Pizza Anyone My Recipe for a great Pizza

Hello and welcome. Yes I know it looks delicious. As it should be. Earlier this year we had bought the PiPizza Pan yes a Pi pan. When I was a child my grandmother Joann used to say it’s a pizza pie. She was always saying things like that. She would say chride Fricky for fried chicken. When I would ask a question she would always say no it’s for your brother over in Italy. What??? It took me many years to get that! I used to think I really had a brother in Italy. I know laugh. She was a school guard and was a school guard for 30 years. She left because she became ill with what they called organic brain syndrome. She was diagnosed around age 52 I was 12 years old. It was a very painful experience to see your grandmother deteriorate in her memory. Anyway I digress. Did you come here for the pizza or what?? I would imagine you did. I have spent my life making pizzas. We used to buy them in the Chef BoyArDChef Pizzas in a green box. The box may have changed but this was over 40 years ago when I would buy them. It was like a Friday night special. I will have been married for 41 years this November. I was making them as a teen. I can still even remember making them when we lived in Norfolk behind the ABC Daycare which Bruce cut the grass for the school to pay for Jrs. Daycare. I was 18 going to Nursing school. Those pizzas were so delicious. The funny thing is I would make homemade wheat rolls (old Betty Crocker recipe book) but yet I bought that pizza kit. Haha. 🤣 I think that kit was only like a 1.40 then if that. It came with everything in the box. Good times! I want to add that the Lodge pan shown in the picture will hold the recipe batch below perfectly. No need to cut the dough. It’s a great easy way to make that pizza for the family. 

We have always ate pineapple on our pizzas even when I was a teen I would go to chuck e Cheese with friends and I would order the ham and pineapple. I know laugh but if you then you know it’s very tasty. Lip smacking delicious. When Bruce worked at Dominoes Pizza he would bring home pizzas sometimes and he always had pineapple with extra cheese and extra sauce. That was our favorite!! Even our kids loved it. 

I also will put them in cast iron pans to bake in. Add extra olive oil for a crunchy crust. 

I also use the stones to cook them on as well but I believe the cast iron does a great job. As they both do. 

Riggs and Ledger love when I make these homemade pizzas. They help me decorate them. 

I am gluten free and have been eating gluten free since 2015. I have celiac’s disease. I have no choice but I find so much more gluten free items now than I did before. We would always have to drive to VA. Beach to find things for me at the Trader Joe’s or the Whole Foods. Then when Wegmans opened we went there as they had a great selections as well. I miss VA. Beach. Some of my best friends lived there. My art group was there. 

A lot of times we will use the Pioneer Princess to cook the pizzas. It has to be in the teens as it will get so warm in here. 

So a lot of times I will freeze the dough I wrap in cellophane and then put in gallon bags. They keep up to four months. Just thaw and use as you would. We would have huge pizza parties at my old house as we had built a homemade pizza oven. It was hand built. I will share more on that later. I was late on this post as it was. As if there is a time limit..,, lol it’s my internal time clock. Haha 

So when we would have the parties I would make a list of everything we would need for the toppings. The boys mostly Colby made the Buffalo chicken pizza. Colten would make the bbq pizza. Dusty was a cheese pizza. Cooper was the pepperoni. 🍕 
 Now for what you all have waited for…… 

The Recipe 

Pizza Dough Recipe 

water 1 1/3 cups warm 100 degrees Fahrenheit (I use a thermometer) 

Olive oil 2 TBS. 

Sugar 1 Tablespoon

Salt 1 teaspoon 

Flour 4 cups (I use whatever flour I have wether it’s bread flour or white flour) 

Active dry yeast 2 teaspoons I buy the one in the jar and I keep it in the refrigerator. 

I use a bread machine as having a family of nine children I needed appliances that could help me cook with. When my girls were growing up they would help with so much. In the bread machine I just use the dough cycle and put your water in first then the olive oil. Add the flour and salt. Then add the sugar and yeast. Start the bread machine and go do something else for 1 hour and half. Then your pizza dough is ready to make into delicious pizza. When I would have these pizza parties I had so many people over I had for bread machines going at once and then I would refrigerate the dough to be ready for the pizza party. When Kim and Jr got married in 2014 we had a pizza party that night at the wedding party. Bruce and I cooked pizzas (mostly Bruce) I kept everything together. Bruce cooked more than fifty pizzas that night. I think that was the record. 

Enjoy!! 

Much love and respect, 

Dawn Gallop 

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The Second 10 Days of the 100 Day Project

Day 11

Hello and welcome,  so if you are new here this is part of the 100 day project I am working on. You pick whatever you want to do the whole idea is in the end you will have learned something and made a new habit for yourself. Plus it’s creative and we all need creativity wholeheartedly!!! It can be as simple as a small sketch or a scribble anything you want. If you have viewed the last 10 days you can see it Days 1-10 the ones you are looking at currently at days 11-20 

Day 12 I have nothing to really look at I am going by memory of trees my so called usual drawings. The skull I had actually seen one day on a walk. 

Day 13 Here for the Craterellus foetidus I had decided to add a spotted skunk. 

Day 14

This one has so much meaning, Skylar had spent a lot of time with me during 2022. She even went to school here while mom was deployed to Korea. We had bought a rabbit at the state fair and we would go on walks every afternoon. Fall was upon us and the sky was golden pink and purples. The leaves had newly falling and oh the beauty of it just poured out of me unto this painting. I had to be grandma and mom while she was here and it was a struggle at times. She was in the fourth grade then. If she didn’t get her way she would get upset. As with grandma she was used to getting her way. Easy peasy. Well I want you to know I miss those times we had together as it was special so very special. I enjoyed her company and the games we played board games etc. we did a lot then. Value every minute in your life because once that minute is gone it’s gone!!! You will want to relive it once more. This is so true. 

 Day 15 these are very small but I added the pileated woodpecker. 

Day 16 when I was painting the background in the green I saw the green man show up. So I painted him. He was stopping by to make sure I had painted nature correctly. 

Day 17 Shrimp or the woods doesn’t taste like shrimp but has the texture of shrimp. This one I painted without adding a sketch. It just flowed out and I did it while we were on a Zoom call with our weekly group chats for the 100 Day Project. 

Day 18 this was right out of my brain as we have seen these many times over and the first time I saw one with snow on it, it was breathtaking beauty. See pictures below. 

Day 19 Here I was enjoying just playing the Reishi in watercolor. It’s such a beautiful mushroom. 

Day 20 Here is day 20 this one I actually started out total different like I was in charge and next thing I looked and it wasn’t going to work. My brain was somewhere else while I was painting as I looked and it was way off on perspective. I was going to let it slide but I couldn’t I had to fix it. So I tore a page out of the book (which I like never do) so I cut out the lacquered mushrooms off the stump I messed up on (it was already painted) I added a sweet little deer like the ones that keep coming to my yard. They come for the apples and the birdseed. When Brooks and Baker come over they ask for apples and then when they are done they tell me to throw it out for the deer. It’s the cutest. 

Here is the picture of the Ganoderma applanatum I found in our woods several years back. I can spot these even riding down the roads. 
I hope you enjoyed the second 10 paintings of the 100 day project. I have enjoyed the process and I feel a progression in just the 20 days. 
I made hamburgers last night and potatoes for dinner and Bruce says it’s always good when you cook. It’s hard on me so I don’t do as much as I used to. 
Much love and respect, 
Good Vibes, 
Dawn Gallop 

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P is Popsicle or I is for Ice cream

Hello and welcome…. It’s not summer here but always a great day for a popsicle or ice cream. The other night when Cody and Amelia and all those sweet babies came over. Papa brought out popsicles I had previously bought for Ledger and Riggs when they had stayed a week with us. Oh my goodness what a surprise and a great treat for them. Brooks wanted more. It was so cute. Reminded me of Riggs always wanting another one. Not to mention Colten as well. Colten once said “I think I will have an ice cream cone.” It was Easter and everyone who needed a new bike had got one. I remember a lot of bikes. That picture is on regular film. He hadn’t even been on the bike but like 10 seconds. We all still laugh at that. So instead of being in the moment of the new bikes he was thinking of those yummy Schwans ice cream cones. We used to always have Schwans delivery. We had been customers since 1995 but in the last few years we’ve been unable to have any deliveries due to budget. All my children have grown up with Schwans ice cream. Living rural it can be difficult to get ice cream home especially in the south. The popsicles I actually bought I had seen my old driver at a neighbors house and I stopped to get those bomb pops. As we called them. I think they call them firecrackers or patriot pops. When I was kid they also came in banana and chocolate. I always got that one. 

Look at that sneaky happy face on Brooks. Baker is just enjoying the moment. 

Oh I know you can taste that sweetness of that cold brain freezing popsicle. 

 

Here is Ledger at our home in NC they enjoyed them too. Always a popsicle at grandmas house. 

We had seen this ice cream truck at Jacksonville Beach while we were visiting with Amanda. The bomb pop is on the door of the converted ambulance truck. 

Skylar aka Skybear. It’s not a popsicle but I had made everyone at cake at the house Bruce was working on in Cape Hatteras, NC. She wanted to lick the beaters and the spatula. I have a video of her when Dusty was saying can have some? Skylar was shaking her head no. She was like two then. Here she is four. She had stayed with us while mom was deployed to German, that time. 

Clarissa 

Kim sends me the pictures so I don’t know all th details but I do know that it looks super delicious. 

This was when we were in Canada 🇨🇦 we stopped and had ice cream. It was a great experience and a delightful place. The ice cream was amazing. 

Samantha enjoyed this blue ice cream and I do remember her tongue turned blue. When I was a kid my aunt and grandmother on my mom’s side lived in WW1 housing and right across from the Colonial Grocery Store and a Highs Ice Cream shop. I would cross this major highway and go and buy a .25 cent ice cream I would get bubble gum flavored. Sometimes I would get a red white and blue one it was around 1976 so Bicentennial memorabilia was everywhere. I even had a red white and blue banana seat bicycle. I rode everywhere. Even places I had no business being there. I was quite the explorer. Curious!! 

Dakota looks like she got the same ice cream. 

Dusty had a custard cup in the Outerbanks of NC. We went there every time we were there at one time we had a camper at the campground. We would get the vanilla custard with rainbow sprinkles. My mouth is watering thinking of it. 

Here are Dusty and Cooper when we had gone to Florida to visit Amanda for her wedding to Chad. We walked around St. Augustine visiting the shops and enjoying the beautiful views. Well we were broke just getting to come to Florida we had cashed in our Rufus “piggy” bank which is really a dog. Amanda told us we could “hock” some jams along the way. Which didn’t happen. We just needed enough money to have gas money. We brought our food which is a normal occurrence unless we have to fly or get on a cruise ship. So we good just needed money for fuel. Gas prices were around $2.80 cents per gallon in 2015. Well the boys had run ahead of us and had got to the ice cream shop where everyone in our group had gone thru the line as we were walking coming to them. Here were Dusty and Cooper sitting with no ice cream. My mother and stepfather had gone thru the line and didn’t buy them any ice cream. As we were getting ready to open the door of the shop Chad had taken them up to the counter and bought them ice cream. I was so upset over the fact that my mother couldn’t buy them an ice cream. While they both sat there eating ice cream. It made me cry later. Because who does that to kids. On our way back home we had stopped at a rest stop to use our jetboil to cook a meal. A couple came up and asked us could they get $10 dollars for gas. Bruce said I don’t know if we can spare it. I pulled out $20 bucks for them and said get you some gas and maybe a little snack. Then I reminded Bruce of what goes around comes around. 

Look how happy Cooper was….. with the ice cream that almost wasn’t. Thank you Chad for saving the day. My boys appreciated it. 

This is Samantha when she was at my house in NC with one of those “ice cream cones” that Colten was talking about. I always had these on hand as well. I miss my ice cream suppliers. Too cute. 

This little ice cream tip was in my pictures I must of got it off of Pinterest years ago. I wish I had known that earlier in my life. Great tip!!! Thanks to whoever made that post. 

Today I was in a slump it seems I have this bottled up energy and the weather is just not cooperating with me being outside. Too much snow and ice and extreme temperatures. I have been watercoloring. The 100 day project which is getting to be 20 days in today. Yay! Five more days will be a 1/4 of the way finished. Toot!! Beep!! I love the painting for today however it seemed like I just couldn’t get there. Colby went to buy dog food for me tonight and I asked for some of those gluten free crackers and a goat cheese for a snack. We have been watching a few shows. Nurse Jackie and Versailles. Well I better stop working on the blog for today. See you tomorrow. Much love and hugs. 

Good vibes, 

Dawn Gallop 

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Camping ⛺️

 Hello and happy Monday. Here we are on to the second week of February. Remember I am still sharing the good times of 2025 and other years as well. It’s nice to share and I am enjoying the process. It’s like journaling without paper. I still journal as well. It just feels right. It’s another way for creativity. 

This video is funny it’s about us coming to Cody and Amelia’s wedding. We camped using a HipCamp and let me tell you it was a great experience. We arrived in Ohio (kinda like a half way mark) or in my mind it was. We picked a campsite and it was on a slope. I was exhausted as I wasn’t even a few months passed the first back surgery. Which one of my pins were broke and no one was listening to me at how much pain I was in. Finally when we came back home they did a CT scan and found all that out. I was scheduled for the second surgery on September 30. Only 26 days after Cody’s wedding. So while we were camping the next morning on the slopes. It had rained and when I woke up I was way down the slope. All of us moved in the tent. I still laugh about it. 

In 2024 we took the boys camping in our vintage camper that someone had gave us. We call her Betsy. She needs work inside. The boys loved it. They wanted to go again in the camper. This past year 2025. I will tell you more of that story below. 

So we tent camped this past year as Bruce hadn’t got to work on Betsy the RV. It was August and it was hot. Plus being in the tent you could hear everything and everyone close by. We did meet one of the nicest RV owners that pulled in beside us that day. It all started with a frozen Margarita. A young lady had come with her parents and they had brought a margarita machine. Well when they said the margaritas are ready you would know it…. Bruce said “Margaritas” they invited us over and that was it. We really enjoyed talking with them and the boys were both chatting as well. The guy was very impressed with the boys. How smart they were and so well behaved. 

We had brought along our hammocks that we have in our backpacks. Over the years we have used these and in fact one of the very oldest hammocks we have is a blue one that Jr used on his walkabouts. When he was in his late teens he would grab his Kelly pack and we would be riding down the road and see him with his backpack. He would stay gone for awhile and enjoy his time going places. 

The little boys enjoyed the hammock mostly without grandma. I just wanted to test it out since it had been a long time. It was really nice. 

We collected rocks and I used my identifying app for the rocks. They loved it. 

Riggs always wanted to get the big ones. 

I enjoyed my class with herbal preparations that night it was Goldenrod and if there is an herb I know a lot about is goldenrod. I had brought some from home. 

Smoke must of got in his eyes. Bruce had packed all the camp goodies. The boys roasted marshmallows with sticks the old fashioned way. They got a kick out of that. 

Ledger has grown up so fast. I tell you it was like yesterday he was just born and now look. Slow down bud grandma has to catch up. 

The BigFoot by the house. You can even see the yellow goldenrod blooming. 

At the time we went Riggs had burned his foot. Well grandma had all the supplies for a pretty bad burn. To avoid infection I changed the wrap etc. when it was time for him to go home I told him what he would need. He told mom and he was very specific about it. Even telling her how to do the wrap. His attention was very focused and concerning. He watches this doctor on YouTube and is knowledgeable about doctor educational shows. I keep saying he’s going to be a doctor. 

This was a picture I found of the boys making a tent in the yard. Everyone was going to sleep in it until nighttime came. 

This was camping the year of 2024 when we had the RV on the road. 

A very beautiful and relaxing campground. Now for the story….. Ledger and Riggs told me that they didn’t want to tent camp again that they wanted to go in the RV again. So no more tent camping. Haha. Gotta love it. Luxury boys!!!! They know the best way to camp!!! 

Years ago we would go Girl Scout camping and would stay in the cabins and/or the platform tents. Bruce was canoe certified so all our girls used to be able to canoe. Bruce would help other troops as well. That can be another post. All the years of camping and canoeing. Most of my pictures of that life are on actual film. I have been one of those people that always had/has a camera. I used to spend many years taking pictures of my dogs and trees. My mother said you’re wasting film and time!!!! I never felt like that. However when I would get my film developed I had to listen to the fussing but I was to busy looking at the pictures analyzing them and seeing if I caught the sun just right or if my dogs were looking at me. I even took pictures of my clothes….. I was thinking of the future perhaps as now no one thinks that type of picture is out of the norm. Mostly for gifts I would always get cameras. Always the novelty ones as well. Then when I was 18 working at a large department store they had a camera department and I put my first expensive camera on layaway. Jr. was a baby and I wanted the best pictures I could get. The camera was over $300 with my employer discount. A Canon. I didn’t become the Nikon girl to much later. The first digital camera I had was a Kodak. I got that around 2002. Which brings me to the new book I am reading Art Work: On the Creative Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/1419780719?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share by Sally Mann a must read it’s so good. I’m already in the fifth chapter. 

Well I better head on out as the dogs want attention…

Much love and good vibes, 

Dawn Gallop 

P. S. Today I was very tired and had no energy…. Bruce said he was feeling some kinda way as well. 

 

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