Well, if it isn’t the last day of the calendar year!
First of all, may I just ask where the time went this year? It seems like moments ago we were off celebrating the dawn of 2013, and now it’s … dusk. Or should I say dawn – the dawn of a new year!
Or something like that. The whole space-time continuum thing can get me a bit turned-around from time to time. Suffice it to say, the year flew by, as did the one before it, and so on. In fact, the years seem to be flying by faster and faster as I get (gulp) older. How does that work?
Ahem. Let’s talk about something much more concrete, shall we? Dinner!
Our friends Denise and Matt joined us for pizza tonight, and I knew I wanted to be able to entertain them during our feast rather than being stuck in the kitchen throughout the evening. So I got started a day early!
Last night, I put together a ball of pizza dough – my trusty KitchenAid makes it a snap – and let the dough rest in the fridge all night and throughout the day today. Then, just before our friends arrived, I brought it out of the fridge and shaped it into the mold of my pizza pan. After 12 minutes in the oven at 450 just to firm up the crust, I brought it back out, topped it with pizza sauce, mozzarella shreds, and chopped veggie burgers and sliced black olives, and put it back into the oven for another 12 minutes (again at 450). As the pizza cooked, I whipped up a quick salad – just romaine lettuce, cherry tomatoes, olives, and garbanzo beans – and before we knew it, our martinis were consumed and the pizza was ready!
And so begins the last few hours of 2013. I’ll be sure to regale you with any good stories to emerge from the rest of tonight! And in the meantime, happy new year! Here’s to a wonderful 2014!
:)