Pizza Night

Tonight's culinary adventure proved to me, once and for all, that any leftover can be made into a deliciously inventive pizza. Matt is the mastermind here--he planned out the toppings, different combinations, and the meticulous order of pizza assembly. I was skeptical at first, but I was wrong. I shouldn't have doubted. We made three different kinds and they were all SO GOOD. So good that I decided to blog about them.

Now, I'm no food photographer and our camera is mediocre at best, but here they are. In all their glory.



On the top left-ish we have the classic mozzarella, tomato, basil, pizza with a bit of pesto spread on the crust for an extra kick. This was our backup pizza in case the other two failed.

Top right-ish is probably the most creative of the three. A turkey chili, sour cream, baked potato pizza. We mixed together the chili and sour cream, spread that on as a sauce, and topped it with seasoned baked potato pieces. The sour cream looked a little funny after baking, but the flavors in this one were pretty delicous.

The bottom one was my favorite. Mexican pizza with refried beans, taco meat, corn, kidney beans, hot sauce, green salsa, diced tomatoes, and cheddar cheese. I think I'll call this one Taco pizza from now on. Or maybe Burrito pizza? Anyways, it was spectacular.

Anyone have pizza breakthroughs of their own to share? I'm all ears!

A Book List

I've tried to read as much of the popular YA lit as I could this year so that I could get my students all pumped about reading. I'll be honest, some of them were totally obnoxious, but these are the ones I enjoyed more than I'd like to admit...

Top Ten YA Books That Grown Ups Should Read Too (in no particular order)

1. House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
2. Lost Hero by Rick Riordan
3. The Maze Runner by James Dashner
4. Divergent by Virginia Roth
5. Matched by Ally Condie
6. Crossed by Ally Condie
7. Shifting by Bethany Wiggins
8. Michael Vey: Prisoner of Cell 25 by Richard Paul Evans
9. Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
10. Everlost by Neal Shustermann

Update: We Graduated!

The last few months have actually been fairly eventful over here. Matt and I graduated in April, which was very exciting and a little surreal. I thought it was pretty awesome that we got to graduate and walk together. It feels like I just graduated from High School. Has it really been 5 years since I obsessed over how to make that weird little hat look somewhat normal? And now I'm graduating college? With a husband? Awesome.
Anyways, Matt graduated with a degree in Math and I graduated with a degree in English Education. My mom came over from Hawaii to join in the festivities, and we also got Michael in on the fun before he entered the MTC a couple weeks later. The Scotts were all there, Grammie and Grandpa came, it was a party!

In other news, I'm still teaching 8th grade. It's great, I love it, but I'm really excited for summer. Possibly even more so than my students. Why? Because on May 30th we'll be boarding a plane for Hawaii! And this isn't just any vacation, my friends. This is a month-long vacation in paradise with my family who I haven't seen since last July. Can you blame me for counting down the days?

Matt is spending his "vacation" doing manual labor around our house and his parents' house. I'm still loving yoga, teaching the young women, and cooking random stuff.

Life is good!