Playing Host & Hostess

Over the weekend Ashlee and I cleaned house some, and that was partly because we had company. Last night Pat and Wanda came over for homemade pizza and today Nicole (from TFA) was treated to Ashlee's red pepper pasta.

Our plan for pizza was simple. We would use our bread machine to make the dough and then put our favorite toppings on it. We aren't particularly fancy: mushrooms, pepperoni, mozzarella, bell peppers, and pasta sauce. We've done this at home before, but this time we needed to cook for four, so we doubled the dough recipe to allow for two small/medium-ish pizzas. One hour and fifty minutes later, we opened the machine to find pizza dough soup. It was about the consistency of Elmer's glue, and sticky, of course. We were already running a bit late, so I hopped in the car with Pat and drove to the grocery store and bought their pizza dough instead. In the meantime, Ashlee turned the bread machine back on for another dough cycle. We eventually got the pizzas made and baked, although they were still a bit doughy, and had a decent meal. Wanda's strawberry Jello and pretzel dessert was a great way to finish.

After our guests left, Ashlee and I tried to salvage the pizza dough (that was processed twice) by adding some flower and rolling it into bread sticks.

That brings us to this evening, when we had Ashlee's red pepper sauce with chicken over rotini pasta. It was delicious as usual. We used the bread sticks instead of French bread or something similar. They may not have been quite as good as those at the Olive Garden, but they were pretty tasty for being salvaged. Our dessert tonight looked something like this:

There's a bit of a story behind the brownies.