Simply Pizza Dough...

Friday night is "Family Movie Night" for the Gambles. I came up with a simple homemade pizza dough recipe that tastes great and is easy to make! For those of you with a bread machine, extremely easy!

Simply Pizza Dough

3 Cups of Unbleached Flour

2 tsp of Active Yeast

1/2 tsp Sea Salt

1/8 tsp Garlic Powder

1 tbsp Raw Honey

2 tbsp Olive Oil

1 Cup Warm Water

Put all the ingredients in your bread machine, in order, hit your "dough" setting, and let it do "it's thing!" If you are making by hand, you will have to get your hands sticky! After mixing in a bowl, throw some flour on the counter and begin to fold over the dough. If you have never done this before, here is a good tutorial on how to knead pizza dough. Roll into your favorite shape, we do rectangle.

Now you are ready to add your favorite toppings! Here are two of our family's favorites:

Simply Hawaiian

Traditional Pizza Sauce(tomato sauce, pinch of sugar, basil, and oregano)

Mixed Cheese

Fresh Cut Pineapple

Bacon(crumbled)

Optional Green Onions

Top with Fresh Grated Parmesan Cheese



Simply Fresh Margarita

Homemade Pesto Sauce

Mixed Cheese

Sliced Roma Tomato

Sliced Fresh Mozzarella

Chopped Organic Basil


Pre-Heat Oven to 425 and cook for 12 minutes! Serve with some homemade Simply Ranch!

Simply (Discovering) Homemade Root Beer....

Hey friends! One thing I want you all to know is, I call em' like I see em'(or taste em')! Friday afternoon, as we drove home from getting our delicious raw milk, I had an epiphany! More like a craving, but we will go with the first one because it sounds better. I LOVE root beer floats, and making some for our Family Movie Night sounded lovely...until I remember how much high fructose corn syrup is in soda!!! WHY? We don't buy soda except on special occasions, which seems to get fewer and far between as we really dig into eliminating processed foods. Oh, but how I love a good root beer! I thought to myself, "Jen, why can't you MAKE your own?" Great idea! I googled "homemade root beer" while driving home (while my husband drived, hello!) and found something that made my heart smile, for an hour anyways, root beer concentrate! They make root beer concentrate?!?! YES! A quick search and I came across a recipe for a homemade root beer using 4 simple ingredients; root beer concentrate, water, sugar and club soda! Well, I knew I could easily replace sugar with pure maple syrup and that made my heart smile even bigger!
We swung by the store and my sweet Cam ran in for me. There it was, just waiting for us to take it home and make the best, homemade root beer floats...EVER!!! Can you just hear the excitement in my voice! I am still working on creating a fabulous homemade vanilla ice cream recipe, but I had one that would do for this wondrous occasion.
And then... as quick as that bright smile lit up my heart, a huge thunder cloud came and stole my sunshine.  I flipped over the box as I was admiring my new found prize and the ingredients section was a little "longer" than I had anticipated. I was thinking in my crazed happiness that I had found root beer extract...nope, it was root beer concentrate. What is the difference? Well, let me just say it is the same ingredient you will find on almost EVERY processed food......corn syrup! SIGH! UGH!
So, my title is named what it is because I am simply discovering as I go. It is a journey, and sometimes part of the journey can be disappointing, frustrating and discouraging. Be encouraged, you are not alone!
I made the root beer anyways, I am positive it is more "healthy" than store bought, but I am frugal and I am certain a little more corn syrup was not going to kill me. It tasted OK, it definitely did not compare to IBC or Stewarts...but it was not horrible! I am what some of you would call a "perfectionist", so keep that in mind with my reviews. The homemade vanilla ice cream made up for anything the root beer lacked. The two combined tasted like one of those store bought root beer ice cream bars...yum!
So, I will return homemade root beer to my bucket list and revisit this blog when I have a little more time on my hands...From the looks of this recipe, a little more preparation and planning is needed. Doesn't it look amazing? I can not wait to try it out.
Although this recipe has not won it's way into my personal family cookbook(due to the concentrate and corn syrup), here it is for any of you who dare to try something new, fun, and homemade!!


Cheer!

Almost Homemade Root Beer

1 1/2 Cups Water

3/4 Pure Maple Syrup

1 1/2 tsp of Root Beer Concentrate

1 Liter Club Soda

Mix the first 3 ingredients and then carefully and slowly (save all those fizzes) add the club soda when you are ready to use. Poor over a couple scoops of homemade vanilla ice cream and ENJOY!!

Simply a Mouser...

Every farm needs a barn cat. A couple months ago, our amazing Maximus had to be put to sleep because he was hit by a car. The damage was too bad, and it broke every bit of all of our hearts. It was no doubt the best thing we could do for him, but that didn't lessen the pain and sadness. Our family tries to learn from every situation, to find joy in the pain and hope for the future. The last thing we wanted to do was "replace" our Max...so we took our time and grieved him. The farm wasn't the same with out our hunter. With all of this warm weather upon us, Cam and I knew that those little squeakers were going to be in full force in no time at all. Hence our new little mouser. He fits in my hands, and has the most incredible markings. He reminds us of a tiger(already had a cat named tiger...that is a no-go). We can't call him an official barn cat, because he will be indoors more than a barn cat...but just for kicks, meet........, our "barn" kitten (name to be inserted at a later time).