welcome to saddie's psyche

If you could read my mind love, what a tale my thoughts would tell.
-Gordon Lightfoot

You Are What You Eat

If this is true, then my family is REALLY GOOD! Or at least we should be after eating homemade pizza approximately twice a week for the last two months - yeah, it's THAT good.

I found this recipe while blog surfing one night and since my life's goal has been to find the perfect pizza dough recipe, I decided to try it. It is everything the blogger promised - simple, easy, fast, delicious, freezable, and fun to experiment with! I can die happy.

Homemade Pizza in Under 30 Minutes!

1 Tbsp active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1tsp sugar
1tsp salt
2 Tbsp oil
2 1/2 cups flour

Dissolve the yeast in the water.
Add other ingredients and mix.
Knead until smooth.
Press into a greased pan. (We use corn meal instead to make it pizza parlor perfect!)
Add toppings.
Bake @ 450 for 12-15 min. until the crust is lightly browned.

We (meaning Levi) tend to lack imagination in the field of toppings (meat and cheese - what else?) but we enjoy messing with thickness and size. We've done everything from rolling it out thin; to inch thick, pan style in our round cake pans; to 4 inch diameter snack pizzas. This is how it appeared when Mom and Dad dropped by last Saturday and stayed for dinner. It was my new stone's maiden voyage, and while it did take longer to cook than the sheet pan, it performed beautifully.


Here's a single batch of dough. It covers our 15" pizza stone perfectly and is the perfect amount for four adults. To feed just our small family, we like to make a double batch and divide it into thirds, freezing 2/3 for later.


Canadian bacon and pepperoni for the guys, add pineapple for the girls. Sprinkle generously with Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and Parmesan cheese.

Yum yum! Good to the last ... um... morsel? So, what are you having for dinner? Odds are, we're having pizza.


PS I know I overused the word perfect, but it was the perfect word to use.

PPS A single batch is quite easily made by hand (trust me, this recipe supplied me my first time ever considering mixing bread by hand and I was pleasantly surprised by the ease and success of my venture) while a 3X (possibly 4x, I have yet to try it) batch easily fits in my machine.

PPPS I was going to credit the blogger who posted this little bit of magic, but the link I saved is now a dead end - so I send my thanks into the cosmos for the lady who made my life easier, tastier, and cheaper (less expensive, that is) too.

Double Vision

Yesterday was a rather exciting one at the Gubler residence. We took a peek in our hummingbird nest to find that our eggs had turned into baby hummingbirds! They are pretty difficult to photo, snuggled safely under the eaves, but those two dark bumps are our twin birds.

Yesterday also marked the (relative) completion of Tomie's new toddler bed. Yes, Tomas has graduated from the crib, which is a very good thing for Hazel since the bassinet was definitely not made for a 6 month old. So my boy is pretty much in love with his new "bed" that is "big." Happily he's learned to stay IN his big bed when Mommy says.

I found this sweet toddler bunk bed at the DI last year, and just finished repairing and painting it. Tomas kindly added a bit of ink artwork to the fresh white paint job, making it uniquely his. We still need to cut a piece of plywood to go on the top bunk, but for now it's great for jumping.

In other doubles news. My twin nephews can be seen on my sis-in-law's new blog. They are ever so cute and we're excited to see them nexter Sunday! Fun fun fun!

There And Back Again

The time of our annual adventure to Jean, NV (that's pronounced Jean Nebada) has come and gone. Here are some of the highlights:

Our inaugural stop was "the long hike" at Flagstone. We drove the 'zukis in and dropped off the guys, accoutred in their hiking regalia, to conquer the first two post of the mine claiming season. Here's the whole gang.


We spent Thursday at Easter Sunday. Tomas LOVED going for rides on the 4 wheeler and in the 'zuki. He's also been talking nonstop about how Dad and Grandpa went "up up up the mountain - around around." Hazel and I got to hang out together in the shade while everyone else worked. She thought eating licorice was grand fun - so sweet, so messy.

Friday was spent hanging out with the Stratton Fam in Vegas. I spent the morning hours getting a root canal (yippee!) while Tomie and Hazel played with Corbin and Jenna. Tomie is still talking about getting teeth "work d'on." (Hopefully he's still interested after his upcoming dental appointment, because he's got some teeth that need to be "work d'on" too.) After naps, we went to the Titanic exhibit at the Luxor. At the beginning of the exhibit we each got a "boarding pass" with a real passenger's information and at the end there was a list of who did or did not survive. I'm happy to report that Jane Richards and her two daughters, ages 8 and 2, made it through the ordeal alive. Unfortunately, of the male passengers in our group, only Dr. Frauenthal (Levi) survived. He was returning home from his wedding in France; his wife and brother also survived.

Saturday we spent the morning at the Lied Museum. We could've spent FOREVER there. The kids loved it - okay, so I did too; I'm a sucker for science museums! Tomas especially appreciated the fact that Clifford was there this month.

After lunch we headed out to the hotel pool. Tomie was being a chicken about the water being too cold, even though it was the perfect temperature. Hazel, on the other hand, was ready to play play play!

Some other miscellaneous highlights of our adventure were:

Tomas and "his" hat that he pretty much stole from Levi. Notice Levi is wearing the blue hat in the first pictures, but Tomie's has it later. Yeah, we still can't separate him from it.

The sparkly, lovely opal ring Levi bought for me to wear in place of my wonderful wedding ring that refuses to fit my now chubby finger. What a nice anniversary/mother's day present!

Eating in public with my children - ARGH!

Seeing the wild donkeys up close and personal this year. They were only like a hundred feet away. That was pretty cool.

Tomie getting to sleep in his "tent bed."

Having all the crusty casino ladies ooh and ahh over my cute baby girl.

All in all, it was a fun trip, but I was ever so glad to come home again. I missed my little garden, drinkable tap water, and having a separate bedroom from the children. Isn't it funny that I'm always dying to get away from the house, but after adventuring there's no place I'd rather be. Even if it is a messy bit of chaos, there's no place like home!