Whole Foods' Pizza

   Do you have a kid who feels pizza is the most delicious food in the entire world, who can eat pizza from breakfast till dinner and you can serve him pizza when nothing works out for him ? Then this post might be little helpful for you.

  I do like pizza, easy food and dial the number (or order online)..its ready in 20 minutes at your door. However, my recent pizza encounters are not so good. Sometimes the dough or the sauce turns out to be not so tasty, even my best pizza lover rejects. I wanted to make pizza from the scratch (it was a long weekend ..no kidding). But my culinary skills was not that great and dough turned out to be very hard. I still have that yeast bottle at refrigerator.

  Recently I was talking to my friend who is an expert cook. She suggested me whole food pizza dough. I was too naive in this business. However this pizza turns out to be good.And most importantly you have a chance to control over the quality of sauce, cheese and the toppings. Its also another good activity to involve the little one to participate. We may call it as the pizza project. Usually in our house hold we do it on Saturday evening (especially on a rainy/snowy one).

Ingredient : 1.One pack of pizza dough (you can choose whole wheat one, multi-grain one or plain white

2. One tablespoon of  oil

3. A very small amount of all purpose flour 

4. Pizza sauce (sometimes I do use canned tomato paste also)

5. Grated Mozzarella cheese for pizza ( I sometimes use Kraft cheese, sometimes I do buy from Whole Food's cheese for Pizza

6. Toppings are of your choice- like broccoli, pepperoni, mushroom..lots of room for creativity

Directions : Preheat the oven to 450 degree Fahrenheit
 Now let the pizza dough to come to room temperature..what usually I do if I plan to make pizza in afternoon. I put the dough outside after lunch.
When the dough comes to room temperature, take a ball of dough .
On the rolling board, with the help of rolling pin and little bit of oil and all purpose flour, make the flat pizza. I usually make 1" thick one, easy to make.
Now at this point I slowly transfer the pizza on the pizza pan.
Then I put the pizza sauce on top of it.
Next cheese and last step is adding all the toppings.
After all the decorations, put the pizza in oven and bake it until the sides of pizza turns brownish.

Ready to serve and eat.

A Very Lazy Chicken Rice Vegetable Soup

   I am a very very lazy Mom. And here in Boston, we have this very cruel winter, that makes me lazier than ever. From there only comes my "very lazy chicken rice vegetable soup". Whenever I feel exhausted after a long day work, I land up ordering take-out food or pizzas. However, we, as mom, all have this guilt consciousness lurking in corner, that we are not doing enough. Hence I come up with this easy recipe of chicken rice soup (especially made for a picky-eater preschooler). Its very easy to make and now a days I have some other short-cut plans too.

    I cut the vegetables in inch size at weekend and store them for a week. I usually store different type of vegetables in separate boxes. Most cases I use Pyrex, Rubbermaid or progressive storage box. This helps me to choose the menu I want to cook whenever I need in the working weekdays. If you want to cook in half of the weekdays, as I do; this is a very good option for you. Do choose the menu before hand and keep the vegetables pre-cut with date labelled on the box wall. I also keep peeled garlic in the zip-lock bag. However I do not keep chopped tomatoes or onions stored.

  Coming back to chicken rice soup recipe again, you can choose to ignore chicken part and make same way completely vegetable rice soup. Here is the recipe.

Recipe :

1. ½ cup brown rice, washed-soaked in water  for 30 minutes (this is first step, you can start here and prepare the rest)

2.Coarsely cut onion-1 cup

3.Garlic-3-4 pieces-crushed

4.Ginger-peeled and stick size

5.Tomatoes-1 cup coarsely chopped

6.Green beans-cut in 1” size

7.Brocoli floret-cut in small chunk

8.Potato-cut in long 2” size

9.Carrot-cut in ½ “ size

10.Zuchini-1”size

11.Green peas-1/2 cup

12.Spinach -1 cup

13.  ½ cup bite size chicken breast-washed,cleaned

Cooking Direction :

1. Warm up 1 Tb spoon of oil/butter (you can play around with amount) in a flat bottom pressure cooker or flat bottom pan

2. Sizzle the oil with one cardamom (usually I crush it little bit before putting it in oil) and one 1” cinnamon stick

3. As soon as the beautiful aroma of spies comes out, add onion

4. Fry Onion for 1 minute and add veggies

5. Sauté the veggies little bit and then add chicken

6. Add ½ Tb spoon of cumin powder, coriander powder and pinch of ground black pepper and turmeric

7. Sauté veggies and chicken for 2 minutes

8. Add 1 cup of chicken broth ( you can use vegetable broth or plain water too)

9. Add salt according to taste

10. Boil them for 10 minutes

11. Add soaked brown rice with ½ cup of water

Close the lid of the pressure cooker and wait for 3 whistles. Cool it off little bit before you open the lid.

Soup is ready to serve.:)

     

Clementine Box Project

Whenever we get clementine, along with the bunch (or branch) of orange fruits... there is also a box. Usually I recycle the box. However, this time I thought we better use it for something useful and good (in this process I can vent out the energy of an enthusiastic hyperactive 5 year old). This is good project in a snow/rainy day.

  Hence comes the Clementine Plant Pot holder :

 What we need : an used clementine box, Americana Multi-surface satin paint (you can choose any brand of your choice , just make sure this should be non-toxic), brush, plastic cup, old news paper and brush

How to do it :
  1. We spread out an old news paper on our work table and put on our work cloth ( we have some worn out T-shirt for this purpose).

   2.Next we took an empty clementine Box and cleaned out all the papers/wrappers around it. We used our dry paint brush to clean up the sides little bit.

   3. A plastic cup was just we needed to pour some of our paint and next we knew we were painting.

   4. Once it was fully painted we kept it dry for 30 minutes.

   5. Now our clementine plant pot holder was ready.

     Hope you enjoy this pot holder as much as I do. Do not forget to let me know how it works for you.

About this blog

   I am mommy of a very dynamic five year old pre-schoolar who has a very strong personality and opinion. I live in Boston,MA with my husband and son. This blog is dedicated to keep my self-imposed sanity and trying to live a better (and decluttered) way with them. Often it is difficult and challenging to live in a small apartment with a little kid. However, through this blog I want to involve my kid to live and grow up in a artistic way ..to involve him in my small house project...to keep him busy and  to live "Three of Us living in a box".