Sunday = Funday!

So yesterday was Sunday (duh!) , and in an effort to avoid the Sunday blah's we sometimes get in the van der Veen house we've decided to make Sunday a funday.  Considering the crazy day we had Saturday we were all in need of some down time!  We slept in, played on the Wii, shot some hoops, and then began to play in the kitchen.  It was decided that pizza would be on the menu and what better compliment to pizza than cookies! 
I've had somewhat of a fickle relationship with pizza crust recipes, never quite settling on that one really good formula.  I've flirted around with a few versions via allrecipes and they were good but maybe I've just gotten bored.  So in an effort to find a new and improved crust I visited one of my new favorites Pioneer woman and bingo found the following lovely recipe for pizza crust.  It was so good  that Jake declared I should open a restaurant! 

Basic Pizza Crust:

Ingredients

• 1 teaspoon Instant Or Active Dry Yeast
• 1-½ cup Warm Water
• 4 cups All-purpose Flour
• 1 teaspoon Kosher Salt
• ⅓ cups Olive Oil

Preparation Instructions

Sprinkle yeast over 1 1/2 cups warm (not lukewarm) water. Let stand for a few minutes.
In a mixer, combine flour and salt. With the mixer running on low speed (with paddle attachment), drizzle in olive oil until combined with flour. Next, pour in yeast/water mixture and mix until just combined, and the dough comes together in a sticky mass.
Coat a separate mixing bowl with a light drizzle of olive oil, and form the dough into a ball. Toss to coat dough in olive oil, then cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap and set it aside for 1 to 2 hours, or store in the fridge until you need it.
Note: it’s best to make the dough at least 24 hours in advance, and 3 or 4 days is even better.
When you are ready to make the pizza, grab HALF the pizza dough (recipe makes 2 crusts) and squeeze the dough toward the bottom to form a nice, tight, pulled ball. You can roll out the pizza with a rolling pin if you’d like, but sometimes it’s just as easy to throw it around and pull and stretch till it feels right. And when the crust is nice and thin, lay it on an oiled baking sheet or pizza pan. Drizzle a little olive oil on the dough and spread it with your fingers. Very lightly sprinkle some salt on the crust.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Top your crust with your toppings of choice. Then bake for 15 to 17 minutes, or until crust is golden brown and toppings are bubbly.

And YES we did make half the pizza Chicken BBQ and it was yummy! 

Next up were the cookies that Ella helped me make.  We decided on peanut butter and I used this recipe for them.  Problem was - we were already going on the cookies when I realized we didn't *quite* have enough peanut butter, we were short like 1/4 cup.  One taste of the dough confirmed that these cookies needed some help!  So we dug around in the cupboards and found butterscotch chips, chocolate chips, oatmeal and pecans!  Ella had fun dumping these items in willy-nilly and the result was super deliciously good.  We discussed what we should call our new creation and came up with "They were going to be peanut butter but are now peanut butter, chocolate chip, butterscotch, oatmeal and pecan cookies!" 

So Sunday was indeed fun!  One of my favorite moments was when the kids were in hysterics talking about if me and "mama" kitty traded places!  We had all sorts of crazy scenario's we came up with.  Fun!

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world

J.R.R. Tolkien