Life is good.

I am currently feeling excellent. The tax thing got taken care of, by the way; I called up the guy I called before and he kind of laughed about it, noted in passing that I was listed under a completely wrong SSN in their system, and removed the charge. Today work was short because of a dentist appointment, which went very well, and after the appointment I went to Bassett's to buy wheat berries, rye berries, and oat bran for bread. I came home and spent a couple of hours in the yard, in the sunny not-too-warm weather, planting corn and echinacea and more parsnips and parsley. Then we made pizza for dinner (calculating along the way that homemade pizza costs us approximately $3 a pizza, which is $0.75 per meal) and now I'm alternately reading and working on my garden records. Soon I will write. I want more pizza but no, maybe I'll have one of the leftover killer brownies.

The pizza experiment is up here. We had grilled cheese sandwiches and soup for dinner. Tomorrow, I'm going to the farmer's market and hoping to bring home fruit other than oranges. I have potting soil for winter sowing now but no shop light for my greenhouse--the guy I asked in Anderson's listened to me ask for a 24" shop light, because we found 24" plant/aquarium light bulbs, and said, "They're here. This is $8.97." It was 48 inches. Eric said, "Is there a 24-inch one?" The guy stood there impassively. I said, "I take that as a no," and we walked away. Sigh. But I will get a light...someday. Someday within the next two months, in fact.

We did the pizza crust extravaganza last night, and except for a less consistent schedule of rising and resting and baking than I would have liked, it went off with reasonable scientific rigor. (I'm going to post it at The Fresh Loaf tonight if I remember.) We like the honey-wheat and the herbed crusts best, so the next step is to try honey-wheat-herb crust. Incidentally, doing mini-pizzas like this (each was about seven inches across) would be a great way of doing a tapas-type meal, or for a party. Bite-size pizzas would also be good, I bet, though a bit more work (but they'd bake up really fast!). Maybe I should try that for our next party. Along with the homemade pickles and salsa and ice cream. Maybe this year we'll learn to make our own tortilla chips?

Tonight I'm yet again working on the garlic-rosemary sourdough, using less garlic this time. Next week there will be no bread baking at all (we're going to ConFusion and there will be no pizza because I need time to recover from last night), so I better get my licks in now.

I got the first of my seed orders last night, from Seeds of Change. I was quite pleased--and the free seed packet was nice, of course. And then I was looking at Baker Creek and finding, among other things, seeds for a two-foot pomegranate tree. It has been very, very hard not to order those seeds. But I've got enough to deal with this upcoming growing season...especially since we've got all that landscaping to do in addition to the actual garden work. Though feeling free to call on Eric to do half of that will help a lot.

I called up the tax guy and he told me what to send in to prove I didn't live here when I was working in Dayton, so that’s fine. But the other line item, not enough Toledo tax, was due to my work taking out only the tax for the city the company is located in, which is lower than Toledo's. I checked with HR just now and they won't take out the proper amount, so I'm going to have to pay Toledo tax myself for the next couple of years. Realistically speaking this is probably better for me--I get to hang on to that extra couple of hundred dollars for longer--but it annoys me nonetheless.

We're going to the Farmer's Market tomorrow. I am determined. I wanted to go all summer last year and didn't, partly because I had my own garden and partly because it's downtown where we have no other business. Now that I know they're open in the winter--and I've been told they have greens and apple cider and eggs and apparently an entire poultry house, if Eric wants fresh chicken soup--I must visit and see what's there. I'm hoping they have cheese and potatoes, too.

It's a slow day at work, with my two big concerns being a project that's been delayed and a project with mistakes that I have to help ameliorate. I didn't make the mistakes, so I don't feel too bad about that. It hasn't been too bad for my first full work week in almost a month, though.

Ugh. I got a letter from the city of Toledo, telling me that I owe city tax for 2006 and 2005. They spelled my name wrong. The 2006 line had me working for an aerospace company, which I don't. (It's one letter off from the company I do work for.) The 2005 line? It was for the company I worked at in Dayton. When I went back and looked at my W2s I could see how that could happen; the W2 was sent to my Toledo apartment, because that's where I moved immediately after quitting. But still. Ugh. I called to see how I should go about proving I don't owe them that extra $266 and left a message.

On to happier topics. Specifically: pizza. Our next kitchen experimental subject is pizza crust, courtesy of Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and a packet of pizza crust mix I bought from Jungle Jim's and decided the time had come to use. We tried it a couple of weeks ago. The mix was awful, the Prego (?) pizza sauce mediocre, the store-brand cheese didn't even taste like mozzarella. "We can do better than this," Eric and I said, because we like pizza and it really doesn't take long to make, even from scratch. So Friday I made sourdough pizza crust, because I had some starter to use up, and we used Trader Joe's marinara, and the results were so much better...but still needed improving. We have to replace the cheese yet, and I plan to make and can our own pizza sauce in the summer when the tomatoes come in; but I can work on the crust now.

So I found three recipes online that I want to try, and made up three more based on them. There's a control, of just flour, water, salt, and yeast. There's one with oil, one with oil and wheat flour, one with oil and honey, one with wheat and honey, one with herbs, and one with herbs and oil. To be truly scientifically rigorous I'd be changing just one variable at a time, but that takes too long and I want to see how these taste in combination. So this week I'm making mini pizzas, just crust, sauce and mozzarella (so I'll be replacing it soon), and taking notes on each variation. If we don't end up with the perfect homemade pizza, it will not be for lack of trying. Or geekery.