The English Geek

Letting Faith be Visible

I was in a church meeting a couple of weeks ago when one of the speakers shared this quote:

"Don't let your faith be hard to find."

I'm not certain who said it---one of the general authorities. But it struck me hard. If you don't know me in the flesh (as opposed to on line) you probably have no idea about my faith. I rarely write about it on my blog because it feels too personal, and yet I so admire bloggers like Heather who are constantly sharing their testimonies and experiences with faith. So, to start working on my goal of letting my faith be easy to find, I'm sharing an experience here.

In the LDS church, we are encouraged to have a weekly family night. During family home evening, we learn gospel principles and ideals. We also do fun things together to build family relationships. I grew up in a home that was only sporadically active in church, and we never had family home evenings. So it's been a little bit of a struggle for me to incorporate this into my family, but we've been doing so well this year. A few weeks ago, my in-laws asked if they could come to one of our family home evenings. Of course, I was thrilled to accept.

They came last night. I made dinner first---manicotti, green salad, Parmesan toast, and the first fresh asparagus I've found this year---and then went into the living room for our family home evening. I had no idea what Kent and Beth wanted to talk about. Turns out they each wanted to share their testimonies with their grandchildren. My father-in-law talked about the influence of the Holy Ghost in our lives, how it is a blessing to have spiritual guidance. My mother-in-law talked about the importance of reading the scriptures.

Again---I grew up in a basically non-active family. We went to church sometimes, but there were never any discussions of gospel principles or doctrines. My parents haven't ever shared their testimonies with me. And none of my grandparents were active in the church, either. So as I listened to my in-laws speak and watched my children listen, I felt so blessed to have married into this family. I'm not certain that everything they said last night my kids immediately understood. But what I did feel with certainty is that their grandparents were planting seeds in their hearts, and what will grow from those seeds will be something strong that can help them when they need it. We LDS people believe that the family is an eternal unit, and last night I feel I had a taste of the sweetness that is enmeshed in that knowledge.

Going to The Movies

Last night while I was sweeping the floor after dinner (I made meatloaf, by the way, which is something I've not made in at least a year; it tasted so good and I remembered that I really do make killer meatloaf!), I was thinking about the movies. It seems like it's been a long, long time since there's been something I've just been DYING to see. Nothing's really grabbed my attention. I like sagas, with history and romance and a battle or two. I value intelligent chick flicks, which seem to be on the wane lately. What I don't like is a lot of senseless, stupid violence, the kind that's there only to showcase violence or to illustrate some groovy special effect.

We used to go to the movies a lot. Once Nathan was about three, we were able to leave all my kids with one of our couple-friends' kids, since they have kids the same ages as ours AND a couple of older kids who could watch everyone. So we did dinner and a movie a lot. But since Kaleb came along, and those older kids got old enough to not want to spend their weekend evenings babysitting, we've just not been to the movies very often. Which is OK---like I said, not much has grabbed me. But, coincidentally, just as I finished sweeping the floor, a friend called to ask if I'd like to do a girl's night out on Friday and go see a movie. We decided on Amazing Grace, which looks good. And then, this morning, my friend Sophia had this meme on her blog, all about movie tastes. (She did it because of the Oscar's, which I didn't watch. I forgot it was on, but I probably wouldn't have watched it anyway; I took a bath and read my book instead!) So, just because the topic of movies keeps popping up for me, here are my answers:

1. Name your all-time top five favorite movies. Lord of The Rings Trilogy; The Last of The Mohicans, Romeo + Juliet (the one with Claire Danes and Leo Di Caprio), Shakespeare in Love, Ten Things I Hate About You, Cold Mountain, The Gladiator, The Patriot and Pride & Prejudice (the newest one with Keira Knightely) (and, yes, I know i named nine...or eleven if you count all three LoTR, but there you go)
2. What’s your favorite movie line? "I do not think that word means what you think it means." Princess Bride
3. Who’s your favorite movie character? Aragorn (I am starting to sound like a hopeless LoTR geek, aren't I?)
4. What movie do you love that most people hate? Well, I'm not sure if most people hate this movie, but Kendell does: Heathers. I love that movie.
5. What movie do you hate that most people love?  Meet The Parents and Meet The Fokkers. I don't like movies that are frustrating to watch!
6. What was the last movie you saw? The Departed
7. What’s your least favorite movie ever? What About Bob (again with the frustration! In fact, movies that frustrate me are known as "what about Bob" movies around here)
8. What’s one movie have you seen that you would never ever watch again? The Departed. Kendell and I went to a movie with some friends, and the wife was dying to see this. I did like the story BUT the violence was way too over the top for me. I had my head turned sideways for about 50% of this movie. When we left we decided that SHE never gets to pick the movie again! ;)
9. What was the last DVD you saw? The Guardian. It was OK---sort of like Top Gun in the water. Exact same line---"the best of the best." And it was fairly predictable. But decent. I'd watch it over #8!!!
10. What was the first DVD you remember buying? Tarzan. I even wrote in my journal that day about buying our first DVD, lol!
11. What movie do you relate to more than any other? Family Man. Not Nicholas Cage's character, but Tea Leoni's. I get her frustrations with her marriage.
12. What actor/actress would you like to look like? Barbara Hershey. I don't really want to look like anyone else but myself (is that weird? not because I think I'm especially attractive, but because I'm ME, if that makes sense), but I think I look the tiniest, tiniest bit like her in Beaches.
13. What classic movie have you never seen? Most of them...I'm not a big fan of old movies.
14. What song would you choose be the theme song to the movie of your life story? "Left of Center" by Suzanne Vega.
15. What’s your favorite movie genre? Historical sagas.
16. Who’s your favorite actor/actress? Julia Roberts or Gwenyth Paltrow
17. What actor/actress do you refuse to see their movies? Eddie Murphy.
18. What genre would you choose not to watch? Cobs & Robbers
19. What’s your favorite theater concession combo? Whatever little snackie I can find at the bottom of my purse, lol! When I go to the movie with Kendell he WILL NOT buy concessions; it goes against his moral grain to pay $29.95 for popcorn and a soda. ("Let's say we go to the movies, that'll be fifteen bucks. Throw in some popcorn and that's 53. Plus, she's gonna want some Raisinettes. Seventy-five bucks and you got a deal." Ten Things I Hate About You. Seriously...you should watch it if you've not seen it and you have any sort of penchant for cynical high school girls, kissing in a pile of hay, the gorgeous boy-candy that is Heath Ledger, and The Taming of The Shrew seen in a cool and contemporary way. Seriously.)
20. Front row, Back row, Side Seats, Aisle or center? We always arrive EARLY at a movie. Like, early enough that the ticket-taker guy gets annoyed and I'm certain they're still cleaning the theater from the previous showing. Why? Well, Kendell is very picky about where we sit. It's got to be right in the center, both horizontally & vertically. (When we were dating we sat through all 29 hours of Dances With Wolves in the bottom row, far right, and he still talks about how horrible that was! The one and only time we've been late for a movie in 16 years.) Occasionally this bothers me but we nearly always have fun laughing and talking while we wait for the movie. It WOULD be more fun with a big tub of buttered popcorn, but...

All apologies for misspelled movie star names. I'm grumpy today and I don't want to look them all up. Grrrr.

You Always Remember The First Time

Today is Edna St. Vincent Millay's birthday. I know, nothing for the world in general to stop and notice, but interesting to me since, if someone asked me who my early writerly influences were, Millay would be one of them. In case you haven't a clue of who I'm talking about, here's a snippet from my Writer's Almanac email:

Born in Rockland, Maine (1892). Her mother couldn't afford to send her to college, but when she was 19, she entered a poem called "Renascence" in a poetry contest hoping to win the large cash prize. One of the judges was so impressed that he started a correspondence with her, fell in love, and nearly divorced his wife. Her poem didn't win first prize, but when she recited it at a public reading in Camden, Maine, a woman in the audience offered to pay for her to go to Vassar College, and Millay accepted.

At Vassar, she was the most notorious girl on campus, famous for both her poetry and her habit of breaking rules. Vassar's president, Henry Noble McCracken, once wrote to her, "You couldn't break any rule that would make me vote for your expulsion. I don't want a banished Shelley on my doorstep." She wrote back, "Well, on those terms I think I can continue to live in this hellhole."

She had red hair and green eyes and people had often stopped and stared at her on the street, she was so beautiful. When Millay moved to Greenwich Village after college, most of the men in the literary scene fell in love with her.

Millay wrote poems about bohemian parties and free love in her collection A Few Figs from Thistles (1920), and she became one of the icons of the Jazz Age. When she gave readings of her poetry, she drew huge crowds of adoring fans, more like a rock star than a poet. One man who saw Millay perform her own work said, "The slender red-haired, gold-eyed Vincent Millay, dressed in a black-trimmed gown of purple silk, was now reading from a tooled leather portfolio, now reciting without aid of book or print, despite her broom-splint legs and muscles twitching in her throat and in her thin arms, in a voice that enchanted."

In eleventh grade, just as I was surfacing from a really bad dive (read: an entire term of sluffing school and crying over one particular boy), my English teacher, Mrs. Simmons, assigned us a project to research a poet from our battered class anthology. No one else picked Millay (I think it's that unfortunate first name), so being my prickly self, I went against the grain and researched her.

For the project, we had to learn about the poet's life, choose one poem to share with the class and create one poster to explain the poem. (I cheated a little bit on that poster, by the way. I had zero art skills, so my friend Jennifer---who was fairly artistically talented---drew the poster under my instruction, and I colored it in with colored pencils. Am I writing this in my blog because I still feel guilty about it?)

I was in the middle of my rebellious phase. Anyone slightly rebellious appealed to me, so Edna, with her heart breaking and her affairs, her rule-breaking---both in the civil sense and in a literary one---appealed to me. Plus, I never met a redhead I didn't like. During that research project, I wanted to be Edna St. Vincent Millay when I grew up.

The poem I chose was "Well, I Have Lost You." I even memorized it for extra credit. I picked this one because the persona is so stoic. She wasn't prone to fits of desperation over losing someone she loved, and honestly: that was the first sane voice I'd heard in relation to being in love. Contrast it to the typical advice you receive from your friends when you're 17 and you'll start to see what I mean. Plus, the concept of someone losing someone else with their full consent was foreign enough to make me stop and think that every seemingly-tragic, seemingly-out-of-my-control experience might just be controllable.

Well, I Have Lost You

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish—and men do—
I shall have only good to say of you.

Reading it now, much of Millay's poetry seems archaic. But I value it, still, for what it taught me. Here was real writing by a real woman who wasn't afraid to be herself. This was the first time in my life that literature reached down and turned me around the right way. Not the last time---I hope there won't be a "last time" for a long, long time. But you always remember the first.

IS Everything Just Like High School?

On Saturday night, after we'd gone to a party celebrating a friend's wedding, Kendell and I sat down to watch Survivor. (YAY for DVRs!) As we watched this week's scapegoat leaving, Kendell said "Survivor is just like high school," and his words were so close to what I'd been thinking and feeling since leaving that party that I wondered, for a second, if he had been reading my mind.

I'm not a very social person---if there were a test for mingling, I'd definitely fail. I'm horrible at striking up conversation with people I don't know, and no matter how friendly unknown people at parties are, I never really feel very comfortable. The party we went to was to celebrate our friend Steve's second marriage. They got married somewhere else, and are living in southern Utah, so this was just a small party for people around here---twenty or so. The food was amazing---pulled pork and rice cooked with coconut milk. They had it at the gorgeous house of one of their friends, and had Hawaiian decorations everywhere. Everyone was friendly.

But that was the most painful night I can remember having in a long time.

Aside from Steve and his new wife, we knew no one. Now, Kendell is great in situations like these. He makes friends where ever he goes, so this was no big deal for him. For me, it was torture. All of the women there were gorgeous---blond and skinny and just cute. With obviously no social problems like I have. They chatted and laughed and touched each other's arms as if they were all long-lost friends. It didn't help that the attire was also Hawaiian. They all had cute little plumeria-printed skirts and coconut shells; my "Hawaiian attire" is the mu mu I bought when we went there in 1997, when I was just pregnant with Jake and thought a big comfy mu mu would be a nice end-of-pregnancy addition.

So there's me, smiling one of those fake, forced smiles, eating fruit off paper-pineapple-topped toothpicks in my gargantuan, bright-pink mu mu, feeling like a big looser watching all those gorgeous, blond, outgoing women laugh. Kendell kept raising his eyebrows at me, signaling me to go over and get in the mix. But I just couldn't---what would I say? And just as my self-incrimination started, I had this thought:

This is just like high school.

Before I go on, I should say this. I don't think that the labels that we apply to ourselves (or are applied for us) when we're teenagers are things that necessarily stick through our entire lives. I'd like to think that, say, the cheerleaders I alternately detested and envied when I was a teenager are now kind members of society. They probably are. If I look at my own life, at the woman I am right now, I can't help laughing at what my adolescent self would think of me. She'd be shocked and disgusted and the absolute ordinariness of my life. I got chubby. I wear colors (not just black). And I've not yet managed to write something that would change the world. I'm just an average stay-at-home mom. Adolescent Amy would definitely be shocked.

So we don't have to stick with those high-school labels. But as I listened to the women at the party laugh together, it did feel a little bit like being back in high school---being the quiet, mousy, shy girl. No, I guess I should say it felt like junior high school, because by the time I got to 10th grade, I'd found my way to deal with my shyness: black clothes, steel-toed boots and a spiky attitude. Superiority in the face of popularity---being different as a form of protection. The slings and arrows of golden, outgoing girls bounced right off my cynicism and annoyance.

I've thought a lot, since leaving adolescence, about why I was the goth girl I was in high school. There are many reasons. But I'd never really seen it as a form of protection until that party last Saturday. I'd have felt so much better if I'd just not had that bright mu mu on---if I'd worn something black I'd have felt less vulnerable. Of course, it was silly to feel vulnerable in the first place; they really were nice women. But with whatever accomplishments I've made in my life, in whatever ways I've cast off adolescent labels, the one that's stuck tight is that social awkwardness. Probably I never will get it off.

I did survive the party. We played a fun game---Cranium Pop 5 ---and I managed to hold my own without blushing too badly. But I was so glad when Haley called and needed my help with Kaleb so we could leave. And as I continue thinking about this experience, I am left wondering if anyone else ever feels this way. Am I the only fairly-competent member of society who sucks at mingling? I mean, really: throw me in front of an audience of five hundred people and tell me to teach them something, and I'd have the time of my life. But drop me into an intimate party and tell me to mingle---wearing a big mu mu? I think I'd rather have my toenails yanked off. I know this struggle is a contradiction. But really: I have no idea how to fix it.

Other than to always wear black to parties. And to bury that mu mu in the back of my closet.

First Blossom Day

Every year, about this time, it finally arrives: First Blossom Day. The day my little snow crocus blossom; the day winter seems to lose its grip:

There's nothing cheerier than those saffron-orange stems against the lavender flowers. Even though the rest of my flowerbeds are sound asleep, and the trees show no sign of life, and the wind still bites, these little flowers remind me that winter can't last forever. Every time they bloom, I look forward---warm days, blue skies, kids outside, more flowers. But I also look back, remembering. I planted these bulbs (as well as most of my daffodils and tulips) way back in the fall when I was pregnant with Haley. I'd never heard of snow crocus, so I had no idea they'd bloom so early---just a few days after I found out she was a girl. Every time I see these flowers I remember how it felt, knowing I got to have a daughter. In fact, if I had to name the feeling "I'm having a girl" it would be "little purple snow crocus poking up in the cold air."

Anyway. Today I went outside with Kaleb, and he noticed the flowers first---strolled right over to them and picked one. He loved flowers last year, and has been a little bit baffled, I think, about where they've all gone, so he was thrilled to finally have flowers back. He doesn't say the word "flower" yet, but sniffs instead, so he said "Momma!", then pointed to his flower and sniffed. So sweet! I pulled a few weeds and got rid of some of the dead leaves around one of my rose bushes. I did so much last fall that there's not much spring gardening to do, except for pruning. But it felt so good to be back outside again. Spring's coming!

15 Years

Yesterday was my and Kendell's 15th anniversary. It's hard to believe I've been a married person for that long. When I grabbed the mail yesterday afternoon, there was a wedding invitation for the daughter of a family friend. In my head, I still think of her as a little girl, but I guess I shouldn't anymore. I mean, I've known her since she was seven, so it's hard to not think "little Anastasia" but I suppose it's time.

As I looked at the invitation I remembered so clearly how I felt being a newlywed. Is it bad to say that I am eternally grateful that I never have to re-live my first year of marriage? Not because it was horrible or awful or anything bad. But it WAS a year full of the process of stripping away expectations and discovering the reality of married life. And honestly, you really do go into marriage with a lot of false expectations. Or, at least I did, at the far-too-young age of 19. Expectations that are created by movies and books and TV shows, I guess, plus my own love-addict romanticism.

What I've sense learned is that romance isn't a thing that only happens on Valentine's Day or anniversaries. It's not really about flowers and chocolate, perfume or lingere. What I would tell Anastasia, if I could, is that true romance is about feeling loved for who you are, feeling like you matter, you're important, you're unique. Of course, she'll have to learn that the way everyone else eventually does, the hard way, so I can't tell it to her. I have a hard time putting it into words myself. To me, though, the truly special and memorable moments in our marriage haven't originated in the card aisle at Hallmark. They've been the random, small, unique experiences that make our marriage ours. Like last night, when we celebrated our anniversary by going to Sensuous Sandwich (which, if you've taken my big picture class, you'd know all about!). Over pastrami, ham, roast beef, and provolone cheese, we discussed the merits of our new cell phones and laughed at stories I told him about Kaleb. Or today, we celebrated Valentine's Day at Taco Time! (We are going to a nice dinner this weekend, no worries.) But we held hands for a minute, and I think we both felt that feeling: life is rich, and this particular life we have together is priceless---even though we argue about lots and lots of things, even though we frustrate each other like no one else is capable of doing. Even though.

And that's really romantic, in my eyes.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Two Recipes, Quickly

We had friends over for dinner tonight, after a long weekend full of fevers and coughs and one extremely grumpy one-year-old. I love him but I am SO ready for him to feel better and quit whining, you know? (BTW, remember that "I'm so excited about Kaleb sleeping through the night" post? Well, you can forget that, as his cold has ensured that he's "slept" (read: twisted and turned and kicked me more than once in the nose) in our bed all week. Poor baby. Poor me! ;)

Anyway, just thought I'd share two of the recipes I used for dinner tonight, just because they're good!

Lemon Chicken (I always think of Everyone Loves Raymond when I make this!)
Chicken breasts, the kind with skin and bones
2-ish T Olive oil
2-ish T butter
Basil
Lemon Pepper
4 lemons
1/2 cup white cooking wine
1 can chicken broth
1 scoop chicken base
crushed garlic

In a large skillet, heat the oil and butter. Rinse chicken and pat dry; sprinkle with lemon pepper and basil. Brown in hot oil. Meanwhile, juice the lemons and mix with the wine, the chicken broth, chicken base, and garlic (I don't really measure those last two...I just put some in). Put chicken in a crock pot; pour liquid on top. Cook all day on low or for about 3-4 hours on high. When you're ready to serve it, beware: it is SO tender, the chicken literally falls off the bone. I take the skin off before I serve it.

Sophia's Garlic Breadsticks
(I got this recipe from my friend Sophia, so you may have already seen it, but it's so good it bears repeating!)
3 cups warm water
2 T yeast
2 T sugar
1 tsp salt
2 T olive oil
8 cups flour
1 cube butter
1/2 cup mayo or miracle whip
3 cloves garlic, crushed
parmesan cheese

Combine water, yeast, and sugar in mixer bowl; let sit for about 10 minutes. Add salt, oil, and flour; mix or knead until a soft dough is formed---it is just the smallest bit sticky when it's ready. Shape dough into bread sticks; put into two 9x13 casserole dishes. Mix butter, mayo, garlic, and some parmesan cheese and spread over sticks. Bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes.

Hope you had a great Sunday and that YOUR house is free of sickness!

on Books and Snow and One Specific Moment

I think it's a January thing. Even though it's February now, and it's been warmer, and we've actually seen some blue sky this week, instead of smog-grey, I'm still stuck in January. My early-January resolution energy has mostly faded, although I am sticking to my no-soda thing. I've made it to the gym three times each week, but mostly all I want to do is put my pajamas back on, crawl into my bed with socks on, and read.

So that's mostly all I've done, aside from taking care of the kids and the house. Not much creative spark. So I'm just reading. I need to blog about all the books I've finished lately, but instead today I just want to write down this memory and these thoughts.

Reading a lot requires lots of books to read. And since I'd exhausted my stash of new books, I took Kaleb to the library last week. Kaleb loves to have me read to him; at least eight times a day he'll tug my jeans and say "book?" and we'll go into his room to rock and read underneath his favorite fishie blanket. He is in love with all things Eric Carle, as well as anything that has to do with fish or farm animals, but suddenly he's also wanting longer books. So I searched out more story books for him. The adult fiction section of our city library has been reconstructed, and the day I went they were in the process of moving all the adult books into the new section. Which meant I had to request the books I wanted (Ancestor Stones and The Madonnas of Leningrad). While I waited for the kind librarian to bring my books to the reference desk, I browsed the non-fiction books, which were piled here and there (also awaiting the remodeled section) on top of the children's book stacks. Luckily I found some non-fiction books I wanted to read, because someone stole my two books from the reference desk, where they were waiting for me, and checked them out. Special. Aside from my usual lame library fee, it was a good library visit. But the best part came when we left.

We walked outside, Kaleb and me, the stroller full of books and him holding my hand, to find it was snowing. At last, after weeks of polluted air, a storm. It looked like little bits of smog falling, at first, but then took on its proper, fluffy snowflake shape. When we got to the sidewalk, I let Kaleb let go of my hand and run through the old snow piled on the grass next to the sidewalk. The street is lined with enormous pine trees, and he didn't know what was better, crunching through the old snow in the falling snow, or standing underneath the trees, in the dry, cold bark, thinking he was hiding from me.

I thought of how long I had ached and wanted and prayed and hoped for a baby. How, during that time, I'd wanted the archetypal baby moments, the cuddling and the holding, the rocking and changing and nursing and loving. Everything without price. But I could never imagine the specific moments, the ones unique to Kaleb's existence. Like him running with me in crusty old snow, or looking out from the spindles of a pine tree, laughing, trying to catch the falling flakes in his hand. How sweet it would be to sweep him up into my arms and kiss his cold cheek. I never imagined anything quite so disparate: the bleak, dirty street and grey sky and cold wind, his happiness a bright warmth.

Superbowl Sunday

One thing I maybe should have put on my list of 100 things about me is that I am NOT a sports fan. I'd really rather visit the dentist than sit through an entire basketball or football game. It's frustrating and boring to me. And honestly, I've never encouraged my kids in the art of TV-sports-watching. So, in Superbowls past, I've made some snacks for Kendell and he's watched it on his own.

This year, though, everyone (but me of course!) wanted to watch the Superbowl. To celebrate, Kendell suggested to the kids that they all could do something exceedingly rare in the Sorensen household: eat downstairs in front of the TV. We never do this. Kendell freaks out at the merest possibility of a spill on the carpet, so we eat all our meals in the kitchen. Of course, the kids were over-the-top excited about eating downstairs. Here they all are (and please pretend my TV room is gorgeously decorated, ignoring the fact that I am pathetic at anything remotely resembling interior design and have long since given up trying):

I made a 6-layer dip (yep, I know it's traditionally 7 layers, but no one likes the green onions) and these really good pizza sticks (recipe below) I saw when I was watching Rachel Ray at the gym on Friday. Football food---not very healthy, but yummy. (Speaking of the gym on Friday...I tweaked my back and HOLY COW, I think labor hurt less than my back does right now.)

I don't know that the kids really watched the game. They helped me cook here and there, and played with Kaleb. Jake worked on math stuff while he watched, and Haley colored. I only watched the half-time show (can't resist Prince, although Kendell and I were both hoping he'd do "Little Red Corvette" and I was desperately hoping for "Kiss," which might be my all-time favorite Prince song, unless it's "Raspberry Beret"; the kids all thought he was weird, lol) because remember that spill thing that Kendell has...Kaleb is at that bull-in-a-china-shop stage, which isn't conducive to not spilling. Really, though, the game didn't matter. Even though I'm not a sports fan, I'm so glad that my kids can have this memory of hanging out with their dad on Superbowl Sunday!

Pizza Sticks

2 tubes Pillsbury pizza dough
Pepperoni
Mozerella cheese
Marinara sauce for dipping

Open one package of the pizza dough and spread it out. On half the dough, sprinkle some cheese and they lay some pepperoni on top. Fold the half without anything on to over the top of the cheese and pepperoni, sealing the three edges. Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into strips. Twist each strip two or three times. Place on a greased baking sheet. Repeat with remaining dough, cheese, and pepperoni. Bake at 400 for 20-22 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve with marinara sauce for dipping.