PIZZA!!!!

Some of my most favorite Illinois memories as a kid centered around Aunt Judy and Uncle Moose's PIZZA NIGHT! Back then, their house wasn't as roomy as it is now.  In fact, it was downright tight when you added all the relatives to the mix!  As you came in the door, you had to SQUEEEEEZZZE  around the table to get anywhere!   But that didn't matter to us kids. We always had a blast running around with all the cousins outside while the adults (+ cousin Gena, who was never a child) hung out in the house. It's true that you always remember the "smells" of your childhood. I never smell pizza cooking, that I don't think of those wonderful times in Illinois.

These days, the pizza is still as yummy as ever.

Before the pizza, though, we spent a lot of the afternoon cutting up all the peaches we picked.  Oh, and shucking more corn.  While we were up to our elbows in peach juice, cousins Sue and Gerald Glasco from Marion dropped by for a visit.  Gerald and my mom were first cousins.  It's been fun getting to know them over the past few years..especially through Sue's blog.  They brought their granddaughter (who I had read so much about I felt like I knew her!) and some of her friends from college.  Gerald was in a big hurry to get back on the road until he started showing me albums of pictures he had taken of various family, folks and stuff.  That was so much fun looking through and figuring out who all those people were!

This year, Uncle Moose and his granddaughter (my cousin) Cora were in charge of making the dough (from scratch), rolling it out and pouring on the pizza sauce.  Aunt Judy's flour container would last me about 10 years.  They say at Christmas it might last HER a week!  Whew!

This picture is actually the LAST pizza being started.  They ran out of their homemade pizza sauce, so they improvised with homemade salsa!  The salsa was wonderful with chips...it was yummy on pizza, too!


By the way, that is not a mini-fridge.  Uncle Moose is just THAT big!

Here is my cousin, Gena and Aunt Judy putting on pizza toppings.  As a kid, we grated the cheese from a huge block....but now they've resorted to "bagged" shredded cheese.  {For SHAME!} The meat toppings were store-bought, too.  Pretty much everything else was freshly cut from the garden -- tomatoes, peppers, onion, etc.  Actually, I spent a good bit of time cutting up those tomatoes being layered on that beauty! They were soooo good!

Here's some pizza ready to go in their oven.  Its a commercial oven, but for some reason you couldn't put 8 pizza's in at the same time!

If I didn't mention it before, these folks COOK.  They COOK A LOT!!!  And when they COOK, it is soooo GOOD!!!

I must be adopted.

Here are some of the menfolk enjoying after dinner talk.  There were a whole bunch more folks there that night...but they must have been spread out letting their supper settle.  Bex was in charge of taking these pictures... Maybe she could have done better?  She didn't get a picture of all the peach cobbler, the peach pie, the peach and blueberry pie, the peach salsa, the brownies....I'm just sayin.

Here are most of the "little" ones these days.  All cousins kids that live within a few miles of each other.  This was taken right before Bex was told to leave because they wanted some "privacy."









That's all the pictures of the pizza night.  There was a BUNCH of folks there.  There was a BUNCH of pizza eaten and a BUNCH of peaches eaten.  All was well with MY world!!!

Stay tuned.