Pizza Lesson

We had friends over for dinner this weekend -- and one of them (his name is Ray) gave us a pizza-making lesson. I've always wanted to make my own pizza dough, so I was pretty psyched. We started by mixing yeast and tepid water -- we had to wait a while for it to bubble up. (I got a little impatient at this stage.) Then we added more water, some sugar, and lots of flour. Next came kneading thedough. I learned that I need to work on my technique here. Apparently, I am too quick. We let the dough rise (and then fall) in the fridge overnight.

The hard part came yesterday morning when Mike and I had to knead the dough some more and get it onto our pizza pans (in our case, cookie sheets). It was a very MESSY JOB. WE GOT FLOUR EVERYWHERE. THIS DROVE ME A LITTLE CRAZY. AND WE NEARLY GAVE UP.

But guess what? WE DID IT. We made our own very first pizza. And it was good and the whole house smelled pizza-ish. 

Did you already figure out that today's entry is not JUST about pizza? It's also about WRITING -- and about DOING DIFFICULT THINGS. Sometimes,  you're going to want to give up. You'll need patience and things will definitely get messy. It'll be hard. Much harder than you imagined. BUT IF YOU DON'T GIVE UP, YOU'LL BE ABLE TO MAKE PIZZA -- OR WRITE YOUR BOOK -- or do your physics homework. Hope you're inspired. By golly, I inspired myself. Only, I'm leaving now to go to a friend's birthday luncheon, but as soon as I get home, I'm going to make pizza... er, I mean... work on my George River manuscript! Talk to you tomorrow!