Dinners with my Boys

Now that the homeschoolers are planning their February meals, I think it's time to share some photos from our November cooking!

Daniel loves apple pie (like his Dad) and crisp. Our favorite version is to make the filling for a 9 or 10 inch pie and stuff it into a 9" square glass pan. Then we top it with the topping from another crisp recipe. Bake until the apples are tender and the topping is brown. Great with ice cream, of course.

We've had homemade pizza on and off for years, and I've finally tweaked the recipe to the point that the kids like it just (or is it almost?) as much as delivery. My problem was that the crust was always too thick. We now roll it out as thin as we can, and place on three (I used to make just two with the same amount of dough!) perforated pizza pans. An advantage of this is that we can assemble the pizzas and then keep them in the fridge until it's time to bake them (in the pan) at 500 degrees on the baking stone.

ANYWAY, Daniel chose three different toppings. Shown here is the most unusual--a BBQ pizza. On a thin layer of Famous Dave's rich and sassy BBQ sauce, he distributed shredded meat (we now can't remember whether it was beef or pork), then sprinkled on grated cheddar cheese. Yum! He also made a cheese pizza and one topped with pepperoni and lots of Italian sausage.

Joe's meal sounds simple: soup, salad, and bread. He worked hard, though, making tomato soup from scratch, a composed chef's salad, and Irish soda bread. The most fun part of making the soup was pureeing it, because we have (thanks, Mom and Dad!) an immersion blender. This is a blender on a stick that goes into the soup pot so we didn't have to move the soup in batches. It's nickname is the "zh-zh", because that's what it sounds like (the "ge" sound in "beige").

We usually serve chef's salad as a make-your-own item from ingredients scattered around the table. Joe's presentation was beautiful and easier to serve.

Take note of the basket of homemade (with WHITE BREAD) croutons--no leftovers, let me assure you!

Dessert was banana pops coated with chocolate. They were supposed to be rolled in toffee chips or peanuts. We substituted chopped pistachios, which I wouldn't do again. They were salted and didn't stay very crunchy. Simple banana and chocolate would have been tastier.