The Joys (and Tastes) of a 3-Day Weekend

I don't know about you, but I'm eating up this three-day weekend. My husband and I decided to stay at home for this holiday and we haven't regretted our decision once. Particularly since we re-discovered the beauty of our favorite appliance ever: the bread machine. When we were deciding what to make for dinner last night, I said, "What about homemade pizza?" and his eyes lit up about as bright as my were shining when I thought of the idea.

We'd never made pizza dough before, so the whole process was new and therefore fun and oh-so-yummy. I got the ball rolling on this one, but as soon as the dough was ready to come out of the bread machine Jeremy couldn't take his hands off it. There's something about digging your hands into real homemade dough without the emulsifiers and pectins and guar and xanthum gums...and whatever else comes in the pre-packaged stuff.

And I have to say -- this pizza was the best pizza I remember eating in a long time. As you'll see above, this wasn't a picture-perfect pie because we had to break the dough into two oblong pieces to fit in the cookie sheets we had. But it made it even more fun to eat.

If you're wondering what was in Maggie & Jeremy's best pizza ever, here are the ingredients, which I'm proud to say are fully pronounceable and amount to only 8 ingredients! Dough: warm water, olive oil, all purpose flour, salt, sugar, dry yeast; and then cheese and pepperoni, which came from Whole Foods. DELISH!

We were planning to go to our favorite gelato store in the city after dinner, but both of us were so satisfied with this meal (with also entailed broccoli cooked with garlic and olive oil) that we didn't want dessert -- and that's practically unheard of for us.

I'm telling you -- Eat When You're Hungry (make it good-quality stuff), and stop when you're full. It's the only thing you ever need to know when it comes to food and feeling good.

Happy Labor Day!