April snow

All day yesterday we had alternating blizzards and blue sky. It was cold and terribly windy. Hilda shut the chicken coop early in the afternoon because the girls weren’t out anyway, and the coop would stay warmer.

This is April?

The rhubarb is coming up. It does not seem to mind the return of cold weather.

Rhubarb sprouting

We had our March game night in April because of various scheduling conflicts. We choose appetizers as our theme, knowing the whole time that there would be WAY too much food if we all brought something to pass. Hilda saw a recipe in Cook it in Cast Iron for Baked Pepperoni Pizza Dip. She gave me the choice of making that or Parmesan chicken wings. I picked the former because she is better at wings, and I love making bread.

When I got down to really thinking about it Friday, I realized that the Baked Pepperoni Pizza Dip was not really a make-ahead thing. The recipe involved lining the outside of a 10” cast iron skillet with balls of pizza dough, letting the dough rise for 20 minutes, baking it for 20 minutes, filling the middle with a mixture of pizza sauce, cream cheese, mozzarella, and crispy pepperoni bits, and baking 10 more minutes.  Our game nights really start in the afternoon so the guests can get home at a decent hour. Thus, I had to have the prep work done before the guests arrived at 3:00 and be able to quickly finish it up and have it hot by 5:00 or so.

I began by making pizza dough using the recipe from Cook it in Cast Iron. I had misgivings because the whole thing was done in the food processor and took about 2 minutes. I was horrified to find that when I removed it from the bowl, it had developed so much gluten that I could have bounced it off the floor. As I mentioned last week, however, if it doesn’t have eggs, you can abuse it as much as you want. I put it in a greased bowl to rise and crossed my fingers. After an hour, it was still a tight ball at the bottom of the bowl. After two hours, it had relaxed and looked more like it should. I proceeded to make the dough balls, which I let rise for an hour. I baked them for the first 20 minutes and figured it would hold there. I would put in the filling and finish the baking just before serving. And it was delicious.

Baked Pepperoni Pizza Dip

In addition to the pepperoni pizza dip and wings, we had deviled eggs, a tomato/rosemary tart, artichoke dip, Rumaki (traditionally chicken livers and water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, but in this iteration, Lit’l Smokies replaced the chicken livers, which was a-okay with nearly everyone), shrimp cocktail and a variety of salty, crunchy snacks. We started with the cold hors d’oeuvres at 3:00 and ate more or less continuously until 6:00. Oof.

At Terry’s request (he was one of the two March birthday boys, my dad being the other one), I made a peach pie for dessert. I’d had the peaches in the freezer for quite some time, making it more of a Tundra Surprise pie. It turned out fine. I baked it first thing in the morning and had to get the picnic net out to keep the box elder bugs and Asian lady bugs off of it.

Bug-protected peach pie

Box elder bugs on the window behind the pie

The bugs have been driving us insane since the ground thawed. They seem to be attracted to water. The ladybugs are marginally worse because they release a stink when squished or even just brushed from the counter. The Asian ladybug was important intentionally to control soybean aphids. I’m sure it seemed like a good idea at the time.  Here is a picture of one that was on its way to contaminating my toothbrush.

Ladybug stalking my toothbrush

Soon the box elders will be leafed out and the soybeans will be up. The bug density in the house will go down until fall. It’s all part of the cycle of life here in the country.