Yep, we had homemade pizza for dinner. On a weeknight. I even made the dough myself.  But lest you think I’m Super Suzy Q. Homemaker, let me introduce you to my favorite new item at the grocery store.

My aunt found this stuff and introduced it to my mom, who is absolutely nuts for it. Perhaps even more so because she CANNOT get it in Illinois. None of the local grocery stores carry it, and you couldn’t buy it online (now, apparently, you can… but it’s more expensive).  It’s like the frigging Wii of yeast. Feel free to check and see if your grocery chain carries it, but know that I ended up on a wild goose chase at my LEAST favorite supermarket in the area.  I bought about 20 packets and sent them all to my mom.

But what makes it awesome is not that it’s necessarily the most awesome pizza crust you’ve ever had the privilege of eating… it’s that you don’t have to let the dough rise.  Seriously, you just mix it up, knead it for a couple of minutes, and make your pizza.

Even with a pair of, ahem, “helpers” and worse-than-usual time management on my part, I still had it out of the oven barely an hour after deciding to make it.

Just toss the ingredients into a bowl (I use about half whole-wheat flour), mix it up with some hot tap water and a little olive oil.  A bunch of the flour gets kneaded in post-mixing, as it’s a very sticky dough.

I bake mine in a lightly-greased half sheet pan, and could care less what shape the dough turns into.  I cook up some Italian sausage, caramelize some onions, and sauté some red pepper (or, at least, I was going to… forgot I already used it earlier in the week).  No sauce.  Mix of shredded mozzarella and Monterey Jack with a healthy amount of salt, pepper, and oregano.

YUM.

The recipe is on the packet, and one package of yeast makes a pizza that’s easily big enough for three or four adults, depending on your appetite. M and I alone do some serious damage to this thing.  The kids, sadly, refused to taste it. Maybe some day.

Anyways, there are plenty of other great pizza recipes out there.  But if you want to decide at 5PM on a weeknight that you’re making pizza for dinner, here’s a way.

And no, FTC, nobody asked me to write this. I just love me some homemade pizza.

Pouring rain, yet again. Toddlers are going bonkers, as am I. (And, no, New England bloggers will not stop talking about the crappy weather until it actually turns into summer.) The mall play area was a mob scene this morning, and the new indoor playspace nearby was apparently so crowded the other morning that there was a line out the door. Insanity. Need sun.

In the meantime, I decided to do a little baking with the kiddos. Our favorite: zucchini muffins (see end of post for recipe link and info). While they were waking up, I laid out my strategy. When I’ve tried cooking with them once or twice before, I realized they have zero tolerance for me trying to find ingredients. This called for a full-on mise en place.

Oh, sure, it sounds snooty and French. But there’s a reason all of the TV chefs have everything laid out in little bowls ahead of time: it makes things go a whole hell of a lot smoother. That’s true enough when cooking by yourself, especially with certain fast-moving recipes with lots of ingredients. It’s even more critical when there are impatient 23-month-olds involved in the food prep.

In an unusual twist, Daniel was awake while Rebecca stayed asleep. Great, a little one-on-one activity. After putting his fingers in the eggs a few times (doh), he proved a good helper when it came to pouring things from one bowl to another, and had an… unusual whisk technique.

Was I a little nuts to do this? Especially right after my beloved cleaning ladies had been over and made everything smell nice and stop sticking to my feet? Ah well. I even let him help get the batter into the muffin pan.

The aftermath was not pretty, but it could have been worse.

And with the joy of the mise en place, do I feel like I used nearly every bowl in my kitchen? Totally. But hey, the dishwasher had already been emptied. In they all go.

And, in the end, we get super yummy muffins (yes, I just flipped them out of the pan and let them cool upside down).

By the time they came out of the oven, Rebecca was up and joined in on the fun. Yumminess was shared by all.

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We use the Stonyfield Farms recipe for zucchini bread. Only slight modifications. I substitute whole wheat flour for about half of the all-purpose. It makes two full muffin tins, or two loaf pans, so be prepared that it’s quite a lot. As with all muffins and quickbreads, make sure not to over-mix. And I bake the muffins at 375 for about 25 minutes. Enjoy!