Make It! The Creation Challenge

With all this extra time at home, why not work on learning a new skill or even perfecting an old one? It could be anything: cooking (like in my video), art, music, building stuff, knitting, writing or something else with your hands, inventing a board game - whatever!

When we create something beautiful, we are participating in God's holy work of creation. We are creators, much like the Creator who made us all! That's part of our job, to continue God's important work of creation, whether it's a scarf or a piece of music, or a great Lego skyscraper, an app ... whatever!

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Ephesians 2:10

As I explain in the video, I've been trying to perfect homemade pizza for several months now. Above is the result of what I show cooking in the oven while filming. Tonight I came very close to getting it just right! It was delicious - all four of us ate it, even the baby, and it was gone in about 15 minutes :) Tonight's toppings were pepperoni, yellow pepper, mushroom and kalamata olives. As promised, here is my recipe if you want to give homemade pizza a try.

Pizza Crust
Making the crust is actually pretty easy. I double the crust recipe since I have a stand mixer that can handle that amount of dough. Then once the dough has risen, I divide it into four portions and freeze two of them: it only takes a little while for frozen pizza crust dough to thaw and start rising again, and then you can roll it out and top it.
Basic pizza crust recipe and cooking instructions from the Joy of Cooking

Pizza toppings
I keep these ingredients on hand so we can make pizza whenever we want
-jars of premade marinara or traditional pasta sauce in the cupboard
-blocks or grated bags of mozzarella cheese in the back of the fridge
-pepperoni slices that you can keep in the cupboard until you open the bag
-cans of pineapple chunks (yes! We love pepperoni and pineapple pizza, don't judge) in the cupboard
-vegetables that I dice and quickly sautee on the stovetop to soften before putting on the pizza
-Italian seasoning herb mix that I dash sprinkle over the toppings right before putting the pizza in the oven

You can also get creative with toppings. Here are some of the combinations we've tried:
Cauliflower or chicken marinated in Buffalo sauce with blue cheese crumbles
Red onion, sausage and goat cheese
BBQ chicken and red onion
Anything goes! The sky is the limit