Prosciutto Pear Pizza

Seriously, who doesn't love pizza? Okay, okay, I'm sure that there are several of you who don't like pizza, but I'm not talking about heavy, greasy, sauce-laden box pizza. I'm talking about a fresh, crisp balance of salty and tangy perfection.

Pizza is actually a pretty new addition to our menu rotation. When my son was diagnosed with food allergies, he was allergic to (among other things) beef, garlic, tomatoes, peas (I'll get to why that matters in a minute) and was intolerant to soy and dairy. I believe in eating as a family so this takes pretty much everything Italian off the table. I came up with some substitutions for things like spaghetti sauce but it's not really the same.

Then one day, I was reading some allergy blog and the heavens burst open and the sun shone down! There was cheese for people like us!!! Dairy-free, soy-free, it melts, it oozes! I'm looking at pictures of allergic kids eating mac and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches and yes, pizza!! So I get on my computer and seek out Daiya Cheese and find it the next town over. I get in my car and there it is in all it's cheesey glory!! I buy like five bags of this stuff (and let me tell you it is not cheap) and I go home and start making homemade pizza dough and roasted red pepper sauce and cook up some turkey sausage. We're having pizza!!

I proudly present this pizza to my son who was about two who was so very excited to be eating cheese! He takes a bite or two and pushes it away. Okay, so the cheese is a little funky but it's not bad.... Then I see the little red spots popping out on his face. I had broken the first rule of living with food allergies. Read every label, every time. I sprint to the fridge and grab the package. Sure enough, to be soy free, they use pea protein. Not a big deal to most allergy families but he was more allergic to the peas then to the milk or the soy.

 Fortunately, it wasn't a severe reaction although he did have an upset tummy for a few days. Those four and a half bags of not-cheese sat in my freezer for over a year before I had the heart to toss them and pizza was off the menu until this summer when my son outgrew his dairy intolerance! He loves, loves, loves all things cheese!

Enough with the trip down memory lane, and back to the subject at hand, I bet you want to see this pizza!

Isn't it beautiful?? And let me tell you, it's even tastier than it looks!

I start with half a recipe of Guy Fieri's Prime Time Pizza Dough. This is my go-to dough. I am lazy and knead it with the Kitchen Aid, but it's a perfect crispy, chewy dough that's perfect a little thicker for the kids and a little thinner for my husband and me. I make a full recipe of dough and let the kids make their own pizzas with the other half.

To get it thin enough, I roll the dough to a rough rectangle on parchment paper and drizzle with about a teaspoon of olive oil and then top with 1/2 cup of shredded Italian blend cheese. Then I arranged about 1/2 of a ripe red pear that has been sliced thin and three slices of prosciutto that have been quartered. That's then topped with another quarter cup of the Italian cheese and a quarter cup of gorgonzola. Bake at 500 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until the cheese is melted and beginning to brown. Finish with bottled balsamic glazed and fresh-cracked pepper. Enjoy!!

needs a little salt

Little Dude has a rather annoying case of Cradle Cap. His sister never got it but he's proving to be an all together kind of baby. Mostly, I don't worry too much about it but it seems to itch and he has ripped the top of his head all apart no matter how often I clip his nails.

This has lead to the search for a solution from my doctor and no end of advise from well-meaning friends and I finally found a combo that works.

For daily care, I slather his head in a thick layer of lotion and then put a hat on him. Well hydrated skin is harder to tear, right? And that's what they say to do for nice hands. He does have the softest head I've ever kissed.

To get rid of the scales, we use an oil a few hours before bathtime to soften and then we shampoo it out. There are a lot of things you could use but I don't like putting mineral oil on him and he's very sensitive so we went with something natural that we already had: olive oil. The only problem is that every time I do it, I think to myself "time to marinate the baby." I'm pretty sure that's wrong.

Help! Help! I'm damp!

It's 2:30 in the morning and I just spent the last 20 minutes with my nearly-asleep son on my lap praying that he wasn't going to pee and soak us both and we'd have to start all over with the falling asleep thing.

Why, you may ask, was your child not wearing a diaper if you were trying to get him to fall asleep? This seems like rather poor planning on your part. Here's the part where we have to backstory...

*twinkle fade*

Until recently, Little Cutie (my just-turned three year old daughter) could be wet and poopy for seven days and seven nights and really wouldn't care as long as it didn't leak on to her Tinkerbell jammies. To say that Little Dude does not like to be wet, on the other hand, is an understatement. He has this cry that says"HELP! HELP! I'M DAMP! I'M REALLY REALLY DAMP! THREE DROPS OF PEE-PEE CAME OUT OF MY WEE-WEE AND NOW I'M DAMP!!! IF SOMETHING ISN'T DONE ABOUT THIS SOON, THERE IS GOING TO BE CHAFING AND OMG I AM STILL DAMP!!!!!!!"

Seriously.

The kid has never had a diaper rash, yet sometimes I can't even tell that his diaper is wet at all, but still he is screaming and as soon as I take the diaper off, he's quiet. It's like magic. If it were up to him, he just wouldn't wear a diaper and would spend all day kicking himself, um, yeah... that may be a different post.

Now when he's sleeping, there's this little whimper that lets me know that he's wet himself and not happy with the dampness and as long as I can get that nasty diaper off before he full-out cries, then he will stay asleep through the whole process.

And that's where we were this evening when he was just about asleep and started in on the whimper. And I knew if I got up to change him, he would wake up. But if I left him in the wet diaper he'd wake up. So I removed the diaper and prayed for dryness. Luckily, our story has a happy ending and I even get to go to sleep before 3 am.