The Apprentice Puppeteer

Noelle is involved in puppet ministry this year and really enjoying herself.  She got her "hood" last night and has been having fun creeping us out, lol.  She put the thing on my head when I wasn't paying attention to her and, yes, you can see through it, but I would have liked a proper warning :-P

Pepperoni Pizzaz

Here's what we had for dinner last night.  I'd never made it before, but some similar, and we have decided that this ones the best!  I also got to use my Home and Garden Party cranberry bean pot for the first time (I only got it a year ago, lol).

The recipe came from a Quick Cooking cookbook, though its not really that quick (unless you have a food processor, which I do) but is worth the time spent.

Pepperoni Pizzaz

8 ounces medium tube pasta, cooked and drained (do this while mixing other ingredients so pasta stays warm)

1 jar (28 ounces) spaghetti sauce, divided

1 jar (4-1/2 ounces) sliced mushrooms, drained

1 package (8 ounces) sliced pepperoni

1/2 cup chopped green pepper

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/8 tsp pepper

1/8 tsp crushed rep pepper flakes

1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce

2 cups (8 ounces) shredded mozzarella cheese

Combine 2-1/3 cups spaghetti sauce, along with next 9 ingredients, in a bowl.  Add pasta to sauce mixture and mix well.  Transfer to a greased 3-qt. baking dish.  Combine the tomato sauce and remaining spaghetti sauce; pour over top.  Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until bubbly.  Sprinkle with mozzarella cheese.  Bake, uncovered, 5-10 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.  Let stand 5 minutes before serving.  Yield:  9-12 servings.

As usual, I didn't follow the recipe exactly.  Pizza is usually topped with what each family likes best so I only did what we liked and had on hand ;-)  I left out the mushrooms, halved the pepperoni amount (and cut the pepperoni into small pieces), and upped the onion and pepper amounts. I also didn't have the red pepper flakes so used hot sauce instead.

If you make it, let me know what you think.

Hard Drive Failure

No, I didn't have it backed up. Yes, I lost a lot from the last couple years (a lot of my pictures have been preserved on Flickr and Picasa, PTL for that, but the videos are gone). The hard drive was so dead that I wasn't even charged a fee by the computer shop for trying to retrieve my files. Some lessons in life are learned the hard way *sigh*

I have a new hard drive now. I've also resolved to buy an external hard drive to do back ups on, as well as continuing to use online sites for storage. I'm trying not to be paranoid about the whole thing, just going to do what I should have been doing all along.

What caused the failure? I didn't get my firmware update accomplished in time. If only life didn't get so busy that many things get put on hold until "a time when things aren't so busy". That's my excuse anyway ;-P

Oh well, moving on....