Pita Pizza

Sara and I made Pita Pizzas tonight for dinner. We bought some whole wheat pitas a while ago, and kind of forgot about them, so we've been trying to use them up before they completely dry out. (Left - me spreading my homemade pizza sauce on our pitas for pizza).
We've made Pita sandwiches, we made pizza one time before, and used them for burritos. Tonight we decided to make pizzas. I made the pizza sauce (and it turned out superb, might I add?) So in the first picture here, you see me spreading my secret sauce on the pitas.
After the sauce, we added cheddar cheese, cubed chicken, black olives, and mandarin oranges. We used mandarin oranges because Sara and I both like pineapple on our pizza, but we didn't have any pineapple, so we decided to try mandarin oranges. (Right - Sara cutting the mandarin oranges for our pizzas. If you notice, she is talking on the phone while cutting . . .) Its not too bad, but pineapple is much better. I think that mandarin oranges are just too sweet for pizza.
Anyway, it was really good. Its kind of funny because I didn't used to cook, meaning both that I didn't like to cook and that I had no idea how to cook without a recipe. Though I wouldn't say that I love to cook, I don't mind it now and I've discovered that I hate to cook with recipes. I usually will look up a recipe for something to get ideas on what to put in something, but I never measure, and I tend to experiment with spices. I never used to be like that before. I really don't know where it all came from.
But anyway, now when I get ready for dinner, I decide what I want to have and then I figure out how to do it with what we have. Its kind of nice to be able to improvise. (Left - the finished pizza) I made pumpkin cobbler a couple of weeks ago (I'm not brave enough to bake without a recipe since I don't understand how all the elements work together) but was missing some of the spices. Instead, I used what I had, and it turned out really tasty. That has helped me to build my confidence it making substitutions in baking if I need to.
Oh, and HAPPY WOMEN'S DAY!!

Pumpkin's are evil

I don't really think pumpkins are evil, I just had a heck of a time tonight with one. I've had a pumpkin sitting on my counter since, well, Halloween. I've been telling myself that I was going to cook it and we would have fresh pumpkin, but it just kept sitting there. So, tonight, I decided to cut it open and cook its flesh (See left). That was much tougher than I thought. It wouldn't have been so bad if I had some kind of steamer, but I had to boil it, and to do that I needed to remove the outer shell.
Well, I slipped a couple of times while I was cutting the pumpkin open. One time I sliced off a huge chunk of skin. It started bleeding profusely. I put on a bandage, but soon realized that one just wasn't going to cut it (ha ha, really bad pun) when I noticed that blood was leaking through the pores. I didn't know band-aids could bleed... (see below). Well, the pain didn't stop there. I also cut a couple of times into the tip of my thumb. I'm lucky I didn't cut my finger off, and if I ever decide to have a fresh pumpkin again, I'm going to get a steamer so I can just steam it in its shell.
That was only one of my adventures for the day. Besides that, Sara and I went grocery shopping. A new store just opened up here in Provo called Buy Low Market. Sara got a part-time job there, so she brought home their ad. I was happy to see that they were having a sale on chicken for $.99/lb! And that was for boneless, skinless chicken breasts. Unfortunately, we had to buy a 40 lb box to get that price. I didn't really know how much 40lbs of chicken was until I saw the box. When we got it home, we started separating it to put in our freezer. We got half-way through when I decided that we could not handle 40lbs of chicken. I had already planned to offer some to my cousin's family (Adam and Betsy) but now I really hoped that they would want some, so I called them up. To my great delight, not only did they want some, but they were willing to take half! They even went and bought a 40lb box for other family members (Josh and Catie, my other cousins, are sharing a box with Jim and Carla, my aunt and uncle). Between us all, a lot of chickens had to die.