The Day Before the Party…

21. Peel, cook, and mash the potatoes.
22. Burn up your mixer in the process.
23. Hit full-blown panic mode because there are more potatoes to be mashed but you can’t (see Number 22), mashed potatoes are splattered all over your freshly washed counters, the house is a mess, your hair is dirty, you forgot to make the glaze, you have to leave for that all-important belly dance workshop in less than an hour, and you can NOT find a water bottle anywhere.
24. Fixate on the water bottle.
25. Accept your husband’s offer to find you a water bottle while you take your panicky self upstairs to get ready.
26. Return downstairs, thank your husband for the bottle of water, and drive off without the water.
27. Attend the belly dance workshop which, it turns out, is geared for professional belly dancers.
28. Be awed.
29. Be even more mortified.
30. Position yourself at the back of the room and try to pretend you’re not an elephant in ancient yoga pants and a faded, too-small top with a threadbare sports bra underneath.
31. Tell yourself that it doesn’t matter. Belly dance is not your life.
32. Continue to suffer agonizing mortification pains anyway.
33. Out in the hall at break time, moan about your inability to do a reverse undulation, belly roll, shoulder roll—heck, all of the moves—but then seize on one truth and shout, “But I can make donuts!” and feel better, if only for 3 seconds.
34. When the workshop ends, slink to the car and profusely congratulate yourself on your decision to skip out on the swanky restaurant because your ego can only withstand so much embarrassment in a five-hour period and you reached your limit four hours and thirteen minutes ago.
35. Arrive home, tuck kids in bed, and visit briefly with an exhausted husband.
36. Mentally review all that needs to be done: make the glaze! grind the coffee! wash the apples! make the dough! decorate the porches! sweep the porches! vacuum the house! go to church! pick up the cider! buy ice!
37. Crawl upstairs to bed and pull the covers over your head.

1. Set the party date for a couple months out, hope for good weather, and tell everybody.
2. Freak out, sit down with your husband, and together process all the reasons for freaking out, of which there are a discouraging many.
3. Make lists.
4. Stress, worry, giggle hysterically.
5. Make more lists, show them to your husband, and get your panties in a twist when he shrugs the list/you off.
6. Let your husband know, in no uncertain terms, that making light of your stress does not help reduce it.
7. Every few days make a new Panic List and show it to your husband. Have no shame—if things don’t get checked off quickly enough, resort to hysterics.
8. If things get really bad, throw down your dish rag and threaten to leave.
9. Decide to attend a five-hour belly dance workshop in a distant city on the day before the party and agree to dance at a swanky restaurant (in the same distant city) that night at 10 o’clock even though you know full well it means you won’t get home till 1:30 in the morning and you’ll have to get up three hours later to start making the dough.
10. Feel sheepish (and ever so slightly guilty) and bust your butt doing lots of work.
11. On second thought, decide that hundreds of donuts on three hours of sleep might not be such a good idea and back out of the swanky restaurant part of the deal but hold steadfast in your workshop plans ’cause belly dance is awesome.
12. Stress some more.
13. Combat the stress by making more lists.
14. A couple weeks pre-party, snag a newlywed couple after church and cordially invite them to come help the afternoon of the party. When they say yes, bask in several blessed hours of stress-free relief.

15. Buy mums, pot them, and set them on the front porch away from the main thoroughfare so your children won’t de-flower (not in the Shakespearean sense) them.
16. Wash windows, dust, wash more windows, dust more dust.
17. Watch happily while your husband cuts down ratty trees, puts the garden to sleep, spruces up the chicken coop, mows, weed wacks, pressure washes the porch, etc.
18. Watch not-so happily as your husband decides that it’s time to build a woodshed, but don’t say anything as you know he’ll just cock an eyebrow and say mildly, And, um, the belly dance workshop?
19. Buy 50 pounds of bread flour, 24 pounds of confectioner’s sugar, 3 gallons of oil, ½ gallon of half-and-half, and a bushel of empire apples.
20. Accept a church friend’s offer to provide the apple cider—he will press it the day before—and do a Little Happy Jig because fresh-pressed cider rocks.

This same time, years previous: apple cake, Italian cream cake, the stash of 2008, deprivation

So, like I said, I made pepperoni rolls for Mr. Handsome’s birthday present. They looked and smelled so delicious that the kids commenced a-wailing when I bagged the rolls up and shoved them in the freezer with nary a crumb tossed in their direction.

But a couple days later, after snitching one from the freezer (and tossing a couple crumbs to the kids while I scarfed down the majority), I decided they (the rolls, not the kids, or as well as the kids but let’s not get into that right now) had lots of room for improvement.

Improvement #1: less bread.

Improvement #2: more pepperoni.

Improvement #3: some Parmesan in the bread dough.

Improvement #4: remove the plastic casing from the pepperoni slices. Nobody likes to floss while chewing dinner.

So I made pepperoni rolls all over again, and this time, thank goodness, I got it right.

Boy oh boy, did I ever get it right.

I first got the idea for pepperoni rolls from Larisa. Up until July of this year I did not know Larisa existed, but then I mentioned to someone that I was hoping to buy Miss Beccaboo some horseback riding lessons for her birthday and that person said, “Oh, you ought to talk to Larisa.”

So I did. And Larisa, a college student and horse back riding expert, agreed.

For six Saturday mornings she instructed Miss Beccaboo in the art of all things horsey.

Miss Beccaboo loved it.

And then it came time to pay up. Larisa and I had talked about compensation in the very beginning but she had yet to decide between bartering and moolah, straight up. So at the last lesson when I walked up to her with my checkbook, Larisa said, “Um, I was thinking that I might like some cooking lessons from you.” And so it came to be that Wednesdays found the two of us flitting about my kitchen, cooking, talking, tripping over kids, and washing dishes.

Foods we (she) made:

*yogurt
*roasted cherry vanilla ice cream with dark chocolate
*apple pie with this pastry
*roasted tomato and garlic sauce (in fact, she provided some of the inspiration for this recipe)
*sourdough bread
*orange cranberry biscotti
*cheesecake
*strawberry sauce
*ginger cream scones
*flour tortillas
*whipped cream
*and perhaps some other things that I’m forgetting

I taught Larisa all those foods (she already knew quite a bit about cooking) and she, in turn, reminded me of pepperoni rolls. It was just a passing comment she made in one of our many conversations, something about a shop in Pittsburgh that causes her to drop her vegetarian habits every time she goes there just so she can feast on pepperoni heaven, but it planted the birthday gift nugget in my brain.

Until I started researching recipes, I thought everyone knew what pepperoni rolls were, but no! I learned from my reading that they are a West Virginia specialty. Seeing as I grew up in West Virginia and pepperoni rolls were as common as white-tailed deer, mountain mamas, country roads, coal mines, and ramp festivals, I could hardly believe my eyes and—

Wait! That means YOU probably don’t know what I’m rattling on and on about. How rude of me.

Allow me to fill you in on the delicious details. It would be such an honor.

First, a definition. A pepperoni roll is simply: pepperoni-and-cheese-infused bread wrapped around more cheese and lots of pepperoni and baked. The rolls can be made small and served as an accompaniment to dinner, or they can be made large and eaten in place of a sandwich, or as a hearty snack.

So now that you know what I’m talking about, let’s break it down with a few pictures and some simple instructions. With me playing maestra, you will master the art of the noble pepperoni roll in two shakes of a rat’s tail.

To your favorite pizza-like bread dough, add some Parmesan cheese and chopped pepperoni. It’s important that the rolls don’t just hint at pepperoni—that’s boring. No, the rolls must SCREAM PEPPERONI AT THE TOP OF THEIR VOICES.

Roll the dough out into a large rectangle, about a quarter inch thick. (Mr. Handsome will take one look at that picture and say indignantly, That’s not a quarter-inch thick! Geesh! That’s five-sixteenths! Don’t you know anything?)

Using a pizza cutter, divide the dough into smaller rectangles by a) first cutting the dough in half lengthwise and then b) crosswise into an many pieces as you want to get. (Approximate size to aim for: six to eight inches by four inches. More or less.)

Sprinkle a little mozzarella on the dough. Just a bit. The predominant taste is pepperoni, so go easy on the cheese.

Now it’s time for the pepperoni. Make one layer of side-by-side pepperoni pieces. There is no need to stack it, just make sure the pieces are covering three quarters of the dough and extending all the way out to the edges. You want to see pieces of pepperoni sticking out of the dough. Nobody should mistake these rolls for anything but a pepperoni roll. Even if they don’t know what they are. A person should look at it and say, Oh, look at that. That’s PEPPERONI sticking out of that roll! So it must be a PEPPERONI ROLL. Nifty!

Roll up the dough, using your fingers to tuck in any escaping bits of meat and cheese.

Place the rolls, seam-side down, on an oiled and cornmeal-sprinkled pan.

Brush the rolls with an egg wash.

Bake and eat. The end.

Pepperoni Rolls
Inspired by Larisa, with a bit of guidance from the blog Chickens in the Road

If you buy large slices of deli pepperoni, make sure that they removed the plastic casing before cutting the slices. Otherwise the rolls will be more toothsome than you anticipated.

These rolls beg for creativity (though then they will no longer be able to fall under the title of “pepperoni roll”):
*Add, or substitute, some browned sausage or bacon.
*Try different cheeses.
*Add caramelized onions, or some hot peppers.
*Add some minced fresh garlic to either the dough or the filling, or both.
*Omit the meat all together and make a vegetarian version using a filling of feta and spinach, perhaps with a few green olives thrown in for spunk.

The measurements are intentionally vague. This is a process more than a recipe.

1 recipe five-minute dough
½ cup (or more) finely ground fresh Parmesan
1 cup chopped pepperoni
Lots more pepperoni, either in whole slices or chopped
Mozzarella, grated
a bit of olive oil, for the pan
cornmeal, for the pan
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water for the wash

After the flour has been stirred into the dough, add the grated Parmesan and the cup of chopped pepperoni. Let the dough rest for an hour or so.

Roll out the dough into a large rectangle. Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into smaller rectangles. Top each rectangle with a bit of mozzarella and then generously cover it with pepperoni slices. Roll the rectangles up and pinch the seam to seal (leaving the ends open).

Spread the baking sheet (use a sided one to keep the drippings from dirtying your oven floor) with olive oil and sprinkle with cornmeal. Set the rolls seam-side down. Cover with a clean cloth and let them rest for 30-60 minutes till they are slightly puffy. Brush the tops of the rolls with the wash.

Bake the rolls at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until toasty brown.

Yield: as many as you make!

These rolls freeze beautifully. To freeze, allow the rolls to cool to room temperature before bagging. To thaw, remove the rolls from the bag, wrap them loosely in a cloth, and thaw at room temperature. If desired, reheat them in a 350 oven for 5-8 minutes.

This same time, years previous: sweet onion corn bake, the clubhouse (started two years ago and it’s still not done), pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting