UFO

Over the weekend, we made pizza from scratch. We tried to make a friend's secret dough recipe but the measurements must have been off as we had bubbly, off-white dough soup. Hmmm. Hoping to rescue it for another day I added some flour, put it aside, and resorted to calling Extreme Pizza down in town - they bailed us out by letting us purchase some of their raw dough.

Jim from Boston had quite a flair with pizza dough - the rest of us just rolled it out with a rolling pin and called that good enough.

I had had a blast choosing ingredients from the market the day before so we had all kinds of stuff to choose from - everything from smoked duck breast to pepperoni, plus lots of pre-cooked veggies, different goat, cow and smoked cheeses and a choice of red sauce or creme fraîche. Everyone topped his/her own pizza and shared portions of the masterpieces, so we all got to taste several different kinds.

In addition to pizza, we had a wine I'd like to recommend to you all - 2008 Lee Family Farm Rosé. Beautifully raspberry-pink in color and very soft, it is both a lovely sipping wine and a nice accompaniment to foods. It's from Morgan - we tasted it when we were down in Carmel Valley and loved it; I have ordered a case.

We grilled our pizzas on the barbecue, something I highly recommend. It's super fast (In fact, it's so fast that we have found that pre-cooking all veggies insures a happy outcome) and it adds flavor but, even more important, it adds a little drama and fun to the process while everyone gets a kick out of watching their crust bubble and balloon.

While our granddaughter frolicked on the deck, we enjoyed one of the loveliest evenings of the year while trying to catch pictures of UFOs.