Make It

Let's Talk Pizza Again

Matt, while not as pizza-obsessed as I am, is certainly fan of the dish as well. We use pizza to mark our anniversary and Valentine's Day every year and the only reason that we didn't go out for pizza the night he proposed is because Ann Arbor doesn't have any nice ambiance pizza places. As we talk about having our wedding in the backyard, we're considering asking our neighbor for the use of his backyard wood fired oven for the occasion so our guests can make pizzas under the stars. (Here's a look at a wedding featured on Style Me Pretty featuring pizza for the catering.)

Here are some old photos from this year's Valentine's meal. Our first experiment with homemade deep dish pizza (using a Cooks Illustrated recipe) and a rhubarb/raspberry ice cream concoction that turned out the perfect shade of Valentine's pink.

Let's Talk Pizza

I need to talk about pizza, because I don't think I've accurately conveyed on this blog how much I love it. So let's get this out in the open: I love pizza.

Any pizza will do, but my true love is homemade pizza. It didn't always used to be this way. I still have a weak spot for a greasy cheesy slice from Pizza Hut/Domino's/Papa John's, and of course any fancy designer concoction from a coal-fired oven type of place, but given my druthers I now think I prefer my own homemade pizza above any of those. My ideal slice is thin crusted, light on sauce and cheese, with a thoughtful topping combination. When I make it at home, I can get it just like I want it.

At Emma Pizzeria in Cambridge I learned the wonders of sweet potato as a topping and discovered that a great salad is the perfect pizza companion. I'm not talking some limp Iceberg lettuce and shredded carrots. I'm talking spinach salad with green apples, nuts, red onion and the kind of dressing that makes a salad dressing hater like me sop up the last bits with every spare spinach leaf and pizza crust I can get my hands on. I recently recreated an Emma's-like pizza and salad experience in my home and the results were so amazing that I have to share.

Dough: I've really enjoyed using this dough recipe in the past, but you have to make it ahead of time and let it sit overnight and some times I just don't have the forethought to do that. This dough recipe is my new go-to, because it can be made same day but still yields the thin crispy crust that I crave.

Sauce: Start with a 28oz can of whole tomatoes. Cook with half an onion and a pat of butter, like this recipe. I always freeze the leftovers.

Toppings: I alternate between fresh balls of mozzarella and the regular kind and I don't really have a preference. Sweet potato/Italian sausage/red onion has been a favorite topping combination lately (cook the sweet potato in the microwave first). But I'll try just about anything. Occasionally when I take the pizza out of the oven, I sprinkle it with some grated Parmesan and chopped parsley. I'm always interested in trying new topping combos, leave your favorites in the comments!

Salad: Spinach, green apples, red onion, some type of nut, some type of dried fruit like cranberries or dates. I whipped up this dressing on the spot and so don't remember quantities, but it had a little bit of olive oil, lemon juice, parsley, Dijon mustard, champagne vinegar, salt and pepper.

Ginger Tea for Rainy Days

This rainy weekend, I made a batch of Ginger tea to soothe my sore throat and ward off what felt like an oncoming cold. I have two versions of ginger tea. The first is a very simple combination of chopped ginger (don't bother to peel), honey, and lemon juice (from about 1/2 a lemon). I don't really measure anything, I just put it all in a french press, pour hot water over and let it steep for 5 minutes before I strain and drink.

This weekend I made another recipe that is a little more involved, but no more complicated. It's from a local Asian restaurant called Pacific Rim and the recipe, along with a few other recipes appears here. I can't wait to try this iced when the weather warms up.

1 gallon water
1 cup sliced ginger (I didn't bother to peel the skin)
1 cup dried dates
4 red delicious apples, sliced (I had Fiji apples so that's what I used)

Place all ingredients in a large pot and simmer for 3 hours. Strain and serve hot or iced. Add honey and lemon if you like.

Writing a Book: Time for Test Readers

I thought blogging about the process of writing a book would be exciting, but it turns out it's anything but. Writing a book is slow, tedious work. I am anxious to be finished, but every time I think I'm close I see something else that needs major tweaking: plot elements, point of view of the narrator, removing or adding characters. I've been working on it nearly everyday for the past few months, and there's lots of excitement happening in the story, on the page, but the process is a slog. It's a butt-in-chair-hands-on-keyboard type of work (I read that on some writing blog, but I forgot where) and I've probably written and deleted just as much as I've kept.

But, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This week I finally finished a full draft of the manuscript. There are still (still!) unresolved issues, typos, plot holes and probably too many characters and story threads, but at least I've got the entire thing down start to finish. My protagonist has a major goal (it actually took me a long time to figure out what that was) in the process of pursuing that goal she goes through a transformation and ends the book in a different place from where she started. And that's the point, to have a protag that readers will identify with and even if they don't agree with her or what she does, they see her as a character that is growing and changing, not a static entity.

I had four bound copies made of my manuscript, which is currently 68,000 words about 340 double spaced pages. I'm passing them out to some friends who are going to read and make notes right on the pages. In a couple of weeks I hope to get these back, go through the notes and make another set of revisions. My ideal scenario would be that everyone loves the story, they'll have notes which mirror my own, none of which require a major re-write, I make the changes in a week and then start querying literary agents. Of course, the other scenario is that it's very possible that they would have major issues with the book. In that case, I'll take their advice to heart and if need be, make those changes. On the day I sent out the copies, I was really nervous in a way I didn't expect. For other people to judge what I've been working on so intensely for 8 months is really nerve-wracking. My goal has been all along to get published and to have other people read what I've written, but that has always seemed like a distant possibility. By putting my work in the hands of test readers I'm taking one more step towards that goal.

Balloons Are Cheap and Chic

Having a wedding on a budget doesn't mean we want to sacrifice style and I don't really think we'll need to. Wedding blogs and magazines like MS Weddings are so chockful of DIY projects and resources that the only limit to what we can pull off at the wedding is the amount of effort we're willing to put in.

Lately, I've become a big fan of oversized balloons, which seem to offer the most bang for their buck. Matt is dubious, so this post is for him. 

 

(Image Credit) 

 

(Image Credit) 

The trick is to stick with the matte-finish oversized latex ones and use a limited color palette. I've found a variety of colors here, six 36" balloons for $13. We'll also have to factor in the cost of a helium inflater if we go this route.

And of course, there's this:

 

 

Invitation Inspiration

 

    This is the Martha Stewart Weddings invitation that I have had bookmarked, ever since I saw it a couple of years ago on frolic, as my ultimate wedding invitation inspiration. It looks like a handwritten letter, but is in fact letterpressed in colored ink. Be still my heart!  

    I have pretty good handwriting (I've actually gotten many compliments on it) so I'm drawn to the idea of writing this out in my own script. It falls in line with the very personal, homespun nature of the type of wedding we're planning. But, if money was no object, I could be tempted to commission Betsy Dunlap.

  As for Save the Dates, I'm not sure if we're going to send paper ones or stick with email in order to save money. If we do paper ones, I'd love to use these cards from Winged Wheel Japan and either rubber stamp the info on the back or screenprint it in white ink. They would make excellent Thank You cards as well.

  

 

While having custom letterpress invites is a priority (it's the one wedding thing I want to splurge on) we'll get more mileage by mixing elements of our stationery suite with "off the rack" cards: the stationery equivalent of mixing high and low.

Alabama Chanin DIY Style Wedding Dress

 

 The dress is probably the element of the wedding that I'm least interested in. Food, yep. Venue, yep. Decor, yep. Invitations, of course. Dress, meh.

I'm not much of a clothes person anyway, and though I'd love to find a great dress for the wedding, it's certainly taking a backseat to other considerations. But if I were so inclined to spend my time on a DIY wedding dress project, I just might think of trying my hand at a dress in the spirit of Alabama Chanin.

I've been a fan of Natalie Chanin ever since Project Alabama, which was getting big press back when I still lived in Birmingham in high school. My love of her work only continued to grow when I received her sewing book for my birthday last year. I am a huge fan of the emphasis on hand crafts and re-use of found fabrics. Call me crazy, but I'm convinced that you could make an Alabama Chanin style dress like this:

 

 With a little creative embroidery and applique work on an American Apparel dress like this: 

What do you say, can anything remotely wedding appropriate be created from the work of Dov Charney? 

The Secret of Kells

 

 I'm writing this a few hours before the Oscars and I'm eagerly awaiting the ceremony so I can see if a movie I watched last night wins in the best animated movie category. As you can see, there is lots of eye candy here for lovers of hand drawing.

Secret of Kells tells an animated tale loosely based on the creation of the Book of Kells, an illustrated manuscript of the New Testament, widely considered to be Ireland's greatest treasure. I found the thick Irish accents difficult to understand in the beginning, but was able to understand it enough to follow the story. But, frankly, the story is second to the amazing animation. The fact that the use of layered patterns and illustrations here mimics the look of the pages of the Book of Kells was an excellent decision on the part of the filmmakers. Though this is an animated film, there are some scary scenes I wouldn't recommend for children younger than middle school age. 

 

 

All About Mermaids

 

I spoke in a previous blog post about how my novel-in-progress puts a twist on a well known fantasy trope, but I don't think I ever mentioned what that trope was: mermaids!

I've been fascinated by mermaids for a long time - dating back to a straight up obsession with Disney's The Little Mermaid - and when I started to think last summer about a YA fantasy book, they were the first creatures that came to mind. What I like about mermaids is that they're well known yet still mysterious. Everyone knows what a mermaid looks like of course, but lots of other aspects of them remain secret. Can they walk on land? How do they communicate underwater? Where do they live? What do they eat? Can they mate with humans? If so, what happens to the offspring? I thought it would be fun to come up with my own answers to these questions.

In the past few weeks I've had both my dad and Matt read my manuscript. They offered some very helpful suggestions and the combination of their comments, plus some additional brainstorming on my part have lead me to make some big changes. With 55,000 words written -well within striking distance of my goal of 65,000 words - I decided to change my work from first person point of view to third person point of view. I'm now doing the tedious work of going through ever page and changing all the "I" pronouns to "she." I've also finally figured out how the book is going to end by following this advice, which I found on a writing blog:

"Imagine the absolute worst thing that could happen to your main character and then make it happen."

With these two tweaks, I can tell my story is much stronger and I truly feel like I'm nearing a point where I'll be able to send it out to some readers for feedback. (Image credit)