Skinny Italian.. (the cookbook..not me!)

As I mentioned in my last post, on Mother's Day I got Teresa Giudice's Skinny Italian cookbook! I LOVE this cookbook!! It teaches you so much. Who knew there was such a difference in olive oil's? I didn't! Who knew that oregano has more concentrated antioxidants than blueberries or that the oil from basil can actually kill bacteria in the food near it and in your body?!? Not me!! I have enjoyed just reading this book. But the recipes .... Oh my the recipes! They are so good! So easy! Simple, fresh ingredients! I LOVE it!
This past Saturday Mom came over and I picked out a couple of recipes I wanted to try from my cookbook, namely Solerno Stuffed Mushrooms and Margherita Pizza with home made Old World Crust! The crust was so easy... A total of four ingredients.. After mixing the ingredients and kneading for several minutes ( thanks Mom for helping me with that) we formed the dough into the six balls that would later become our pizzas.



it had to rise for an hour and a half then an additional 20mins.
Once time was up and they were ready to be shaped Lena stepped in and helped us shape the dough into individual pizzas!


My baby had so much fun helping out in the kitchen!


While the dough was rising the second time I threw together the stuffed mushrooms! The fresh Romano cheese made all the difference. They were so good!


I put five slices of bread in the oven to make bread crumbs, diced the stems from the pitted mushrooms, sauteed onion and garlic and the mushroom pieces in olive oil and added the Romano cheese. It was delicious!
In all my excitement I forgot to add salt! Imagine that!! Not to worry! I just dashed some over the top and it was just as well!
There was some extra stuffing left over so I pitted out some tomatos and stuffed and baked them. My word! It was so good! I didn't get a picture of those. They went too fast!
Back to my pizzas. Being Margherita pizzas the toppings were simple and fresh... Fresh tomatos, fresh mozzarella and frah basil! Just dribble it with olive oil and put it in the oven.


Wait 8-10 minutes...


And then enjoy this!!!



The pizzas were so unbelievably good! Papa Bear told me he wishes he could eat like that everday! My response? Let me stay home and you will! And he would! Now I know I didn't bake the pizzas on a pizza stone. This is my first time making pizza and didn't want to rush out and buy an expensive pizza stone for something I wasn't sure I would do again. But this was so much fun and do good I might need to start looking around. I'm not going to spend $100 on one! But I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to invest in one... Soon!

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