and the weekend is over.

Jealous? Yah, I didn't think so. This weather is getting to me, I want to be outside for big walks and beachtime. I do not want another week of this! 

Me and my community garden plot friends met at Solly's this morning for a bagel and to go through our seeds and to plan the garden. We toughed it out in the cold rain and planted swiss chard, rainbow chard, golden beets, red beets, radicchio, fennel, flat fennel, red radishes, purple radishes, long beans, green beans, sweet peas, sugar snap peas, poppies, shallots, green onions, rhubarb and dwarf sunflowers. Still to plant: garlic, blueberry plant, scented geraniums and tomatoes. I can't wait for summer!

After a trip to Ikea (wow they have really great seasonal stuff right now!) I made us a really easy pizza with my favourite new easy dough.

Pizza with Sauteed Chili Mushrooms, Radicchio and Pesto

Basic Pizza Dough

1 tbsp dry yeast

1 tsp sugar

1 cup  lukewarm water

2½ cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp olive oil

Place the yeast, sugar and water into a bowl and mix to combine. Set aside in a warm place for 5 minutes or until bubbles appear on the surface this means the yeast has been activated.

Put the flour and salt in a bowl and make a well in the centre. Add the yeast mixture and mix together with well floured hands to form a dough.

Kneed dough on a lightly floured surface for 3-4 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic.

* I mixed it all my stand mixer with the dough hook for 5 minutes.

Divide the dough into equal-size balls. Rub two mixing bowls and the dough balls with olive oil and place each ball into a bowl, cover the bowl with cling wrap and then with a clean damp tea towel and set aside in a warm place for 30 minutes or until the balls have doubled in size.

Press each dough ball into a round and roll out on a lightly floured surface to the desired size.

I topped our pizza with:

• a few tbsp of tomato sauce mixed with 1 tbsp of pesto on the crust

• 2-3 cups of mushrooms sauteed in olive oil with a good sprinkling of dried chili flakes and salt and pepper

• 1 small head of radicchio, thinly sliced and sauteed with 2 garlic cloves in olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper

• shredded fresh mozzarella

• finely chopped parsley

I preheated the oven to 500° with the pizza stone in it, let the stone get good and hot, about fifteen minutes and then stretched out the dough and put it on the hot stone, topped it with all the tasty treats and baked it for 10-15 minutes until golden and crispy.

So delicious with a big plate of steamed asparagus on the side!