Pizza Fritta Tomorrow!

My paternal grandparents came from small towns outside of Naples, Italy. My father always told us about eating the “pizza fritta” his mother made for the family.

When I researched Pizza Fritta the description was for a round, flat pizza dough that had tomato sauce and cheese on it. I’m sure that is very good, but my Dad’s pizza fritta was a breakfast treat – extremely delicious … and very fattening. J

We serve it every year as a special treat on Christmas morning.  Here is how it is made:

(You can make your own bread dough, or cheat like I do and buy a couple of loaves of frozen all-purpose dough.)

Fill a skillet about half way up with vegetable oil and heat it until almost boiling.

Break off pieces of dough the size of the palm of your hand.  Then pull and stretch each piece with your hands until it is ½ - 1 inch think.

Place the pieces into the oil when it is hot. (Flick a little water into the oil. If it bubbles it is ready.)

When the pieces rise to the top and are light brown on the bottom side (peek with a slotted spoon), turn them over. When they are brown all over, remove them and place them on paper towels to drain the excess oil.

We serve the pizza fritta with good maple syrup (heated) and powdered sugar. Just pull small pieces off each hunk and dunk them in the syrup. Yum!

I also cook up some bacon to serve with it. The salty taste is a perfect counterpoint to the sweetness of the syrup.

 

Enjoy your family traditions. Have a special holiday. My very best wishes to you all.

Love,
Kathy

 

 

 

A New Approach to Choosing a Christmas Tree

The tree is up and decorated! After agonizing over whether or not to buy an artificial tree, we went and got a real one after all. I have to share with you my new approach to choosing a tree…

It was freezing cold and windy the night we went out to buy our tree. The trees were all tied up tightly with string and piled up against a wall.

I decided the only thing that really mattered was a straight branch at the top for our angel. She has been with us since our very first tree when we got married and we just love having her appear each year and share the holiday with us.

So I looked at all the trees, found one with the perfect top, and said “that’s the one”! The tree guy started to cut it loose in order for us to check out the shape. I told him not to bother. Just put it up on top of the car all wrapped up. We want to be surprised.

It was way too cold to be agonizing over tree shapes, and I figured if one side wasn’t great, I’d just face it against the wall.

Look how pretty it turned out to be!!

In a previous post I talked about how looking at all the trees and choosing the perfect one was part of the fun of buying a real tree. I was wrong. On this cold night our 10 minute quick decision time was just right.

Merry Christmas!!

 

 

How to update a small bathroom

How to update a small bathroom ...
What a difference! A new neutral color scheme makes the room look brighter, larger and more contemporary
I love the new sink. The cabinet provides a place to hold towels and all the other miscellaneous things we need in a bathroom. And it also hides the pipes which are never pretty to look at. The dark stain grounds the room and breaks up all the light colors.
Light grey flooring and white wall tiles and shower curtain add to the clean bright look.
New window treatments and accessories add pops of color.
A small bathroom can certainly be quite lovely!



Before

 

After

Staging a Small Kitchenette



What a pretty dinette!

When you stage a home, how do you make a small dinette area look inviting? The goal is to make potential buyers feel like they’d like to sit down and have a cup of tea.

In this case our first task was to remove al...l the baby items. We realized that this condo, with living space on three floors, would most likely not appeal to families with small children. The most likely buyer profile would be a young couple investing in their first home. The current owners had a small child and a baby on the way. They had loved living in this home and had fixed it up beautifully, but were really ready for something more family-friendly.

Once the area was cleared, we put pretty flowers on the table, tweaked the shelves a little bit ... and we were done. Mission accomplished!

Kitchen Transformation