Its the Great Cupcake!

Our good friend Jen celebrated a birthday this week. To celebrate, we headed to Cyclone Anaya's for margaritas and dinner followed by a giant cupcake and peartinis at Jen's afterward. Another great night with great friends!

The Great Cupcake

Reading List

I get asked to recommend books sometimes so here is a list of what I've read since the Christmas holidays...

The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud

In a Perfect World: A Novel by Laura Kasischke

Dream When You're Feeling Blue: A Novel by Elizabeth Berg

Somebody Else's Daughter by Elizabeth Brundage

Dear John by Nicholas Sparks

and currently reading Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen

As you can tell... I read a lot. The two I enjoyed the least were The Emperor's Children and Dream When You're Feeling Blue. The first didn't pull me into the story and the second had an ending I just didn't get on board with (still a good story).

I'm just beginning Water for Elephants... its about a traveling circus during the great depression. The characters are pretty odd (which probably isn't a surprise) so it should turn out to be an interesting book!

Pizza Pizza

A few weeks ago, I made pizza dough from Ina Garten's recipe collection (get the recipe). I only made the dough from this recipe... not the toppings. I went through all the dough making steps and froze it in individual pizza rounds once it finished rising.

Today, I took the dough out of the freezer and let it thaw and rise a little on the counter in an oiled bowl. I baked a cheese pizza with olive oil and garlic for myself and pepperoni with tomato sauce for Mike.

The dough is really good! I'll be trying out new toppings when I bake the other two dough rounds that are still in the freezer.