Menu =)

[FruGal]

Tried to do a little planning ahead on this one by using leftover Italian sausage in the spaghetti sauce, making extra meatballs to use for meatball hoagies, cooking a little extra rice to use in making stuffed cabbages. I love it when I manage to plan ahead like this! Wish I was good enough to do it every week!

Italian sausage on rolls, potato chips

Spaghetti & Meatballs (make extra meatballs), salad, garlic bread

Fried Chicken, home made perogies (not sure of that spelling!)

Meatball hoagies, potato chips, dill pickle spears

Pepper Steak over rice

Stuffed Cabbage, mashed potatoes

Pizza Night! Cook's night off! =) (Gotta love "Little Caeser's" - they make pizza night possible with their reasonable prices!)

[brchbell]

Sounds good! Yeah, gotta love to Pizza guy! I got 3 Schwann's Pizzas coming today so we'll do pizza tonight as I'm already a mess at 4 AM and not up to the kitchen tonight. But my kids are a tough crowd to please. Most of our pizzas are home made. Sauce from scratch, pizza crust that takes 4 hours (whole wheat) and they are quite picky about the crust and sauce, ect. Hope Schwann's doesn't let me down tonight! Way to far out in the boondocks for delivery. Got a Pizza Hut 14 miles south of us that leaves much to be desired!

[FruGal]

I live in a part of "suburbia" that is more like the city. Believe it or not I would love to live someplace that doesn't have pizza delivery. Besides, Little Caesars doesn't deliver, it's pick-up only! I usually make my own, too, but sometimes we like to splurge a little. ($5 for a medium, 1-topping pizza ain't bad!) Care to share your pizza crust and sauce recipes?

[brchbell]

We're a family of 7 so my recipes are geared that way. But here is my recipes:

Pizza Dough

2 Tablespoons Dry Yeast
2 cups Warm (not hot!) Water
5 to 6 cups Flour (I grind all my own flour. For this one I use hard white winter wheat)
2 teaspoons Salt
¼ cup Olive Oil
1 teaspoon Garlic Powder
1 Tablespoon Italian Spices (I use Basil & Oregano)

Add water and yeast into mixer bowl and then mix in 2 cups of flour and salt. Let set to proof your yeast about 10 minutes. Then add rest of ingredients mixing well and only adding enough flour to get a good moist working dough. Knead about 5 minutes with dough hook or 10 minutes if doing by hand. Cover with plastic and let set for 1 ½ hours to let rise. You can punch down and let raise again or use it at this point.
(You can use any high gluten bread flour or mix half white with half whole wheat. I never use white flour at all. Use my own fresh ground whole wheat for breads and for regular white flour I use equal amounts of oat groats, barley & brown rice ground up. no one ever notices the difference. )

Pizza Sauce

4 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1 Cup finely chopped Onion
1 Tablespoon minced Garlic
4 pounds fresh or 3 pounds canned Tomatoes
1 Tablespoon Basil Leaves
1 Tablespoon Oregano
½ teaspoon sugar
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 ½ teaspoon salt
1 small can Tomato Paste (6 oz.)

In a heavy pan heat olive oil and cook onion and garlic about 10 minutes. Stir in everything else and lower heat and simmer, partially covered about 1 hour. Taste for seasoning. Beat with a spoon to make smoother if desired. Use immediately, or refrigerate or freeze for a later time. I make several batches of this up when we have lots of tomatoes in the garden and then can in pint jars to use in the winter. Unfortunately we had very few tomatoes this year due to our very wet and cold summer. So we'll make this up and use half and then freeze the other half for next time.

Hope this helps!
Cherlynn

[FruGal]

Thanks, Cherlynn. I'm cooking for 6 or 7 myself (4-5 adults & 2 children). I don't grind my own wheat. Don't have the space for storage or a grinder! I have several recipes I use for pizza and sauce, but I am looking forward to trying yours. Did you know you can refrigerate the pizza dough and it gets a good chewy texture like from the pizza shops? Just use room temp water and refrigerate your dough until you are ready for it. I like to make the dough the night before and chill it. It saves time the next day when I'm ready to make the pizza. My eldest son always wants me to make my own pizza instead of ordering out, but occasionally this cook likes to have a night off! =)
Thanks again for the recipes. I think I'll try them next weekend.
Jeannie