Pizza Day!

It's a big day today! No, not the Super Bowl, who cares about that? It's National Pizza Day! (And apparently World Pizza Day too.) I tried to make a big deal last year, but everyone pooped on my pizza parade. This year I insisted though, and Dylan was on board because pizza is his favorite food, which got the ball rolling. So I made Shortcut Sicilian-Style Italian Pizza:

Fast food, episode XV

It's been too long since my last installment in the "fast food" franchise, even though I have posted other under-30-minute recipes since then. As quick and easy go, they don't get much quicker and easier than this, an Indian-style variation on a rice-and-beans dish using only pantry staples (if you go with canned over fresh tomatoes). This one is definitely worth keeping in mind for when you're home late from work and don't know what to make but don't want to order in or go out. We all thought it was really tasty, especially given the small amount of time and work involved. Stock up on black-eyed peas next time you're at the grocery — they're delicious and have a great texture compared to some other beans. (They're great in the Four "Pea" Usal, too.)

 

Your parents' meet cute

In a recent episode, I mentioned in passing having "had the perfect meet cute with my dream woman 40+ years ago in the Hopkins cafeteria." I was surprised when Moriah texted me to get the scoop on the meet cute because I thought Dylan would have known the story, but he didn't, and apparently neither did the rest of you. So here it is.

Outsourcing my blog, episode VI: Above and beyond the call

[Moriah spent months perfecting this recipe so that Mom could have a reliable recipe for making gluten-free sourdough. Talk about going above and beyond the call!]

 

 

Karen makes a huge sourdough loaf every week for the family but can't eat it herself! I wanted to perfect a gluten free sourdough recipe so Karen can enjoy the fruits of her own sourdough-labors. After a lot of research and four attempts with tweaks, it turned out better than I could have imagined. 

My 2024 reading

A favorite year-end activity is looking through the books I read in the preceding year. According to StoryGraph, I read 73 books in 2024, totaling 21,622 pages. The genre I spent the most time with in 2024 was, not surprisingly, psychology (20 titles), followed by memoir (15), self-help (11), and "literary" (9), whatever that means. Looking through the picture of all the books I read last year, I see that there were a fair number I slogged through, even though they weren't all that enjoyable. 

A love letter to the world

My gratitude for the day is for the public library system. I recently read about a book I was really interested in: Four Seasons in Rome (2007) by Anthony Doerr, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2015 for All the Light We Cannot See. It wasn't available through Libby, but they do have two copies in the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library system. I put a hold on it, and it was transferred to, and available for pickup the next day at, our local Central Library, where I exchanged it for The Book of (More) Delights by Ross Gay, which I had just finished.

 

The winter solstice

Today is the winter solstice. I bet you didn't know it's one of my favorite days of the year. Why would anyone like the day that's kicking off three months of winter? Simple. I'm almost exclusively an early-morning runner, and the winter solstice is the shortest day of the year. So after today I can look forward to it getting light out just a wee bit earlier every morning until the summer solstice. It makes for seeing some good sunrises while running too.