Last week, in the park department office the director of P&R (Missy)was asking what I'd been making lately and if I'd brought any goodies (she'd told me to slow down so she could stay in shape for her float trip a couple weeks before, but now that it's over, she's ready for more), I told her it's been too hot to heat the kitchen up, I'd have to come use the kitchen at the community center! She was ok with with that--guess I'll have to take her up on it soon, and after stopping by today I'm even more excited to go in, we got new stainless steel tables (way to go Miss Ann!) to prep and work at!

Anyway, Missy, told me that she was really interested in something she'd seen the Barefoot Contessa do, grilling pizza.  Infact, she wanted to have a pizza grilling party with friends over.  A fun way to create your own and not have to heat up the house.  Sounded like fun to me and yummy!  We love pizza at our house and like to make our own.  For years I've been making my own wheat crust and piling on the toppings (ok, so pepperoni, mushrooms and black olives aren't exactly piles, but they're what we like at the little house *).

When I got home I mentioned to our daddy (who can do anything I set my mind to, like getting bees next spring after I saw something on the news a couple weeks ago--but more about that later) that I wanted to try pizza on the grill sometime.  So, he read up about it; and watched youtube videos about his PBS grilling idol, BBQ-U creating grilled pizza.  I checked out some cooking sites too. 

Everyone seemed to use a gas grill, we have a good old Weber Kettle and ya know what, it worked just fine.  Here's how we did it:

step one-- Daddy started the coals while mommy started the dough (#1 and Mr. G helped out by napping after an afternoon at the splashpad in the park) see the recipes tab for my pizza dough recipe
step 2--arrange create the thin crusts as shown in the following 2 pictures, my dough usually makes 1 large pampered chef round stone pizza, but tonight we made 4 thin pizzas






--I stretched each pizza's crust on a piece of wax paper coated in olive oil



step three--assemble all ingredients by the grill--we used mozzerella, parmesan, sauce, pepperoni, olives, and mushrooms (well, Uncle Thomas didn't have any mushrooms and made the momma pick them off of the piece he got from the 1/2 and 1/2 pizza--oh yeah, part of step 3 was realizing that we were gonna have lots of extra pizza so calling to invte uncle Thomas over)

step four--set up the coals in a ring around the outside of the grill when they're ready and then coat the grill with some more olive oil to prevent sticking, toss on a crust and let it cook until it starts to bubble and is golden, flip

step five--after both sides of the crust are golden, top with toppings, according to the BBQ-U guy, you should start with the cheese cause it takes longest then toppings and sauce (momma added a little extra cheese to the top as well) we were able to fit 2 of pizzas on the grill at a time.



step six--pull pizzas off grill and put on something to cut them and serve from (my huge wooden cutting board from Grandma and Grandpa Bell's was covered with toppings, so we used the pizza stones, which are also wonderful for baking cookies) at this point we had to call uncle Thomas again to see if he had gotten lost between Omi and Grumpy's and our house, apparently he'd forgotten he was supposed to go running with a buddy, but he was finally on his way



step seven--enjoy!  they were yummy!



*recently, this momma's been too hot and tired after camp and the heat of the day as well as lazy and craving pizza someone else made, but trying to save money as well, so we've been using that wonderful new (old) toaster oven i got at the estate sale we went to with aunt cindi to make digornio pizzas and breadsticks