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.

My Favorite Grilled Cheese Sandwich: Cheddar, Pickled Turnips, Shredded Vegetables, and Hummus

Grilled cheese with hummus, shredded carrots & radishes, pickled turnips and lettuce.

When I shared a photo of a grilled cheese sandwich as the centerpiece of a lunch collage in this post on how to eat more veggies, I felt like I was teasing you. So I'm sharing a bit more about my favorite grilled cheese sandwich to inspire you, and hopefully make you hungry. I know I'm getting peckish.

Long on photos, short on words because honestly, this is just a simple grilled cheese sandwich.

Or is it?

If you're ever in the Cincinnati area and hungry, I recommend paying a visit to a Tom+Chee restaurant. They've got amazing grilled cheese sandwiches and delicious tomato soup.  My friend Holly told me about it, and whenever we can we swing by for a meal.  My favorite sandwich is the Hippy Chee.  It's got hummus, cucumber, tomato, and lettuce with your basic grilled cheese.  Tom+Chee manages to keep the bread toasty and warm, the cheese melty and hot, and the veggies cold and crisp.  It's addictive.  I'm still figuring out their technique--it involves a long spatula to fry both slices at the same time before lifting them off the heat, adding cold veggies, and mashing together--and I've found a way to incorporate my farm share veggies which delights me with the results.  Try it yourself!

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?