Homemade Crazy Bread!

I don't know about you, but I LOVE LIttle Caesar's Crazy Bread, with extra buttery-cheesy goodness! Unfortunately, the nearest Little Caesar's Pizza Place is an hour away...so I don't get it very often (which may actually be a good thing...). When Derrick and I were dating, we used to get their cheapest combo at least once a week--it was around $8 for a pepperoni pizza, crazy bread, and dipping sauce. Not exactly the healthiest supper, but when you're a poor student, it works!


I found this recipe for pizza dough a few weeks ago, and found a knock-off recipe for Crazy Bread a few months ago, so the other day I decided to combine the two! The crazy bread recipe used store-bought pizza dough, butter, garlic salt, and parmesan cheese. Now unfortuantely, the stores around here (and by "here" I mean 30 minutes away) don't have frozen pizza dough--at least I've never seen any! So if I wanted that, I'd probably have to go to Lethbridge, again, an hour away....so I might as well just buy REAL Crazy Bread! So when I saw that the blogger that posted this recipe had turned hers into cheesy garlic sticks, I decided that I could do the same. 

So one day I decided that's what I wanted for part of my lunch, but of course decided this while I was making my lunch (the dough take about 1 1/2 hours so that wasn't going to happen)...so I used some fresh Naan bread that I had just bought the day before with the intention of turing into a pizza for Mason while Derrick and I had Buffalo Chicken Pizza. It turned out pretty yummy, but just wasn't as good as crazy bread in my opinion! The cheesy garlic sticks and pizza dough recipe can be found here.


So anyways, the other day I decided to make pasta with a creamy rose sauce that I had seen on Pinterest and thought Crazy Bread would go well with it. The pasta was an EPIC FAIL. Derrick wouldn't even eat it. He said the smell of it made vomit rise in his throat., which would have offended me, but I already knew it tasted kind of funny...Mason ate it, but then the next day when I tried to give him leftovers for lunch, he wouldn't let me put it in his mouth! I thought it was ok, but definitely missing something...all it was, was you sautee garlic and red pepper flakes in olive oil, then when the garlic starts to brown, add a can of crushed tomatoes, and simmer about 10 mins until thick. (I pureed everything before this next step because Derrick won't eat chunks of tomatoes). Then stir in 1/2 cup cream or milk. I think the bitter taste of the canned tomatoes, and the overwhelming taste of olive oil (it called for 1/4 cup!) was just too much...topped with lots of parm, it wasn't that bad, but then I'm not really that picky...so anyways, we won't be making that again! Derrick ended up just having crazy bread for supper! I guess that's what happens when you don't get home until 9:45--no time to make anything but a bowl of cereal, which he doesn't like anyways....haha!


Back to the Crazy Bread. I used the pizza dough recipe, splitting it in half and using canola oil and honey (those were options on the recipe), as well as unbleached all-purpose white flour. I patted it into a circle with my hands on a piece of parchment, then cut it with a pizza cutter into rectangles. I then baked it about 6 minutes on the parchment, on an upside down cookie sheet as she suggested at 500 degrees, and then immediately brushed it with a mixture of butter, garlic powder, and salt (I don't have garlic salt, and all it really is, is one part garlic powder to two parts salt...but I did about a one to one ratios for this...just eyeball it!), and then sprinkling it with lots of parmesan! You could use fresh garlic, but I wasn't going for that spicy taste that fresh garlic brings, I was going to the authentic Crazy Bread taste.

It was pretty close! And I think the dough part was even better than Little Caesars! It was soft and fluffy, yet a little chewy, the way pizza dough should be! It was so yummy and I ate wayy to much of it...forcing myself to save half of it for Derrick...I didn't even take a picture because it was half gone by the time I thought of it...I suppose I still could have, oh well! Next time!


If you're reading this and have a mixer with a dough hook, you should definitely make this! It is not hard at all! Your mixer does most of the work, and you just dump in ingredients!


In other news, Mason is now drinking slightly cold milk...haha, we'll get there soon....and if this weather ever decides to stay nice, I'll get his bed frame spray painted black (it's scuffed up and white right now), so I can set it up in his room! Maybe I'll do that before I take away his bottle, as his bottle helps make him nice and drowsy...hmmmm

In the meantime, can you guess what I'm making for Mason? Jake was "helping"... :P

Walking, bottles, soothers, cribs....

Isn't he just the cutest!? I love him so much! He is such a sweet, smart, curious, and happy boy! He's 14 1/2 months old right now, and has been walking really well for the last two weeks. He only crawls about 10% if the time now, and it's usually if he keeps falling down lol! He started pulling himself up around Christmas, and now, five months later, he's not looking much like a baby anymore! This summer I'm going to take away some of the baby things he loves (sigh): his crib, his soother, warmed milk, and his bottle...I should have gotten rid of the bottle by now, but I have been slowly working towards having him drink cold milk. Right now we're at room temperature. I could just switch him to a sippy cup with warm milk, but I hate having to warm it up, so we're getting rid of that...I tried to do it cold turkey a few weeks ago, but he wanted nothing to do with the sippy or the cold milk. If he was a chunky kid I'd say that wasn't a big deal, he'll drink it eventually, but he's slim so I worry about how the lack of calories would effect him.

Although, he does eat a lot of food, and he's not picky. I honestly don't know where he puts it! He has a little belly, but nothing like some children! I guess he's just like his dad!

So, a few more days (a week at most), and we should be onto cold milk. Then will be time to change to a sippy cup. I really don't like sippy cups either, I'd rather have him drink from a regular cup, but we'll see how things go! I suppose it could make things easier because he loves to drink from a cup!

Now with the soother, I know a lot of people have different ideas on how long a child should take a soother (if at all---I'm still on the fence about this one)...but I figure, the earlier you break them of the habit, the easier it will be. Mason has been sleeping great for the past few months (except for the odd teething episode or over night trip), so I think that now is the time. Whenever I go in there after he has woken up, he is standing there holding it out for me. And if I don't get there fast enough, he throws it out of his crib onto the floor, as if he's saying "No more soother, time to get up!"

I almost took it away about a month ago when he was sick because his nose was so plugged that he couldn't suck his soother and breathe at the same time, and that made him really upset, but I decided not to, because it still comforted him...so now the dilemma is which day of the week...and something always seems to be coming up! I prefer to do it on a Monday so that by Sunday he won't cry for it at Church. But Father's Day is this Sunday (and I don't want to deprive Derrick of a good sleep haha), and then next Sunday our baby neice is being blessed, so we'd need him to be quiet during that...and then Weds-Fri I watch another child around Mason's age, and I don't want him to be woken up from his naps by Mason crying for his soother....I know you can do it a little at a time too, but I think I'll just take it away and be done with it. He falls asleep in the car sometimes without it, so I'm not too worried...and we have earplugs, or if it is really bad, 2 other beds...that sounds horrible....at least Derrick could use one of them since he has to operate heavy equipment! The other dilemma is should I move him to a bed before taking the soother?

When I worked in daycare, children napped on mats once they hit 12 months. Those were the licensing regulations--no more cribs. And they slept fine, if not better, on the mats. I think the real reason parents keep their children in cribs is so that they don't escape lol and I totally get that! But my plan is to teach him to stay in his room when he wakes up until I comes in to say good morning, Wish me luck! I have a toddler bed for Mason, and I would move his crib mattress into it, so really, I could do it anytime. The upside: the room is outside of our room (for those of you who don't know, we have an ensuite[master bathroom] that we are using as the nursery (no there's no toilet or shower in there lol just a sink and storage cabinets). So once he moves, we don't have to whisper when we go to bed, and get ready for bed in the dark. I know that we could have trained him when he was younger to sleep through loudness, but seriously, when your baby is sleeping, who wants to chance waking him up!? Mason can sleep through some noise, and can fall asleep if it's noisy, but you still have to tread lightly. The downside of moving him: if he wakes in the night, it's a further walk, and the other downside: our living room/tv is right outside that bedroom door...but he'll learn to sleep through that I'm sure...I hope....lol

Thoughts? As it stands, I'll probably have him off the bottle in the next week or two, and be done with a soother and in a toddler bed in the next couple of months. I don't think I'm "forcing him to grow up" by doing this, but making his and my life easier in the long run...plus we'll still have lots of snuggles and playtime!