skiing is the winner!
I am hoping to be able to make reservations at the YWCA in the city. They have 17 rooms, each decorated uniquely. Check it out!
Other hotels/motels are running at the cheapest $60/night. The YWCA is charging $45/night. Well, there are also hostels, but they are not so cheap as expected. You can find hotels for the same price!
The second pic here is the entrance the the Ice Hotel we will be staying at for one night. I can't wait! Looks like this mini vacation for spring break will be awesome!

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas finally got here, actually, it came pretty fast. We had Christmas Eve dinner yesterday. And after we opened presents. I got an electric blanket! Yes!!!! Thats what I wanted because I am always cold when I sleep.
Me and Romy both caught some kind of weird sickness. We are both really tired, have a scratchy throat (not sore) and feel out-of-it. Its annoying because you don't feel really sick, but you do. I want to go to the gym, but I can't cuz I wouldn't even be able to lift. Oh well, I hope it goes away soon.
Today I am selling all our old textbooks on Amazon Marketplace. I hope we sell them all!!! Oh, and then we are going to Jerene's to have Christmas dinner. No wonder its so easy to get fat over the holidays. So much eating!!!
So since we felt so blahhh last night, we just layed and watched the History Channel and Comedy Central (Romy really loves South Park, and there was a Christmas marathon on. . .)

Christmas Preparations

Another day of the Xmas break is over. . .
Today I went grocery shopping with my mom to get all the stuff for dinner tomorrow. We went to The Egg Store. They have cheaper produce than fsf does. I think we might start shopping there. They had pineapples for only 99 cents! For desert we are having vanilla ice cream with egg nog liquer.
Romy didn't get donuts today. He was gonna bring them into work, but he thought a lot of people would bring donuts. Well, no. . . nobody did! Oh well. I kinda wanted one.
I added a few more thing to the blog. I have a little message tag board (under ~+ say hi!), which you can leave me a message or talk to someone who is also online, like an instant messager, but the bad this is it doesn't auto refresh. You gotta pay extra for that!
I finally finished cutting the tiles around the outlet in the kitchen. Once I got the right bit for the dremmel, it was quick and easy. But ceramic dust sprayed all over the basement, and I had to vacuumn it up. And I also wrapped the gifts. Now all that's left to do is the fruit baskets. Just add the fruit!
Oh, and I got an e-mail from Anie today. She was in my TEFL course in Prague (and she is in the center of the photo, pink dress). She's from Lebenon, but she prefers to live in Cyrus (no kidding!). Well, she just told me that she started studying for a PhD at Charles University in Prague, and she is also teaching English and French. I am so jealous! Thats awesome! That pic was taken at the "going away" party after our course was done, at the Tulip Cafe in Prague. It was a place that all TEFL teachers get 25% off, so we went there a few times. It is owned by a guy (Party Ray) who came to teach English, but decided to go into the bar business instead. Oh well! Whatever floats his boat!

Fruit Basket Day

Today there is a lot to do. Yesterday, if anybody noticed, I changed the skin of my blog. I am proud to say that I created it myself, after hours of looking at java script of other blog skins. A good site is www.blogskins.com, if anyone is looking for pre-made ones. Warning: some are not so good, others are okay. But if you really want to incorporate your own style, make your own!! I wanted to create an art nouveau style, my favorite!

Well, since yesterday I didn't do much, that means today I have a lot to do, including going shopping for some food, and fruit for the fruit baskets I am going to make for Xmas. Making your own fruit basket is simple and cheap, and people love them! I am going to the craft store for some small baskets, Xmas ribbons, etc. Then I am going to the grocery store to get some nice fruit, and one exotic one (like a baby pineapple).

What else? Oh yeah, I have to measure out the storage closet we have to finish that is above the bathroom. Uhg. . . for some reason when you don't have much to do, you get even lazier! Poor Romy, he's mad at me because I am not doing much. . .

Oh! And today is Wednesday, so that means we are going to Vertical Endeavors! I can't wait to climb! Maybe I will take a picture, if we remember to bring the camera with.

Its Silo Time!

This past weekend was a little crazy. We went to go see Matt's graduation from ISU at Bloomington/Normal, Illinois. Well, his graduation was, blah blah blah, long and boring. But the other stuff we did was fun. The first notable event was lunch after the graduation (or commencement as ISU calls it) at the American Legion hall. It was good, like buffet style, cooked by Matt and his family at the hall. We played pool while they were cooking. We weren't any good, but at least that was some fun filler before the real reason that we came: rock climbing at Upper Limits!

A lot of people were supposed to come with us, but they all passed. Thats okay, it actually turned out better that they didn't come with, because the easiest route they had set up was rated a 5.6 "Citrus Tree" and let me tell you, it was harder than 5.6, it seemed. Not exactly beginer friendly over there.

Well whats cool and unique about this place is that it is built inside of abandoned storage grain silos. The routes are 65 ft high. The pic to the right is between four silos (the rounded walls are actually the outside of 4 silos, which make up even more climbing routes). Thats Romy going up "I'm a banana" a 5.9. Aside from the erie lighting inside, and the freaky heating, it was awesome. They set up the routes with the minimum amount of holds, so that you climb up and you have to use only what they give. Other places give you a million holds, but color code them, but then its so tempting to cheat, and I get confused when I can't see the color tags. Also, the concrete walls provide a lot of friction for smearing.

There was also a bouldering cave, and an open bouldering area in the front (not inside the silos). All in all, we climbed for about 3.5 hours, and had an awesome time doing it.

When we came back, everyone at the Legion hall was ready to go out to the bar and celebrate Matt's graduation. So we went to some Irish place, where they had HUGE long island ice teas served up in a mason jar! Woah, we saw the bartender make us our teas, and she just kept pouring the booze in, and the last 10% she poured in some ice tea concentrate. I had one and was finished (we really didn't eat dinner after rock climbing. . .) and I don't know how many Romy had. But we ended up crashing at Marty's motel room with our sleeping bags. We drove home this morning, and I was soooooo tired driving! Ugh!