Fail: Spiderweb Pizza

Pin Reaper: Taraflem

Original Inspiration: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/229120699766142740/ via http://kidpartyfoodideas.com/category/holiday-party-foods/halloween/

What I Did: My 4 year old daughter REALLY wanted to make these, so much so that she took my shopping list and wrote “spiderweb pizza” on it (no easy task, as she can’t spell and isn’t sure how to make all her letters. For example: “what comes after E?” “R.” “how do you make an R?” Like a P but with a kick-out” “How do you make a P again?” etc.) Thus begins the saga…

At Shop Rite I decided that the Boboli ready-made pizza crust is just too easy, so I buy the little baggy of dough, and pizza sauce, and string cheese (to rip up into skinny strings to make the web), and colossal black olives (to make the spider).

Dough time! Both kids want to make their own, so I rip the dough in half (“I want that half!!” “Why does she get that piece??”) and I tell them to stretch it out on the flour-covered counter until it’s a pizza shape. No easy task, apparently. The dough is like Silly Putty or something. My son is stretching it out as far as it’ll go, then lets go, and ZOOP! it’s back to its original ball shape. Tricky. Meanwhile, my daughter is alternately licking bits of dough off her hands, patting the flour pile on the floor, eating the string cheese, dropping string cheese on the floor, stepping on it, eating it anyway, rubbing her hands back in her dough, etc. Yuck.

At this point my son decides this is no fun, and would like me to do the sauce, cheese, and olive spider, “but I get to eat it all, right Mommy?” My daughter- no such luck. She’s in it for the long haul. Next comes sauce! She needs to use a certain measuring spoon that came in her “pizza making kit” (a birthday party favor) and proceeds to stuff the big tablespoon into the tiny jar, glopping the sauce everywhere- shirt, counter, face, floor (which gets on socks, which makes sauce prints all over the kitchen, along with the string cheese and flour piles). And again, she’s licking fingers and touching everything. Then cheese- the object is to tear apart the string cheese into lots of skinny pieces which you put on the pizza in a lovely spiderweb shape- concentric circles with connecting lines. She eats half, then dumps the other half onto about 1/3 of her pizza in a big clump. “Done Mommy!” Hmmm… ok, I leave it alone and figure I’ll do my son’s pizza and then at least one will look like the magazine.

Then the phone rings. It’s a long call and I can’t hang up, during which I’m trying to finish the web, my son starts his homework which involves adding up dice and requires two players, so “MOMMY!! IT’S YOUR TURN!!”, then the cell phone rings, I try to ignore it (as now I’m attempting to slice olives into skinny, skinny pieces in order to get eight legs to fit on the olive spider) but my daughter answers my cell and runs back to the kitchen with it, falls into something and starts to cry. So now- two active phone calls, crying daughter, son needing a dice game partner, already 7 pm, raw pizzas, and very messy kitchen. Deep breath.

I hang up both phones, console my daughter, put pizza in the oven, play the dice game, sweep, wipe, straighten, and send her to put on clothes without sauce. Ahhh… quieter now, almost done… how many more minutes?? Check timer. Timer? CRAP! Didn’t set the timer!! GAAAA!!! Burnt, blackened pizza!! (Me: “It’ll taste just like Cheez-Its!” D: “I do NOT want to eat that!” S: “Can’t we just eat the leftover pizza from A’Mangiare?”) Ah, yes… leftover pizza from A’Mangiare. That would’ve been a lot simpler…

PS- The kids ate the leftover GOOD pizza, and I had the crappy, burnt, dirty-finger, doughy, nasty pizza that they made. With a well-deserved glass of wine.

My Result:

Next Time I Will: -buy Boboli, leave kids out of the kitchen and order more pizza from A’Mangiare