A recipe and book chatter

I’m making progress on Yours, Mine, & Forever. We’re up to chapter 12 and I’d be writing now, except I have two electric trains running around the track in my writing room so I’m doing other writing-related things instead. Like blogging.

Someone suggested I include a recipe to, I guess, sort of go along with the book. I was supposed to do that in another post and didn’t because I tend to rattle on too long to add too many things all at once, so I’m devoting an entire post to it because I’m pretty sure I’ll find something to talk about. I usually do. 🙂

The recipe that seemed to make the most sense to me is Cheeseburger Pizza and that’s because it became our Little Buddy’s favorite meal. Back when he was so sick with complications from the flu and then getting his head beat up he went through a complete diet change. A complete, SELF-inflicted diet change. He simply wouldn’t eat any of the foods he used to eat and started craving things he’d previously refused to try. Things like pizza, lasagna, spaghetti, and the spiced taco meat/bean mixture I use in tortilla pie. That last one is kind of weird, but I’m not going to discourage him from eating anything.

Of all those things though, his “bestest favorite” is Cheeseburger Pizza and without further chatter, here’s the recipe and the adult-preferred variations.

 


 

CHEESEBURGER PIZZA

Crust:

2 1/2 cups flour

2 3/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup water, plus extra

Whisk together dry ingredients, add water and stir to combine. Add more water until dough is soft and flour is all mixed in. Knead lightly. Place ball of dough in buttered 14” pizza tray and leave to rest.

Toppings:

1 lb ground meat, cooked and drained

1/4 to 1/2 cup finely diced onion

5 cups shredded cheddar cheese

1/2 cup ketchup

mustard (around 2T give or take)

To prepare the pizza:

Gently press dough out until it’s a flat disc covering the pan. Combine ketchup and mustard to taste (my mustard measurement is simply to tip the bottle upside down, squeeze the narrow sides together to fill the bottle with air, and then squeeze the wider sides until the bottle splutters) and spread over dough. Sprinkle with onion, spread evenly with ground meat, and top with cheese.

Bake @ 375˚F for 22 minutes.

 

Variations:

The Baconator-Wannabe Pizza

Skip the onion and mustard. Mix together mayonnaise and ketchup to create a sauce for the crust. Add ground meat, sprinkle with 1/2 lb diced, cooked, and drained bacon, top with shredded cheddar cheese. Bake as per recipe. Rich and creamy and it tastes like you’d expect. A good substitute for the ‘real’ thing when you can’t go out to eat.

BBQ Bacon-Cheeseburger Pizza

Replace ketchup and mustard with BBQ sauce, skip the onion, and add 1/2 lb diced, cooked, and drained bacon before adding the cheese. This one is especially popular with the older kids and adults.

 


In book chatter news… as I mentioned above, Yours, Mine, & Forever is coming along nicely. The changes that I thought would only affect certain parts of the book have had a much longer-lasting effect than I expected, and the results are, I think, making the book even better than it was before. Remember, this was the second half of what was originally going to be one book, so it was already written. I “just” had to change a few things to match the changes at the end of Dreaming of More. Or so I thought.

What is really happening is the book is being completely rewritten. So far—in 11 and a half chapters—I’ve used two small sections from the original. In a couple of other places I rewrote a scene that happened in the original, but those don’t count because I rewrote everything. They’re new, even if they were already there… if that makes any sense to anyone other than myself.

And I’m not sorry. At all. Like I said, I think this is making the book better than it ever was before. It’s far more interesting and I’ve been able to devote more time to minor characters which has been a lot of fun. For me at least. I’m looking forward to sharing that with you before much longer. September 10th, to be exact. Gulp. I need to get writing!