A Family Alliance

I just made the yummiest pizza bread! I made a white bread dough, rolled it out, built a pizza and rolled it up into a loaf and baked it. It was like a jelly roll except it's a pizza! I got the recipe from my friend Caitlin's blog, and you can find it there too. I don't think I have ever made bread before, but this was pretty easy. Kneading kind of took forever. The whole time I was wishing I had solar hands (or at least solar gauntlets) like Azuma Kazuma from Yakitate!! Japan.  It's a manga about Japan's finest bread bakers and a gifted boy's quest to make a uniquely Japanese bread - "Ja-pan." It was adapted into an anime series, and I highly recommend it. But, I'm going a little too dorky, so I'll get back on track now.

I made the sauce for my pizza bread too - my own simple tomato sauce recipe with a spicy edge. I've never had a taste for sauce from a jar and try to steer clear of it when I can. Actually, I have a pretty good sense of taste/smell, and something about processed foods has always turned me off (besides potato buds). I used to rely on my mom's sauce which she makes in vats during the peak of hamptons tomato season and generously gives her children! It doesn't last very long because I eat it, so I started making my own in small batches as I need it.

So as I mentioned before, this pizza bread recipe is from my friend Caitlin's blog. She got the idea from her mother. Cait and her mom make the yummiest baked goods! I've been a fan basically forever. A fan of the whole family actually. If the world we live in was a game of survivor, our families would be in an alliance. And really, I value Cait's family in many ways much like Survivor contestants value the others in their alliance - you can trust them unconditionally and you just like them better than most of the other players.

There are 3 kids in Cait's family, each one matching up in age with one of the kids in my family. My older siblings were very good friends with Caitlin's older brother and sister, and they were always hanging around our house. Our families have played tennis together forever. Played games and watched movies into the wee hours of the night. Cait's amazing grandmother has accompanied me on piano while I played the oboe and sang (and probably my older sisters too). Cait's older brother Kevin and his family took part in my family's Christmas white elephant. And her older sister, Kirsten even taught me how to get rid of hiccups - a cure that has never failed me and one that I use often. (Drinking big gulps of water from the opposite side of the glass.) And when I was just 9 years old, Kevin assured me that I would have a friend in Caitlin when I matriculated into EHMS.

Caitlin and I didn't go to the same school in 1st-4th grade, so I actually knew her entire family before I met her. I went to a one room schoolhouse, and before matriculating into the much bigger middle school in 5th grade, we spent a few days visiting during 4th grade. I was placed into Cait's class, and I think I spent like every second talking to her. It was like we already knew each other because we both knew all the members of the other's family. Since then, our families have grown up together.  We live all over the place now, but when I see any one of them, it feels like a little bit of home.

My family has had "additions" over the years, and I see many close friends more like family than anything else. Cait's family isn't exactly, but they are truly an allied family. I like to think about it like that because in case the world goes bonkers, I like to know that we have another family on our side. Plus it plays into my weird fantasy that my family takes over the world, which is so so far from what could ever be. AND, it's kind of bad-ass in a mafia sort of way. So cheers to you Cait's family. Ryan and I thank you dearly for this pizza bread! (I didn't know if you all wanted your last name out there all over the place, but I realize now that almost everyone who is reading this already knows that their last name rhymes with shmaringer.)

And for the Shmaringers reading this, and Shmarabines (another family in our alliance), there have been talks about as many of us as possible participating in the Hamptons Marathon/Half Marathon/5K on October 2, including trying to get all our parents to walk the 5K.