PizzaZzip

Everyone should have a creative outlet. Art, song, acting, balloon animals, bird house making, playing the spoons, teasing your sister, knitting, fly fishing, Yelping, fighting the forces of evil - the list is endless.

I always liked this comic

Lately I will lay there, up all night, fretting about zombies who just kicked my butt and a sick mom and deadlines at work and the stupid x and all the yard work waiting for a dry spell and money money money what I ate yesterday and today and what I might eat tomorrow and what I would like to eat right now and what I should eat more of or less of.

Yes, I'm thinking about food at three in the morning. It actually relaxes me, don't ask why.

And I'm not dreaming about a Blizzard. As a rule I don't do frozen prepared and take out and take away or dinner in a box - it's a waste of both time and money, and often it's worse than awful.  I want to know where my ingredients came from and what they are exactly and I want the best I can afford and I want variety in taste and color and flavor and texture, and I want to have fun in the kitchen and be a better cook, exploring new ingredients and combinations and testing my skills while I drink a bottle of wine.

Yes, it's upside down...

Sometimes there's dribs and drabs of stuff that stack up or I buy something and forget to use it and weird food combinations threaten and it's none of it is getting any fresher sitting around, just like me. No matter what you have at home, you can ALWAYS make a good meal for yourself - it doesn't need to be anything fancy (the cats especially like anything with canned tuna, but I digress) - without resorting to processed junk. I say BE CREATIVE - relax, and (note to self) - use what you have before you start buying more stuff that could end up in landfill.

Two jars of sun dried tomatoes started me thinking

Okay, so what's in the fridge? the pantry??? When was the last time you cleaned the freezer(s) out, all the way to the back?

The inspiration for dinner on Sunday night was the discovery of TWO opened jars of sun-dried tomatoes in the refrigerator, because I'm an idiot.

Did someone say "PIZZA"???

The tomatoes are in back, herb garden out front, all loving the rain, including vampires and their smaller cousin, the mosquito

I had homemade pesto in the freezer from last year (yes, you can be jealous), AND frozen homemade sourdough wheat pizza dough (actually, several more in store that I still need to use up), basil in the garden already needing to be pinched back, even had the Cappiello Fresh Mozzarella (on sale at PChopper last week, BOGOF - local and delicious), toasted pine nuts on the door of the fridge, and no veggies worthy of a savory pizza pie except onions.

Don't go heavy handed with your ingredients

No recipe: roll the dough out once it's at room temperature, top with a thin layer of pesto and thinly sliced onions, sprinkle around chopped sun dried tomatoes and top with mozz then an handful of pine nuts, bake in a hot oven (450 F) about 20 minutes until the crust is a nice deep golden brown, and finish with fresh basil. I ate half. It was good.

Beautiful!!!  

Cooking has become my creative outlet. So has working out, just by necessity, but that's another blog.

Zena, Goddess of Fire