Easter update- I survived!

Happy Easter!

I've eaten entirely way too much sugar these past few days. Sometimes I think I have to kind of hit my sugar threshold before I'm ready to go back on the wagon. Get it out of my system, sort of.

I wish I could show you pictures of all the yummy things I baked, our delicious Harrington's Ham that we cooked all day, or the beautiful sides and apps our family brought. But I can't. Because I was so in-the-moment that I forgot to take pictures. In fact, if it weren't for my father who managed to snap this little beauty, I'd have no documentation whatsoever.

Penny Lane loves to wiggle.

I was also too absent minded to send people home with leftovers, so now I've got the remains of a 14-pound ham in the fridge. Tonight I just reheated all the yummy things so we could really savor them. Yesterday I was so worried about tending to my guests, I didn't really taste what I ate. Does that happen to other people? I figure by tomorrow I'll be sick of reheated ham, but still have so much of it left. What to do? Enter: pizza dough.

My pizza dough recipe (which I use for anything related to pizza) keeps changing. I used to use Bobby Flay's recipe; his calls for bread flour. I used his recipe pretty much all last year and had success most of the time. But last week I discovered one of my favorite food bloggers has a pizza dough recipe which didn't call for bread flour. Which was good because I was all out and it was Good Friday and I was not going to the grocery store for the second time that day. So I prepped it and within a few minutes, I knew it was love. This dough was just so soft, and sweet smelling, and sticky. My mom and I used the dough to make Margherita calzones and let's just say we both went to bed with full bellies.

Calzones in progress

Homemade sauce for dipping, obviously.

So flash forward to today. I am tired. I am in a sugar coma. I have a five day work week and three full weeks until April vacation. I do not want to go grocery shopping or do any inventive cooking this week. Leftovers, sandwiches, canned soup; that's all I can handle. But pizza dough is so easy, I thought to myself this afternoon while watching a weekend's worth of DVRed tv and remembering Friday's calzones. 

So, I prepared dough this afternoon in preparation for tomorrow. Hopefully, it will rise overnight in the fridge. I've never done that before but all my recipes say you can do it. I'll just check it in the morning; if it hasn't done anything I'll leave it out on the counter all day. The intent is to make ham-based pizzas or calzones (Hawaiian, ham and cheese, etc.) If we're both sick of ham, we can use it to make different sorts of pizzas, calzones, HOT POCKETS, you name it. 

To all my friends and readers who hosted Easter yesterday and are still recovering from a mild state of exhaustion: I feel you. It's eight p.m. You can go to bed now and nobody will judge you. -Jill