Pizza Pizza Pizza

I adore pizza. I worked at a Sicilian restaurant for 3 of my 4 years of college and I just love pizza. When I was a kid we used to go to Pizza West (closed recently) every Friday night. This was the only time I would get to have root beer and I'd also get to play Pac-Man (although I could also do that at the dentist's office - man we had a great dentist). I love that you can eat pizza for any meal of the day, and it is a carb - another one of my favorite food groups.

So for a while I was buying dough from the Italian market down the street or next door to my house in New Haven. Alas now we live in Seattle. I'm not sure if there are Italians here! I found dough at the super market in the freezer but I was not in love with it. Then I found Trader Joe's dough and that was acceptable. But then I looked at the little booklet that came with my bread machine and saw that it had two recipes. I decided to make the Neopolitan recipe because olive oil sounds nice - as does pizza from Naples. I poured some ingredients into the machine - flour, olive oil, yeast, salt.... and pressed start. 55 minutes later I had enough dough for two pizzas. I even made this for Tom before I went away and then I froze them for him.

We like to make the snowball version that I think I posted a while ago - spinach, ricotta and chopped up tomatoes. Now we are on a salami kick. The little market down the street from us (I swear we must live near a small market or else we will fall apart or something) carries Salumi salami - Mario Batali's grandfather runs the place. So we have taken to now making salami pizza with sliced peppers and whatever else we feel like. It is HEAVENLY.

Oregon Trail

So I was lucky enough to spend the weekend in Oregon almost cost-free thanks to Tom's wonderful company Equator. We drove down Friday evening and arrived around 10pm. We grabbed a bite to eat and a beer. I had a delicious blueberry beer - although it was from Maine and not Oregon.

Saturday morning Tom and I walked to a place called Mother's for a delicious breakfast - although in our opinion, the hollandaise sauce was WAY too thick. The lox and imported bagel from New York City was delicious though. Then we drove out to Dundee to see one of Tom's coworker's houses. He was situated just outside the city limits, and had about 9 acres. There was a llama, two sheep, a bunch of goats (one was a hermaphrodite!), a mummified cat that they had found while redoing the house, and three pigs (which have since been slaughtered). The house was really cool, and they were RIGHT next to vineyards. From there we got some snacks and headed for some wine tastings of Oregon's famous pinot noirs.

We tasted at one place, then headed to another and ate our lunch of bread and cheese and salami. Then one more place in a small town advertising next weekend's Rocky Mountain Oyster Fest. The non-Americans in the group had no idea what they were! We stopped at a local brewery called McMenamins in a small town which was adorable and we sat on the roof. It was 90 degrees outside which made me very happy.

Eventually we wound our way back to Portland and had an ok dinner at a place called Higgins which was right near our hotel.

Sunday we got up early and ate at the hotel (Heathman Hotel). The breakfast was actually quite fantastic. Then we drove on 26 to the coast. We stopped a few times to see giant trees and forestry machines of old. Then we got to Ecola State Park and walked a bit, but it was rainy and windy and cold. We at lunch at a D- type of restaurant called Lumberyard and then I headed on my long drive back home.

Oregon was BEAUTIFUL! I can't wait to go back and explore more.

Pictures can be seen at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/amyhodgman/OregonTripWineCountryAndTheCoast?feat=directlink