Friday Night = Family Fun

Friday night is traditionally pizza night at our house. I typically spend Fridays grocery shopping and running errands so the last thing I feel like doing is cooking a big dinner. Plus are Fridays not a day for relaxing and winding down for the weekend anyway?

Usually pizza night consists of two - sometimes three - frozen pizzas. I buy whatever brand is on special or cheapest that particular week. Since Gabrielle has been so into the Food Network this week I decided tonight we would make homemade pizza together. Gabrielle and I have done this one or two times before but I believe even then it was from a kit or a mix. Tonight the dough and even the sauce were from scratch.

The pizza turned out to be really tasty and a lot more filling than the frozen variety. We rarely have leftovers from the two or three 14" frozen pizzas and there are just three of us eating!! Barely half of the one homemade pizza was eaten tonight and we were all stuffed. I started thinking of all the different types of pizza I could make and all the different toppings I could use. Ed then gave me a pizza challenge that I have not yet decided if I will accept or not. I have a week to decide if the challenge is too completely absurd to attempt. Maybe I'll write about the Great Pizza Challenge in a later post, once I have made my decision.

Dessert is an occasional treat around here but Gabrielle had seen a recipe on the Food Network that looked too good and easy not to try. We made Banana Empanadas. You can find the recipe here. I sliced the bananas and Gabrielle stirred in the brown sugar and cinnamon. She also cut out the circles from the pie crust using a large plastic cup.

Ed had a little dance party with the girls while I put the empanadas in the oven and began straightening up the kitchen from dinner. Cooking with a 3-year-old's help is quite messy!!

And here are the empanadas!! So delicious and so easy. Gabrielle gives them a thumbs up!