Dinner

Diet food? Nope. Delightfully yummy? Yep!!! Here's the recipe - if I remember to take a picture of it after I create it tonight I'll post it, but if I forget you can trust me that it's beautiful and so good. By the way, this thin crust recipe is the best I've found, for any sort of toppings! And the Alfredo sauce, minus the spinach, is my everyday alfredo sauce recipe - really good combined with a red sauce and served over ravioli, canneloni, etc.

SPINACH ALFREDO PIZZA

Thin Crust:

2 ¼ tsp yeast
¼ tsp sugar
¾ c. HOT water
1 ¾ c flour
½ tsp salt

Preheat oven to 500*.

Dissolve yeast and sugar in hot water. Let sit for 8 minutes. Add flour and salt, mix well then knead with mixer for 1 minute or 2 minutes by hand. Spread into a 12-14” circle – you can do this directly on your pizza stone with a rolling pin, or on the counter top and transfer to a greased pizza pan, stretching to the edges.

Bake crust for five minutes; remove from oven, flip crust over and bake for three minutes more. Let cool.

Meanwhile, prepare sauce and toppings:

Spinach alfredo sauce:

2 T butter
½ c heavy cream
½ clove garlic, crushed
¾ c grated Parmesan cheese
5 oz frozen spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

Melt butter in saucepan over medium low heat. Add cream and garlic and simmer for five minutes. Add cheese and spinach and whisk quickly, heating through.

Toppings:

1 T olive oil
Spinach alfredo sauce
2 cups mozzarella cheese
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Other optional toppings to add:
Chicken, cooked and cubed
Mushrooms, fresh or canned
Artichoke hearts
Black olives

Spread olive oil on cooled pizza crust, then top with alfredo sauce. (Add artichoke hearts and/or chicken here if desired). Cover with mozzarella and parmesan cheese. (Top with mushrooms and/or black olives if desired).

Bake for five more minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned and the cheese is all melted.

Happy Birthday Christa!

24 years ago today ... well, that's a story for a personal conversation, not a blog. Let's just say Christa's entry into the world was every bit as exciting as the ensuing 24 years with her have been! I love you Sis - can't imagine my life without you in it, a block away, calling me multiple times a day, sharing your kids with me, cooking with me, sleeping on my couch, shopping on Fridays, walking at the Mall ... and so on and so on.

We had a fun day - went to Blackbob park and let the kids play and had a picnic with Shannon and the girls and GG. Does anyone know exactly where that little kid-warm day-playing outside- funky smell comes from?? Every kid I've ever known smells exactly the same after playing outside. Anyway, fun stuff.



And for those of you who are wondering, here she is last week, at 16 weeks pregnant ... she gets her money's worth out of her maternity clothes, that's for sure! :)

First crush?

Christa and Shannon (my niece, Christa's cousin, mommy to Kylee and Alaina) and I have been meeting to walk and then let the kids play together on Wednesdays. This week we're going to try a picnic at the park to celebrate Christa's birthday! It's neat to watch the babies bond - with each other and with strangers ...

Mason followed this little girl around the ENTIRE time we were there ... kinda freaked her (and her dad) out at first, but eventually she got used to him. He was relentless in his pursuit of her, even turning down a snack to stay by her side!

Kylee and Lexi sitting in a tree ... Kylee OWNED Lexi this day! It was hilarious watching Kylee ordering her around and Lexi obeying in awe and wonder ...
... and poor Alaina was still trying to recover from an ear infection; in spite of that she was in good spirits and made us laugh a lot!!

How do little piggies eat??

Here's a pictorial of this afternoon's snack ... it started with popcorn, but Papa added grapes, and she looked like she had the mumps before it was all over!





This next one is just sweet.



I had a lovely day with Lexi - Christa and Mason had a doctor's appointment this morning, so Lexi and I took advantage of the one-on-one time with her choice for breakfast (corn ... go figure), doing her hair, painting her nails, and playing the games I won't let her get out when Mason's around!

Arizona plant life

Some pictures of plants you're not likely to see in Kansas!
It's amazing to me the vast differences in the landscape from coast to coast - hard to believe it's all the same chunk of land, really.
And the winner is ... GG! She's right - that sewer pump looking thing in the last post is actually a lid to a small in-ground trash can.
It can hold maybe two medium-sized kitchen trash bags - how would you like to be on the trash team out there and have to dig around underground at every stop?? Like I said this was a big topic of conversation while we were there ... obviously it was a pretty low-key vacation! :)

Arizona desert

Here's a few of the pictures I took out in "Green Valley, Arizona" - as you can see, there's not much green there! I actually did not take very many pictures at all on this vacation, which is highly unusual for me - I realized the last day that I'd just been living it instead of capturing it on camera, which is not a bad thing!


This is a sample of what the houses all looked like out there - how foreign to us mid-westerners! But the weather was so beautiful - high 80's during the day (dry heat!) and cooling off into the 50's overnight, and this apparently efficient design of houses that the air conditioner never came on and we were completely comfortable - even me, hot flash woman. :)

More pictures in a minute, but first a word picture that hopefully will impact you as mightily as it did me - first let me set the stage: 79.7% of Green Valley residents are over the age of 72. Now, imagine the pool: Lots of "gaggles" of old ladies in one-piece (thank you) swimsuits in the water, all with hats on. Single scattered instances of REALLY old men, laying out in the sun, heads dutifully covered with hats, but otherwise wearing nothing but a SPEEDO!!!!!!! This should be illegal, I'm telling you - there was one guy right beside me one day that when he turned over from his back to his stomach I had to turn on my side away from him because my eyes kept being drawn like magnets to the wedgie. GROSS!!!!

Linda and Darah and I went for a walk every day, which was wonderful ... until the last day when Linda and I went without Darah, our navigator, and got so lost we actually had to call home for help. We were only three blocks from home. Pitiful. I know now where I got my "birth defect" of not being able to find my way out of a paper bag.


On Friday we went into Mexico - about a 30 minute drive - we parked and walked across the border. We had had several discussions about whether a passport was needed, and were reassured by Darah that a passport wasn't needed until next January (unless you're flying in), that a driver's license would be sufficient. So just as we're walking down the bridge, someone (B.J.?) said, "Now everyone has their driver's license, right?" Oops. I didn't bring my purse, and it never even crossed my mind. After some discussion it was decided we'd go in anyway, because they don't want your ID until you try to leave, and they were all sure I'd get back out. Worst case scenario, I'd spend a couple weeks in jail, right? :) Actually, worst case scenario was that they'd have to drive home for my driver's license, and in reality the guy let me through with only a question about where I was born and if I was an American citizen. By then I was so scared I must have looked pitiful because he actually laughed and waved me through. Whew. All in all it was an interesting experience - a couple hours of hearing "Hey rich American lady, you need to buy my stuff" was plenty for me.


I like this picture of B.J. and Greg ... but the lady in the picture on the wall sort of freaked me out. This was in the condo, which was REALLY nice - two bedrooms, big eat-in kitchen, dining room/living room (also Darah and B.J.'s sleeping quarters), a big screened porch and then a patio beyond that. Tons of space, and we were able to just hang out, cook and eat our meals there, and really relax with each other. It was wonderful.


OK this was the topic of much conversation while we were there - anyone know what it is? Every house had one in our neighborhood anyway. Give me some guesses!


Grapefruit trees - AMAZING! They were everywhere!


Did you know there are really and truly roadrunners in Arizona? Look closely at the picture above - see the two little birds? Linda and I were so excited that we got pictures of them - we had seen a bigger one the day before but didn't have a camera, and the guys had seen one the same day. Only one problem here - when Greg enlarged this picture and looked at them he informed me they were quail. Darn it.

Well that's enough for now - a long post, I know, but I figure I have some ground to make up for my lax blogging the past couple of months!

Mason the Magician

We're home from a wonderful trip to Green Valley, Arizona. We stayed with Linda and Bill in a condo they've rented for the month of March, and B.J. and Darah joined us there since he was on spring break last week. I will say that there is nothing "green" about Green Valley ... I have pictures to prove it but this video HAD to be my first post.



Takes a little coaxing, and he has to be positioned EXACTLY right in that back corner to pull this off ... love the little "running Mason" dance at the beginning too ... and don't you love how he hangs there suspended until he gets his balance/bearings well enough to drop his short self to the floor?! Life just got a little more complicated at the Kuchta household! :)

Pork chop? Ham hock?

Nope! Just Mason's roly poly arm. I do love that boy naked - can't wait for summer! He loves his tummy and walks around with his shirt hiked up over it (the shirt rests nicely there) all the time.

Painted rooms

Greg's had some days at home in the last couple of weeks, and painted our spare bedrooms - this one is Lexi's - she sleeps in this bed whenever she's here. She only will have the small beige pillows in the bed with her though, everything else has to go on the floor in a very OCD-ish order. :) Shocker.
I really love the gold color - the room feels really cozy and warm. Last night the kids spent the night and the "funder" woke Lexi up - it was so sad! I had to bring her downstairs and cuddle her until the storm quieted down. It's weird the way these pictures don't quite do the color justice - it's not nearly as "mustard" as these look, more gold.
This is Mason's room - more of a cocoa color. Looks good with the pink quilt ... I'm not sure how he ended up in the pink room but oh well.
His crib is on the other wall - didn't take a picture of it because it is stripped down to the bare mattress today while I'm washing all his bedding ... a diaper was never made that that kid can't pee through in a night. :( And, these last two pictures are taken in the same room but the colors look totally different ... the bottom one is really closer to the real color, the top one looks too pink.

I mostly posted these for Emily, who was asking about our new colors - our living room is the next project, which has really high ceilings, one wall painted a sort of dark seafoam green and the rest white. Our furniture is mauve/burgundy/blue/green, and we're having a hard time deciding what color to choose, and whether we should keep the green wall for accent or not. Suggestions?