Hey, I bought new car! My first new car ever. It's a Ford Fusion, and apparently I actually like driving when I'm reasonably certain of getting from A to B. It's an unfamiliar feeling, I'm not sure what to make of it.

Pizza Dough

I have been loving the pizza dough from How to Cook Everything. It's a fantastic dough, and it's so easy I'm running out of justifications for having pizza delivered, other than laziness. We've been putting the pizza directly on our pizza stone in the hot oven. This took some practice-- You need enough flour or corn starch for the dough not to stick to your pizza peel, but not too much that the pizza is loaded with flour underneath. I've also been giving the peel a good back and forth shake before putting the pizza in the oven to unstick it.

• 2 teaspoons yeast
• 3 cups all-purpose flour (about 14 ounces)
  
• 2 teaspoons coarse Kosher or sea salt
• 1 cup water
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

1. Combine the yeast, flour, and salt in the mixer. As it is mixing, add the 1 cup of water and 2 T of oil.
2. Mix, adding more water until the mixture forms a ball and is slightly sticky.
3. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead for a few seconds until it forms a smooth round ball. Grease a bowl, and place the dough in the bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm, draft free area until it doubles in size (1-2 hours). You can also stick it in the fridge for 6-8 hours, but you need to let the dough warm up to room temp for about a half hour before you can stretch it.
4. Heat the oven to 500 degrees F while you stretch out the dough onto your pans. (This dough is really easy to manipulate, so it won't take long.)
5. Add your toppings.
6. Cook for 10-12 minutes depending on how crisp you like your pizza.

About a week ago I predicted to myself that all the snow would be gone by today. It's been completely sunny and highs were in the 30s and 40s. We've been fooled into thinking it felt like summer, even though we still wore coats.

Umm, I was completely wrong. We've made progress, though! My front yard snow has gone from about 1.5 feet of packed snow to about 6 inches of packed snow. There are patches of grass everywhere, especially on the edges of lawns and boulevards and under trees. It's very exciting. I just looked at our 10 day forecast and with highs in the 50s (!) and three days of rain coming up, I'm going to go ahead and predict publicly that all of our snow will be gone by this time next week, aside from those mountains of snow accumulated on the corners of driveways, of course. I was hoping more of the snow would be gone before we started getting rain, that sort of complicates the dog-walking a bit (ground is still frozen, snow and ice clogging up the drains, etc etc), but I'll take anything.

This all very exciting. We haven't seen grass since December. Now we can see some! It's dead grass, but at least it's something, right?

Easy Chai Tea

I got this from a Real Simple magazine someone left on the break table at work. The March 2010 issue, I believe.

Makes 4 cups
Hands-On Time: 05m
Total Time: 20m

Ingredients
* 8 cardamom seeds
* 8 cloves
* 4 black peppercorns
* 2 cinnamon sticks
* 1 1-inch piece fresh ginger, sliced
* 2 cups whole milk
* 4 bags black tea (such as Darjeeling)
* 8 teaspoons sugar or more, to taste

Directions
1. Place the cardamom, cloves, and peppercorns in a resealable plastic bag and crush with a heavy skillet.
2. Place the crushed spices in a medium saucepan, along with the cinnamon sticks, ginger, milk, and 2 cups water; bring to a boil. Remove from heat, add the tea bags, cover, and let steep for 10 minutes.
3. Strain into cups. To each cup, add 2 teaspoons sugar or more, to taste.

You can make this tea and refrigerate it for up to 2 days. Reheat in a saucepan or a microwave.

Results:
I like this recipe because you can adjust the spices to how you like it. So, for example, I can make it with decaf tea and add more cloves, whereas Bethie can make it with her crazy lactose-free milk. Crushing the spices in the bag didn't work so well; the spices are sort of pointy, and they ripped holes in the plastic. I think one of those mortar and pestles would work great, or a spice grinder. This might turn out to be reason enough for me to finally invest in one of those.

Hey kids, it's almost March which means, it's almost time for Irish Soda Bread! I'm going to stick with this time frame, even though spring is going to be a lot longer coming up here than it was in Indiana. Send me you recipes to test drive. Jean, I still have that iron skillet recipe you sent me last year, I'm going to try to put that one one the docket. Any other requests?

Nordic Mardi Gras

As current residents of a Scandinavian-heavy area of the world (I've met some people who've lived here their entire lives and still have Swedish accents), I thought the perfect way to celebrate Fat Tuesday was to cook up some Danish pancakes called Ebleskiver. I'm not going to post the recipe since you need a special pan to cook them (thanks Kathy and Dave!), but they're pretty fun. I'm finally getting my technique down so the inside is done before the inside burns. And, as an added bonus for Chris, I filled them with bacon (well, pancetta), which he's been asking for since we got the pan two years ago.

Candlelit snowshoeing...finally!

Chris and I finally went snowshoeing by candlelight after meaning to go several times this winter. It was about 20 minutes outside of Eau Claire at a nature preserve. Between chilly temps and the new moon the sky was incredibly clear, and I can't remember when, if ever, I'd see so many stars. We were all bundled up so we didn't feel the cold, and almost everyone we passed remarked at what a perfect night it was for 'shoeing. The bonfire at the end of the trail was very welcome, though.

We saw a couple tribes of children. They must have been either scout troops or a couple really ambitious parents rounded up their children's friends to go. Personally, I would have been terrified of losing one of them, but they were mostly well behaved, if a little loud. I was generally impressed that these kids got out there at all and weren't grousing about being cold.

This was the same place where I had been cautioned by my co-workers about coyotes and wolves if I went by myself. In retrospect, I think that was probably a small concern for this night event because the loop was so close to the visitor's center and there were a fair amount of people there. However, I am glad I didn't go by myself, it was far too romantic (other than the yelling children).