Humbling Hospitality

After Tony got off work on Thursday, he decided to invite our friend Chris over for dinner and a documentary. ;) The time was 5:15pm and our company would be here at 6:30pm. Not much time. Since we were going out of town for several days, the house was a little bare of groceries. So after starting some pizza dough in the bread machine, we took a quick trip to the store to get the ingredients for the tried-n-true Italian Sausage Roll. Yum. Back at home I discover that the bread machine had already beat down the dough a second time ... I usually remove the dough before this point. So I let it sit there while I prepared the filling: ground hot sausage, diced green peppers, onions, mushrooms, garlic, cream cheese, mozzarella. Chris was now here and he received a phone call reminding him of a meeting that he was to attend that night. He had to leave in less than two hours. The dough still had not risen. So I just spread it out on my pizza pan and placed all the yummy filling on top. It was a rather strange looking concoction. I was worried. The guys started watching the documentary... I watched from the kitchen. In the oven it went. 20 minutes later the timer went off and so did our fire alarms ... :) The cheese had started to brown on top. So Tony gets a towel and starts fanning our fire alarms. Praise God that they're sensitive! Dinner is served - "flat strombolli" with a salad. We eat and even get seconds. ;) It turned out just fine. I had planned on making a pumpkin pie for dessert, but it wasn't feasible with the time constraint. I was trying to think of a quick alternative. "Oh yeah, Monday night I had made some chocolate chip cookies and put the leftover dough in the freezer." Praise the Lord! In the oven they went and out they came nice and golden, served with some coffee ice cream. Mmmmm! Although the evening did not turn out as I planned, it was still a lot of fun; and our guest was very gracious! :)