Friday, July 3, 2009

New Stuff I Made

For Father's Day Val got me a 14.5" deep dish pizza pan. I tried it out the other day for the first time. My goal was to make a chicago style pizza. It you don't know what that is, it's like an actual pie without a top crust. In other words, the crust goes along the bottom like normal, but then goes up the sides of a deep dish - making a deep dish pan shape out of crust. Then you fill it to the top with the topping - but upside down. The cheese is on the bottom, followed by veggies and pepperoni, then topped with a very chunky sauce. I throw a couple of pepperonis on top of the sauce so I can tell when it's done cooking (The pepperonis get crispy).


The above is not my pizza. It's from a place called Zachary's in Berkeley which is delicious! It's my inspiration. Here is my result. It's enormous!




Although it tasted alright, it was too big. One apple thick! That's a third of a Smurf! The problem was that I used my usual dough recipe which tends to rise quite a bit. Confining it to a deep dish pan forces it to rise straight up. Now I am on a quest to find a deep dish crust recipe which will remain thinner (but not cracker-like)while being delicious! I'll keep you posted as I progress toward my goal.

The next thing I made was for my kids. My kids have been wanting their own light sabers. I've see a few nerf-like swords online for $15 or more each. A friend gave us a couple, but the inner stick broke pretty quickly. As I was trying to fix them, It occured to me that I could make way better ones on my own.

So I did.

It cost me $3 to make 4 swords.

I bought a couple of water weenie/noodles from the dollar store. Next I bought a length of 1/2" pvc pipe. (I even cut it down to size right there at the store). Next I slid the pipe down the hole of the noodle. Finished! I taped the handles just to make them look nicer.






I had a couple of feet left over, so I left only a short bit of pipe showing, and plan on connectling them with string (or chain) for nerf Nunchucks.

I made one other thing, but it's not done yet. It should be done by Sunday. I'll let Val show that one.

3 comments:

Sarah said...

Looked like good pizza...wish I could convince Scott to take up the quest to make the perfect pizza. Love the swords! Every foam sword we've had has broken in only a couple of days. AND...I'm waiting for pics of Zoey! Mom said you were going to email some...did you forget your little sis? Tell Val she is AMAZING!!!

Andy Porter said...

That pizza looks really tasty right now.

Hannah said...

We went to Provo's Freedom Festival with Mom the other day. They had a bunch of booths out and Mom bought my boys swords just like this (except for shorter) for $3 each! I didn't know how they were made until Sam ripped his apart to reveal the PVC pipe center.