JoJo's Pizza Dough

If you know my mom at all, you know she loves to cook, bake, prepare foods, and in general create in the kitchen.  While I didn't quite inherit her zeal for being in the kitchen...I do enjoy baking (when cranky babies allow) and having homemade food for my family. 

One of the things my Italian mama always made from scratch growing up was pizza dough. And besides being delicious it's also, of course, less expensive to make it yourself than to buy it.  A bag of flour is about $1.50 and so is one ball of pre-made dough. So...if you feel like making your own pizza dough, here is her recipe....

JoJo's Pizza Dough (makes 2 pizzas)

4 cups all purpose flour

1 1/3 cups warm water

1 tablespoon (fast rising) yeast

2 tablespoons olive oil 

1 teaspoon salt

Dissolve yeast in warm water for a few minutes.  

Add remaining ingredients and mix together/knead briefly.  

Let rise for 30 minutes. 

Divide dough in half and spread onto two greased pans (adding a pinch of extra flour as needed to help with stickiness).

Bake at 450 degrees for 10-20 minutes (check often)

 Today my 3 year old told me he really wanted to make pizza.  He got out his tiny rolling pin and everything.  So.... I switched a few things around on our menu plan for the month and made it happen.  He loves baking projects (which are harder with a baby around) and I'm quite confident that he will bake wonderful treats for his future wife someday. 

 

Here is Mateo spreading out our dough.  Though a rolling pin is not necessary, he sure got 

excited to use his!

 

And the only thing more fun than spreading out the dough is adding (and sampling) the ingredients.  Mateo is learning all about shapes right now so after taking a bite out of his "circle" pepperoni he then declared it was a "crescent moon".  He cracks me up.  But anytime this skinny picky eater gets excited about food and food preparation I try to capitalize on that as best I can. 

Black Bean and Corn Polenta

 One of the "cool beans" frugal recipes I've found is Black Bean and Corn Polenta.  A vegetarian friend shared this one with me a while back and it's become a regular on our monthly menu.  I always plan to make it on a Saturday when I do because it makes quite a bit and we can eat the leftovers with some rice and/or veggies on Sunday.  If at all possible, I try to take Sunday off from cooking dinner.  We all need a break, right?!

Here is what you need:

1 can black beans (or if you really wanna go crazy saving money- make your own beans! Use about 2 cups for this recipe)

1/4 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp dried oregano

1 ready made tube of polenta or make your own for dirt cheap (using 1 cup cornmeal, 1/2 tsp salt, and 3 1/2 cups cold water...boil til thickened)

1 cup frozen corn, thawed 

1 cup red bell pepper, chopped

1 8 oz can tomato sauce

2 cups grated cheese

Mix your polenta in the water and salt.  Bring to a boil.

 

Stir constantly until nice and thick.

 

Pour into a large, greased, casserole dish.

 

Add frozen corn as the second layer.

 

Season black beans with oregano and cumin and add next.  (NOTE..if using frozen homemade beans make sure they are fully defrosted and rinsed to get off any excess water)

 

Add red bell pepper and can of tomato sauce next.

 

Top with 2 cups grated cheese.

Throw the whole thing in the fridge until you are ready to cook.  Homemade polenta does best, from my experience anyways, when it has a chance to chill.   I tend to prepare this during nap time.  Come dinner time all that's left is to bake it at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.

I was pleasantly surprised that the baby, at 10 or 11 months old, seemed to really like polenta and black beans!! The 3 year old... well....he just picks out the polenta....

For 2 adults and a couple of tiny eaters we eat half of this and save half for another dinner.  For a larger family you'd probably want to double it if you hoped for leftovers!

 

This saves really well in the fridge and we just re-heat it in the microwave and make some rice in the rice cooker to accompany it.  MMM.  Looking forward to tomorrow night's "easy" dinner. 

Other favorite sides to accompany this:  Yellow sweet potato fries (or roasted), brown or white rice, steamed veggies,  tortilla chips, smoothies, etc.

Mortgages

I just have to share this website:

--->Mortgage Extra Payment Calculator

It's pretty amazing.  You can fill in the stats for your own mortgage....like loan balance, interest rate, duration of term, and date of first payment.  THEN...you can type in how much extra per month you want to put towards your mortgage.

For our stats, by paying $100 extra per month on our mortgage towards the principal...we'd pay if off FIVE years sooner and end up paying about $24,000 less in interest.  Pretty crazy.

Our mortgage is our only debt.  And we don't like debt.  I especially don't like paying interest.  Sooo... we do pay a little extra per month.  We had been doing $50 per month extra but we are motivated to put even more than that if at all possible.


Mortgages can be beastly.  We thought our 20% down to avoid the PMI (Mortgage insurance) was pretty good though Andy Stanley would tell you to put 30% down payment on a house.  But many put little or no down on their homes making their monthly payments already very high. I would make a terrible loan officer because I'd convince too many people to hold off on the loan and make absolutely no money haha!


Anyways..... if $100 a month seems unfathomable for you to come up with try just $10 extra.  Not a huge amount (2  or 3 coffees maybe) but for us we'd still pay our house off 7 months early and save $3,000 on interest.  I'm a believer in the little things adding up!

Happy Money Saving!!

Alex at one

Tank.  Bam bam.  Travieso.  Just a couple of nick names friends and family have given to Alex.

He shows no fear.  He's rough and he's tough.  He likes to wrestle with his big brother and usually wins. 

He is into everything, (STILL) puts everything into his mouth, and doesn't give up trying to open that one cupboard that isn't locked.  I actually resorted to duct tape the other day.

He will eat anything...even if it's not edible. Including a piece of ceramic (long story).

He loves to hug his big brother.

He loves to play peek-a-boo.  

He is always looking for Da Da while he's at work and stands at the baby gate yelling for him along side Mateo when the garage door opens.

He is happy being with his family and friends and I think we are happy to have him around.  Especially Mateo, who when sad will often say, "I need Owwww Ex.".  And a big Alex hug makes it all better.

He's incredibly squirmy, somewhat rough, has pulled out more earrings than I can remember, and often pokes his brother in the eyes unknowingly or tries to rip off his ears.

He got his first black eye last week.

He weighs 22 lbs and has 8 teeth.

He's happy crawling around the house and climbing on things for now and isn't too interested in walking.  We're OK with that.  Walking means even more chaos. We can wait a little longer.

He still doesn't sleep through the night and graces me with his presence about 4:30 or 5:00 every morning to nurse.  Yay about that lol.

He waves at everybody and says HI. 

He tries to be sweet even when he's sick.

He drives me crazy by his inability to comprehend the word "NO" and his unstoppable diligence in getting into things he wants into (hence the reason why all but one of our kitchen cupboards are locked now.  Have fun coming to cook in OUR kitchen....lol). And hence the reason why our living room curtains are draped up AND the reason I often drag the coffee table to block off areas.  Fun times. 

He melts my heart with his big blue eyes and big cheesy smile.

Happy Birthday to Alex.  Our blessing, whose name means "Defender of Man".  Maybe that's why he tries to be tough.  Thanking Jesus today for his life.