Grilled Veggie Ciabatta Pizza

This was a fun, fast, and easy pizza to make--and to eat.  I'm sharing this today in part because while I find it pretty easy to throw together pizza dough most weeks due to near-constant practice, I know that making your own dough can seem very intimidating (pie crust intimidates me).
That's a big reason why I brain-dumped my Pizza Primer blog post, to demystify the whole thing.  But I don't always make my own dough--or buy a ball of pre-made dough from the store.  Some times I get pre-baked pizza crusts, like here or here.
And sometimes, I'm in the mood for pizza without all the pizza crust foolishness.  Plenty of folks rave about naan or pita pizzas--they sound great to me, if only my kids would save me some naan.  Milk and naan--they don't stick around in our house waiting to be consumed.  Reminds me--I'm thinking the Indian-spiced slow cooker patty pan and beef dish to appear on Monday? Yes? No?  Back to pizza . . . I like to experiment with different breads for our pizzas.

You know French bread pizzas?  When I make them, from a loaf of day old French or Italian bread (I still call them all French bread pizzas after Stouffer's started the trend for me) they are usually too thick and too hard to bite after baking.  I do love how easy it is to make them, though--no dough skills or extra time necessary--so I keep on trying.  When I saw take & bake ciabatta bread marked down, I initially wasn't thinking pizza, but when a recent Friday afternoon loomed and I didn't have dough made, inspiration struck.

Using the par-baked bread means that the crust is just crisp enough when the toppings are warmed and the cheese is melted.  This crust is an excellent vehicle for a wide range of toppings--but to keep it on the easy side, check your refrigerator.  You've grilled veggies this summer, right?  Got any leftovers?

I tossed my leftover veggies (zucchini, yellow squash, bell pepper, radish and red onion) with goat cheese, fresh parsley and a bit of cooked sausage and used that as one of my toppings.  Just plain cheese on the other half for those in the household who aren't embracing the grilled veggie concept.  Yet.  I'm working on them her.

I think this would make an excellent appetizer, or an excellent pizza for a party--you throw it together in minutes, shoot, it takes longer to preheat the oven--and each half can be its own blank canvas to decorate as you desire.

Smoked Mozzarella, Feta, Mushroom and Pickled Pepper Pesto Pizza

Pickled pepper pesto pizza. I was giggling while writing this post (writing the old fashioned way, like the oats in my soaked oat muffins) in my breakfast nook. I thought I'd have a whole weekend to write at the sled hockey tournament, but instead I was yelling encouraging the team or watching some show about moonshine preppers panning for gold in deep-earth bunkers.  It was on TV, I couldn't look away.  My daughter will be home soon to claim her breakfast nook study space, so I must download this recipe before it flies out of my brain.

And you thought I took a photo of the ingredients to show you what's in this pizza. Ha!  I mean, it's great if you find the photos useful as well.  Really.

<days later>I'm still giggling to myself typing this post up in the lobby of the rec center where my son is at wheelchair basketball practice.  People are starting to stare.  Back to the point of this post.

I was cruising past the fancy cheese counter on another milk run (who is feeding these kids?) when I saw a magical markdown sticker in the vicinity of the mozzarella balls.  This time it was smoked mozzarella, so of course I snagged it to give it a try.

Heather (of garlic oil fame, though there's so. much. more. to her) eats marvelous pizza from some place called the Magic Mushroom.  Never been there.  But when Heather described her favorite pizza pie, it sounded like I could adapt it, play with my pickled peppers and pesto, and use this smoked mozzarella.

Smoked mozzarella is different than fresh mozzarella on a pizza in one dramatic way--it doesn't color outside the lines.  When topping a pizza with fresh mozzarella, you need to be careful not to put your slices too close to the edge for fear that they will run off all over your pizza stone.

Crispy mozzarella discs pried off a hot pizza stone are totally worth the burned fingertips.

Smoked mozzarella imparts a deeper, smoky (I know, surprise, I'll never be a food writer) taste, something which pairs well with the pesto and mushrooms.  The peppers and feta really make this pizza pop.

Normally, I don't feel like I make gourmet pizzas.  I'm just cobbling together the ingredients I've got on hand, from my farm share or good deals from the grocery store.  But describing this pizza . . . well, it sounds pretty fancy and high falutin' to me.

Chicken/Blueberry/Hummus vs Pepper/Peppadew Pizza (Pizza Night)

Last Friday Night Pizza Night, I shared with you a poem I wrote to my pizza stone.

You probably thought I was a bit addled.  Correct!

In the interest of adding value to the post, I also shared my Roasted Garlic and Herb pizza dough, a dough that I think is not a copycat but better than Trader Joes Garlic Herb Pizza dough.

I promised this week that I'd share what I'd done with that dough, and I provided you with a teaser photo:

The pizza on the left has hummus, chicken, blueberries, goat cheese and red onion.  The pizza on the right has colorful bell peppers and Peppadew peppers.  Totally not clear to me if I need to put a ® or ™ symbol with that, so there they are if necessary.

I thought I would choose one to share today.

I try to balance meat-including pizzas with suitable-for-vegetarian pizzas, but to be perfectly frank, I've been kinda distracted lately.  My spouse is embarking on his Asian/Greater Middle East adventure du jour  d'année, my kids each had a concert to perform, and we were fortunate to have both grandmas and my dad in attendance which means I've had company for 4+ days.  So instead of writing up all about a pizza, with links all around, I've just realized that Friday's blog post should go live in 6 hours and I've not written spit!  This is not my usual M.O.. (should there be a 2 punctuation marks there?) Normally I write it all out in longhand, research where I want to link to, type it up, and days/weeks/months later, the night before it goes live, I double check everything and hit publish.  And I'm drinking tea while I write, not hard cider while I type.

Imagine my surprise when I realize that I don't have a pre-written pizza post at 8 pm on Thursday night!  I do, however, have great kids--one's walking the dog, the other is cleaning up from dinner, so I can grab my photos and dump out the contents of my brain so that you've got a pizza inspiration. Some day I'll share about the lovely man at the fancy cheese counter who gave me a sample of Peppadew peppers, thereby inspiring me to actually purchase some Peppadew peppers to have on hand for this pizza. Another time I'll share about the inspiration for this pizza, Heather's Strange But Good flatbread.  But after I finish typing this, since I've been up visiting until midnight for several nights in a row, stick a fork in me--I'm done.

If you have a hankering for pizza and do eat meat, grab some blueberries, hummus, goat cheese, chicken and red onion and make the pizza on the right.  If you're not into meat (these days), grab some bell peppers and Peppadews (Peppadews?  is that even a word?) and make the one on the left.  As always, please check out my Pizza Primer for really well-thought out not off-the-cuff-hard-cider-influenced pizza making instructions. Guess what? My folks' flight is now delayed, they are heading back here to spend the night, so perhaps Mom will proofread--she's great at that--and this post will be better tomorrow after an update.

Pickled Pepper and Pepperoni Pizza (Pizza Night!)

"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers and placed them properly on a pizza."   --my daughter

I love pickled peppers on submarine sandwiches.  They add just a little pop of zing which really perks up even the plainest meal.  It never occurred to me to put peppers on a pizza, however.  I can credit that to Jodi at the thrift shop where I spend money volunteer.  I really don't know if the banana peppers on the pizza we ordered were pickled or not.  I just knew after having a single bite that I had to try my pickled peppers on a pepperoni pizza.

The members of my family are not huge hot pepper eaters, and when a hot pepper plant is producing, it's going crazy.  In most of the farm shares I've joined, we either got no hot peppers or a pint a week.  I used to use a few fresh farm share hot peppers in salsa and donate the rest of the week's haul to the food bank.  Then I tried pickling my own hot peppers.  My spouse took a jar in to work, and I was rewarded with even more hot peppers to pickle!

This summer, when your garden, your CSA farm share, or your spouse's coworker give you even a quart of hot peppers, I recommend checking out Food in Jars.  Marisa's blog really de-mystified small batch canning and encouraged me to try just a give it a try and see how it went.  I used to check the Ball Blue Book Guide to Preserving out of my local library until I found it red-stickered at a Target clearance end cap.  Score!

Back to the pickled peppers for tonight's pizza.  If you haven't put up pickled peppers, pick up a jar at the store--or maybe there's one on the door of your fridge?  Go see!

Because I loved that pepperoni and pepper pizza, I figured I'd try and make it at home.  I kept it simple with respect to the dough, sauce, and cheese.  This time, at least.  I just let the pickled peppers give that little pop of zing which did really perk up the slice.  A perky poppy pickled pepper and pepperoni pizza.

Veggie-Pumped Picadillo--Tax Day Meat Stretching

A flavorful hearty main dish of ground meat and vegetables, seasoned with raisins, olives and sherry. Served over rice, this is a family-friendly way to stretch a pound of ground meat and use loads of vegetables.

My spouse eats a lot of olives during his deployments.  He tells me it's a combination of wanting to eat more vegetables yet not trusting the safety of the raw veggies available.  He returns from deployments dumping Tabasco on everything and asking me to fry eggs (only powdered "scrambled" eggs in theatre) and buy olives.  Lots of olives.

If you had asked before my spouse ever deployed to the Middle East if I liked olives, I would have told you a resounding "No!".  I'd tried but not liked black olives on a pizza, and I'd avoid green olives on a relish tray because I tarred them with the same olive branch brush.  So it surprised me, when he returned and ordered a pizza* with green olives on it, that I actually loved green olives on pizza.  In fact, I liked eating green olives off a relish tray.  I do like green olives after all.

Insert your own Dr. Seuss reference here.  I've already done a Dr Seuss-themed post. 

With my new-found love of green olives, their use in a recipe from my mom's old cookbook caught my eye.  I thought I could change it up (brown 1 pound of ground beef in 1 cup of oil?  really?) and it would be an excellent way to throw in extra put up veggies to stretch meat.  The result is sort of like "weird sloppy joes" according to my kids.  Unusual, but tasty all the same.

If you've waited until the last minute to file your taxes because you are not anticipating a refund, consider this recipe as a different way to stretch a pound of ground meat.  It works with beef, chicken, lamb, turkey, probably even venison.  Please note that this recipe calls for marinating the meat for a couple of hours before cooking.  You could do this in the morning and leave it in the fridge for the day, or throw it together in the afternoon if you are around.

Sunset Pizza: Mango, Pepperoni, Red Onion and Yellow Pepper (Pizza Night!)

Crystal is on the left, Quartz on the right--pre-manicure.

If you've ever spent time around guinea pigs you know they are quite comfortable expressing their preferences.  My female guinea pig, Crystal, loves cantaloupe.  [Her cage-mate, Quartz, will eat anything.]  Because I have a tender spot for these pampered spoiled rescued pigs, I keep an eye out for cantaloupe out of season.  When I saw a marked down container of mixed cut fruit, heavy on the cantaloupe, I picked it up for Crystal.

Why am I blogging about this?  The container also had mango in it, and I wanted to try mango on a pizza.  Sorry, Quartz.  That stuff is mine.

 I've wanted to try mango on a pizza for a while now.  I find banana on a pizza delicious, and pineapple on a pizza is commonly accepted, so why not mango?  Because we are living in the midwest, tropical fruits are not part of our CSA farm share.  We get strawberries, blackberries, and pears.  So I shop my grocery store for seasonal fruit and put up the amazing deals that I can't pass up.  Usually, though, mango is not a regular purchase, so I was thrilled with this opportunity.

So was Crystal.

Since I've been making some crazy pizzas for the family lately (2 words:  egg. nog.  and not for dessert) I decided to keep this one pretty standard.  A standard half white flour and half whole wheat flour crust.  A standard pizza sauce.  Standard cheese.  And a bit of pepperoni.  But I am all about using what I've got, and what I've got today is yellow pepper and red onion, so they are going on this pizza too.  All these red and yellow ingredients make us (the moms at wheelchair basketball practice where I am writing this up on Saturday morning) think of a sunset.  So, Sunset Pizza it is.

Taco Farro

When I was a kid, back when a spade was called a spade in the breakfast cereal realm, there was a cereal called Sugar Smacks.  A jumping frog would do a double 'low five' with kids and their outstretched hands would then be filled with a bowl of cereal.  I'm sure I ate it, though my favorite aptly named cereal was Sugar Pops.  When my family would go camping and get those individual serving cereal boxes [which have increased in size since then, I observe] I always schemed to get the Sugar Pops over the Sugar Smacks or the Sugar Frosted Flakes, though really any of them were a rare treat. 

This memory has nothing to do with tonight's dinner except for one thing:  cooked farro looks exactly like Sugar Smacks to me.  I'm tempted to coat it in a honey glaze, bake it like granola, and call it DIY Homemade Whole Grain Sugar Smacks.  But my kids did not get the we-want-to-eat-breakfast-cereal gene, so I'll leave that to someone else.  

Some time between my non Sugar Pops-filled childhood and present day, I saw a post about cooking with farro.  Recently I saw another one, and put farro on the Trader Joe's shopping list.  An hour after returning from the store with my lil blue bag of farro I saw this farro salad with sun dried tomato, spinach, and cashews.  Since I'd already thawed leftover taco meat for dinner, I decided to switch it up and make Taco Farro instead.

As I mentioned, I bought the little blue bag of precooked farro from Trader Joe's.  The Nutrition Facts state that it serves 3, and the bag is so small I had some concerns.  However, once cooked (10 to 12 minutes in a pot of beef broth for me, since this is not a vegetarian dish--that will come on Wednesday) the farro swelled to 5 cups of cooked grain which was way more than enough for the four of us.
[If I cared to, I'd insert my observation here about the increase in size of single serving cereal boxes, paired with the observation that 1 2/3 cups of cooked farro is a huge serving size.  Just sayin'.]

I learned of the technique (combining leftover taco meat with a cooked grain, and salsa, to make a repurposed leftover meal) from my friend Lee-Ann.  When I stretch a pound of ground meat with my CSA veggies and refried beans, the four of us eat about half the concoction the first night, so we always have leftovers.  Thanks to Lee-Ann we all look forward to this re-purposed dish--it's delicious.  I am making it here with farro, but you're welcome to substitute any kind of cooked rice, or branch out to quinoa, barley, amaranth, bulgur, or whatever floats your boat.

What I love about this dish is how easily customizable it is for each member of the family.  I cooked one skillet of food, and everyone got to fix their meal their way.  Here's a shot of each of our plates:

Can you guess which are parent plates and which are kid plates?

(48.3% Meat)Loaf Stretching Meat Part 3

(I know this is not meatloaf.  This is the sweet and white potato mash with cottage cheese I plopped on Loaf #2)

You know I'm all about the Frugal Eco Farm Fresh Feasting, how I stretch meat by making tacos, and burgers.  I do not hide vegetables in other dishes.  I am completely aboveboard with my family when it comes to adding additional vegetables in traditionally non-additional-vegetable foods (like eggplant in the spaghetti sauce or spinach in the pizza crust).

Ok, I lied, in fact I've totally been known to slip a beet into a blueberry smoothie, though I try to own up to it if I'm asked a direct question involving specific vegetables.

But when I make meatloaf, the family totally knows that there's more than just meat in that loaf. When I saw ground pork marked down at the store, I knew it was time to make up a batch of meatloaf, Farm Fresh Feast style.

Today, we weighed the ingredients (and apparently didn't take photos), did the math, and in fact, this "meat" loaf contains 48.3% meat.  What's the rest?  I'm glad you asked. Meatloaf for me is more of a concept recipe, as Alanna of A Veggie Venture and Kitchen Parade would say.  I use a mix of meats (usually ground beef and pork), a bunch of veggies, something dry, and some sauce.  Sometimes I add an egg or two if it seems too loose.  Sometimes I add salt and pepper or other seasonings. I make this into 2 small loaves and freeze one uncooked for a later meal.  Luckily I took some photos of the second time 'round.

Acorn Squash, Chick Pea and Chicken Faux-roccan Stew

Do you get new posts from this blog via email?**

I subscribe to a variety of food blogs and recipe aggregation sites which flood my inbox multiple times a day with ideas.

As if I wasn't constantly thinking about food anyway.  Even in the shower!

This stew was inspired by one such email, from either DailyRecipe or Better Homes & Gardens I think.  The photo in my inbox looked good enough for me to click on the link and investigate further.  I pulled the seasoning combo (cumin, cinnamon, chili powder) but turned to the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve in a cold corner of my breakfast nook for the bulk of the stew.  I'm also trying to use less meat overall--meat as a condiment not as the Main Event--so I added a can of chick peas to stretch the protein even further.  That worked well, and I've used that technique in other dishes.

The seasoning combo (cinnamon, chili powder, and cumin) is billed as Moroccan.  I've eaten tasty food prepared by a Moroccan friend, but I cannot say I've really studied Moroccan food, so in good conscience I cannot call this a Moroccan stew.  Instead, I'll call it Faux-roccan.  Sorry about the cute name.  Regardless of the name, however, I found it a tasty change of pace from my standard winter stew.  Try it!

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Quadruple Roasted Vegetable Mock Florentine Mock Lasagna

I've been tweaking the blog a bit.  If you look over that way ----> you'll see a clickable Recipe Index.  Thanks to Jacqueline of Tinned Tomatoes for the code to make that work.  Moving the recipe index off the top bar gave me room for some essays (recipe-free ramblings, really) I wrote way back in the fall :) when I started this blog in case you just feel like reading a bit.
Let me know (comments or on my FB page) what you think!  On to the food.

This, probably more than anything else, illustrates how I feed my family from our CSA farm share all year 'round.

This dish contains 4 roasted veggies:  garlic, roasted after I harvested it and frozen in early summer, eggplant and bell peppers, marinated in a vinaigrette and roasted and frozen when I was overwhelmed with veggies in late summer, and sweet potato, roasted for another use and left over in the fridge.

The mock florentine refers to the liberal use of Swiss chard in lieu of spinach.  I used a bunch of fresh chard (stems in the sauce, leaves with the noodles) in addition to incorporating leftover Creamed Swiss Chard.  (If you're keeping track, the Leftover Score is now at 2).

The mock lasagna refers to the fact that, although I have a well-stocked pantry, I didn't have any lasagna noodles.  Yes,  I could go out and buy some, I'd rather use up what I already got.

Hence the crazy convoluted name.

I walked in the door after an afternoon wheelchair basketball exhibition game with the idea that I wanted "something good" for dinner but having no clue what that would be.  Seventy-five minutes later I was putting this dish in the oven.  It's not a 'quick take', but to go from cluelessly scratching my head in the middle of the kitchen to completed, ready-to-bake Quadruple Roasted Mock Palooza impresses me.  Then again, I'm easily impressed.

Having the roasted veggies and the prepared pesto put up, and a freezer full of potential pizza toppings, means that making this truly does illustrate my goal of feeding my family from our farm share--all year long.

Yakisoba--Farm Fresh Feast Style (Quick Take)

Recipe for vegetables and meat tossed with noodles and sauce for a kid friendly Japanese dish.

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If you wander through an outdoor festival in Japan, you can see women fixing a delicious stir fried noodle dish, yakisoba, on giant flat griddles.  Because of these unwitting cooking demonstrations, yakisoba is one of the Japanese dishes I'm comfortable making.

I stock up on yakisoba noodle packs when I am near an Asian market.  In Hawaii I could get them fresh, but here in Ohio I get them in the frozen section of the Asian market down the street from hockey in Cincinnati.  Don't ask. I don't usually arrange my children's sports around my food shopping, it just works out that way. :)

I originally had celery in here, but decided there was enough crunch with the Bok Choy and Daikon.

I'm pretty sure my kids developed a taste for it in utero, because they have loved it from the chicken nugget age.  When I get the right mix of veggies in the farm share (some sort of cabbage, carrots, celery or pepper, and onion) it is their lunch of choice.  Yes, my kids come home from school for lunch.  At least my son is easily persuaded to join us if yakisoba is on the menu.  Oh!  Because it's Japanese, give equal emphasis to each syllable:  yah-kee-so-bah.  Easy!

For more recipes using bok choy, please see my Bok Choy Recipes Collection. For more recipes using carrots, please see my Carrot Recipes collection. For more recipes using radishes, please see my Radish Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient, a resource for folks like me starting at the contents of a big box of fresh farm share vegetables and wondering how we're going to get the family to eat them. For more recipe ideas, follow me on Pinterest. For a peek at scenes of life, follow me on Instagram. For articles that caught my eye and epic failures because I have my share, follow me on Facebook. Want to know How to Use This Blog?

Thursday Quick Take-Sausage and Peppers

Life sometimes gets in the way of dinner, but that doesn't mean that you can't make a quick meal using your farm fresh ingredients.  I had peppers from the farm share, a good coupon for some smoked sausage, one for pierogies, and found brat & sausage rolls marked down when I stopped at the store.  Quick meal in under 20 minutes!

Rainbow Pizza (Pizza Night)

This pizza was more an exercise in How Many Colors Can I Put On The Blank Canvas of Alfredo Sauce & Dough than a real taste combination inspiration. It started because I saw Alfredo sauce marked down and thought that would be good on a pizza, and continued when the yellow Bright Lights Swiss chard was calling to me from the garden.  Then I started looking around and noticed the red tomatoes, the mushrooms . . . and finally a purple pepper.  Just be grateful I didn't grab the beets or blueberries.  This time.  While it made for a pretty pizza, and it tasted good, I don't usually prefer sliced tomatoes on my pizza so next time I'd leave them off.  If you love them, go for it.

And I can see red, and yellow, and green, and purple, and brown, and . . .

Fried Potatoes--Farm Fresh Feast Style

Fall comfort food at its best--fried potatoes pumped up with farm fresh ingredients.  I learned how to make fried potatoes in Germany from a very patient social worker friend.  He would cook his potatoes low and slow, until they had a nice crust and were cooked through.  I don't have the patience, so I nuke or boil my potatoes first, and finish them in the skillet.  Try it!

Oops, forgot the seasonings and the garlic.

Triple Green (Pepper, Olive, and Onion) and Sausage Pizza (Pizza Night)

Fresh green peppers and onions, with preserved green olives and sausage, in a family-friendly homemade pizza.

Around here, Friday nights are Pizza Nights.  Except now we live in a place with a lighted football field and have a kid marching in the band, so Pizza Night becomes Pizza Sometime On The Weekend During Football/Marching Band Season.

Eh, I'm flexible.  I bet I make easily 100 pies a year (2 pies each Pizza Night and although I don't make pizza every weekend, I do make it rather often.

I love having farm fresh ingredients handy, so I can make whatever pizza floats my boat depending on what I've got available.  And one cheese/meat for the kids, of course.

Today's pizza is no exception.

For other pizza recipes, please see my Visual Pizza Recipe Index as well as my Friday Night Pizza Night board on Pinterest.
For other recipes using peppers, please see my Pepper Recipes Collection, part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. If you'd like to know how to Use This Blog, click here.