Pizza free-for-all

Got some random veggies around? Not enough meat to build a meal around? Make a pizza! It's almost as forgiving as soup when it comes to using leftover odds and ends in a new way.

We've gotten pretty creative with our pies lately, and each one seems better than the last. One of my favorite combinations is barbecue sauce, chicken, red onion, and cheddar cheese. Adding green onion and/or green olive if they're available is tasty, too.

This one was topped with local nitrate-free beef pepperoni, artichoke hearts, black olives, pesto instead of red sauce, and a random assortment of awesome cheeses left from a party.

On the side, using one of the small crusts (when I make Bob's Red Mill GF crust, I make one large for dinner and two small pie-plate sized ones for leftovers), I made a garlic cheese bread. Yeah, not clean. But deeelicious, especially with the yogurt-based ranch-inspired dip I made on the side.

 

This is just plain yogurt dolled up with some salt-free herb blends and a few shakes of dehydrated veggie flakes.

 Everyone loved it. :)

Happy weekend eating!

A funny little lunch

Today's theme seems to be "fridge clean-out" as evidenced by my lunch (and dinner--stay tuned)... two small slices of leftover black-olive pizza with a bulb of fennel roasted with onion and grape tomatoes. Odd, yes. Tasty? For sure!

Pizza alone sounded lonely, and I knew I needed more veg in my life. The onion was a natural choice, and the tomatoes were a last-minute inspiration. Why not? They're so pretty!

The best way to reheat pizza, in my humble opinion, is to bake it at 400* for 10 minutes, then keep it in the oven with the heat off for another 10. This re-crisps the crust, melts the cheese, and heats everything through almost as if it were fresh.

Today I tried something a little different. I stuck the two pans in next to each other for 10 minutes, then shuffled the racks around so the pizza was on the very top and fennel closest to the heating element. After 15 minutes I removed the pizza, added a handful of grape tomatoes to the fennel, and roasted for another 5 minutes.

And then I topped it all off with a garbanzo bean brownie. :)

Gluten free pizza rocks

This was probably one of my better pizzas to date. And to think I wasn't even planning on this until two days prior, AND had everything I needed in the house already! Even better.

Base: Bob's Red Mill gluten-free pizza crust mix

Sauce: Jarred marinara sauce, to which I added dried basil and dried oregano

Toppings: mozzarella, pancetta from the co-op, kalamata olives, sundried tomatoes, baby Portobello mushrooms, green onion

Outcome: Zero leftovers. The little guy ate almost as much as I did.

I made two smaller crusts out of the remaining dough, then topped and froze them (covered with foil) so we'd have a quick dinner for later in the week. They were dressed with nitrate-free turkey Canadian bacon, sundried tomatoes, pepperoncini, and kalamatas... and we ate them the next day. Yum!

Home stretch

Today is our last full day in DC/Alexandria. For some reason, this 12-day trip has felt a lot longer than our two-week stretch in Austin, TX last summer. Maybe because the little guy is way more active (and talkative) and we've been in a studio room rather than a 2-bedroom suite? I was fortunate enough (::snort::) to be blessed with the bug the little guy had yesterday.

Breakfast was steel-cut oats with walnuts, raisins, and a little brown sugar, along with my lovely coffee. The little guy and I had a big-bed picnic while he munched a piece of toast (The H found bread at the breakfast buffet) and watched the Disney Channel. We each had a banana. Actually, I'm pretty sure he had two... one at 6:30 with The H, and another at 8:30 when I was getting ready.

Since we had to leave the room for housekeeping to do their thing, we wandered down the street and ended up at Whole Foods yet again, more to look around than actually buy anything. It's super-windy here today, and I dressed the little guy inappropriately, so he was cold on our walk. Oops. The grocery store was a good choice. We did end up with a package of organic whole wheat creamy/deluxe style mac 'n' cheese, at his request. We could've done worse. The ingredients list was pretty short compared to the other "natural" kinds on the shelf. After cruising the aisles for a while we headed over to the fountain by the Metro station for a snack--a plain roll and strawberry applesauce for me, and peaches with oyster crackers for him.

Lunch was the aforementioned mac 'n' cheese, which I ate from a mug and he from a leftover container since the dishwasher was running and we literally used EVERY last dish in our kitchenette yesterday. It was good that we chose the one with a creamy pre-made sauce, because my milk-and-butter (and hummus, lol) stash is severely lacking at this point in our trip, and there is NO way I'm shelling out more $ for them now. I forgot to take a picture.

Snack was... something carb-y. The little guy had a squeezable applesauce. Then it was off to the train station for a nice long ride to Silver Spring. There we met my cousin, his wife, and their three kids for pizza at ZPizza, which has gluten-free crust so The H was a happy camper. Well, that and he didn't see the total bill. Folks, bring your big guns if you go here. The "Provence" pie was delicious with added chicken sausage, but it sure wasn't cheap. Oh, it's organic, too, which no doubt added to the bottom line. I forgot that part.

And now I'm packing... well, procrastinating on the packing. Dreading it is more like it. :(

I have a picture or two from today, but the camera is charging... maybe I should've put that sentence at the top of the page, so you wouldn't have gotten all the way to the bottom of my whiny post without seeing any food or little guy's cuteness. Hrmmm. Talk to you all when I'm back in the mitten.

Kitchen-sink pizza

Ever heard the phrase "Everything but the kitchen sink"? Well, that's what went onto my pizza tonight. And MAN was it ever good! I started with a Bob's Red Mill gluten-free crust mix (which is delicious on its own, by the way, and mentioned in Clean Eating Magazine as a good alternative to the real thing) and wanted to use up the pepperoni (nitrate-free) and goat cheese in my fridge. The idea just ballooned from there. Somewhere in the middle of the process, we invited a friend over and she brought even more goodies, plus the fixings for a salad. By the time the (heavy) pan went into the oven, this is what we had created:

1 pan cheese bread, made with extra crust mix, Greek vinaigrette, Parmesan and Cheddar

1 platter bresaola appetizer with arugula, lemon, and olive oil

Salad with Romaine, carrots, red cabbage, tomato, green onion, sweet onion

Pizza with marinara sauce, pepperoni, baby bella mushrooms, maitake mushrooms, two kinds of goat cheese, feta, sundried tomatoes, marinated artichoke hearts, Parmesan, and a smattering of shredded Cheddar.

What a delicious and filling way to clean out the fridge. :)