MichelleWegner

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Family. Home. These words remind us that we have a place. That we have a space and people to come home to that is safe and warm and full of grace and hope.

Home is a place to come and heal after mistakes are made, or to recover injuries from ugly words thrown around like darts at our heads. For us, family is about being the best “us” we can be for each other in times of joy and sadness.

Quite often, we forget. We get selfish, run behind, pour into the important and pass over the eternal. We fight. We stick with our correct and rightly defended arguments. We fuss over silly things and make room for unreasonalbitlty when our own self gets in the way.

Family is hard. Five personalities stretching and pulling and growing to boundless dreams and limits and further in to independence pulls at all of our hearts. There is pulling, stretching and hurting as growing pains do often hurt.

In these times, it is important for us to practice long held traditions. Practicing our family traditions remind all of us what makes a Wegner a Wegner.
One especially fun tradition Rob and I have kept since moving away from Chicago and deep dish pizza in 1993 is creating our very own likeness of our favorite. We make the pizza together, and eat. Our tradition has gone from the two of us, then Maddie helped us. When Maddie was old enough she would show Whitney how it’s done and pour the cheese like a pro. When Belle was old enough, she had four people to tell her how it’s done, so she usually does it her own way, which is what makes it even more special.

Since the girls were old enough to hold a spoon and stir, they have been our little helpers. Everyone matters in our family. Everyone is equally important an is needed to fulfill this task. There have been years our pizza barely made it through the process of being made because there were spills, tears, dogs grabbing a sausage and running away, but these are the real moments that make family family. We laugh so much when we are all together. Watching my girls grown in independence, creativity, boldness and humor have been the biggest joy filled surprised of my mommy-hood.

We come home at the end of the day to life, to love, to tradition, to family.

Thank you to Mike and Julie Storytellers for capturing this part of our Family Story

Here is our very unscientific procedure for making our annual deep-dish Chicago style pizza. Rob and I have made it every Christmas Eve since we’ve been married.  The fun thing about it is that the recipe changes just a tad every year.  This year we used Honey Wheat crust (Rob loved it, I thought it was so-so).  We also used Walmart brand cheese (which I will never use again for this recipe-it didn’t melt evenly.) 

I dare you to try this!  It is our favorite thing to make.  It is a lot of work, and takes about 2 hours to complete.

1.Make dough in bread machine (or however you make dough)

2. Butter iron skillet, place dough in.  Spread it around until it is even.

3. Spread tomato sauce of choice

4. Brown pork or Italian sausage (we used pork this time)

5. Mix  onions, peppers, and whatever veggies you like into the sausage while it is browning.

6. Spread veggies across the pizza according to family preference. ( our big kids like peppers and onions, little kids don’t)

7.  Add Pepperoni or other toppings

8. Add 2 lbs of cheese (not Walmart brand)  🙂

9.  Add basil, oregano, pepperoni, etc. to the top.  (or nothing-totally a preference thing)

10. Heat oven to 350 and place pizza in for about 20-30 minutes. 

Notice the final “after” picture is missing?  The family gobbled up their pieces  before I could snap a photo. 

I really hope you try this some time!  If you do, let us know how you did it, and how you liked it!