Pizza, pretty much the universal party favorite of kids and adults alike.  Even more fun is having the construction of the pizza take center stage at your get together.  I’ve seen kids have a blast making their own pizzas at birthday parties, and the same goes for family dinners.  Give the kids a bit of dough, some flour and a rolling pin and let the fun start.  (We have to hide the toppings or else two cans of olives disappear before the dough is even rolled out!) We love to make pizza in the summer when cooking it on the barbecue lets us enjoy the outdoors while keeping the house cool.  While you can put the dough straight on the grill rack, we’ve found it’s much easier to both carry and bake your pizza if you use a pizza tray made just for the barbecue.  Although the long handled pizza trays tend to cost less, I’ve been told that it’s easier to grill with the short handled pizza trays as you can close the barbecue cover all the way.  The trays also make great gifts for that special someone who loves to grill.  Read the rest of the story...

While swapping recipes, the Flying Hen and I found out that we had a favorite cookbook in common, the Better Homes and Gardens New Cook Book.  Our mothers used older editions of the book and my Rooster even admits to being impressed with the wide range of topics covered in this timeless kitchen reference.  So on a recent trip to the bookstore, the familiar red and white checkerboard cover on a kids cookbook caught my eye.  It was Better Homes and Gardens Snack Attack!  Read the rest of the story...

This past weekend marked a milestone for our family: our oldest son lost his first tooth.  Did the big event catch us by surprise?  Yes and no.   I think he may have been the last in his class to join the toothless club, and that little tooth had been showing only the slightest hint of a wobble since last August.  I admit we knew the time was coming.  We just didn’t expect it to suddenly loosen up and let go in less than a week!  And, of course, it happened late on a Sunday night, which limited the Tooth Fairy’s options considerably.   My Rooster and I could faintly remember receiving a quarter per tooth, and maybe a fifty cent piece for a special one, but that was a long time ago.  What does the Tooth Fairy leave these days?  That night we found ourselves using Facebook and Twitter to quickly gauge just what the Tooth Fairy’s going rate is.  Read the rest of the story...

I was warned by several friends that once I had kids my short term memory would suddenly drop to half it’s normal capacity.  I never dreamed that it would be true.  What began as the consequence of diminished sleep due to a newborn has failed to improve with time.  In fact, it’s gotten worse.  I’ve tried to ignore the latest casualty, but as I write this with the evidence drifting in from the kitchen, I must confess what my family has joked about for the past two years:  I can no longer make a grilled cheese sandwich.  Read the rest of the story...