White Chicken Leek Pizza on Sweet Potato Crust

Chicken, leeks, and herbed cream cheese on a tender sweet potato pizza crust.

Changing it up again--recipe first, words later, because I'd like to share below how I store some crops from the garden and the CSA farm share.  One long term storage crop is sweet potatoes.  I've made pizza crusts from (links to my other recipes) shredded butternut squash, roasted or shredded beets, steamed spinach and steamed kale.  Why not sweet potato?  Just like the addition of sweet potato to biscuits results in a tender crumb, adding it to pizza crust results in a tender, flavorful crust.  I made a triple batch of dough and will share have shared my creations throughout this fall--including 2 delicious FFF-a-boli rolled pizzas, one for vegetarians and one for omnivores--created using ingredients that will be leftover after Thanksgiving. Everything is up on the Visual Pizza Recipe Index.
First up, a white chicken leek pizza (with a fresh tomato pesto & fontina option for vegetarians, photo below), since I got both sweet potatoes and leeks in last week's CSA farm share.

Special Dark Chocolate Pumpkin Coconut Bars

A tree, and Timon, during the 10 seconds of The Lion King where he's dressed in drag and doing the hula.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

As a mother, who has pulled more things out of her ear at the last minute invented a number of memorable meals based entirely on what's on hand in the fridge or pantry, I get this statement.  It doesn't apply only to food--you want to be a tree for Halloween?  They don't sell tree costumes in the store.  You need a Wilbur Wright costume for social studies tomorrow morning?  Which one is Wilbur anyway?*

The recipe I am posting today is one of those such inventions.  I'd roasted a pie pumpkin merely because I had some in the Strategic Winter Squash Reserve (don't rush to eat all your CSA winter squash--it will keep for a few months in a cool dry place) and I had the oven on already.  Truthfully, I tossed it in the oven after baking some muffins (that will be up in December, when you've got Band Fruit Fundraiser Citrus) and utterly forgot about it for a few hours.  I stuck the very-roasted pumpkin in the fridge until I could decide its fate--then fate stepped in, in the form of an email requesting parents bring a sweet treat for the band concert.

I had a cake mix, and I knew we always have success with Cake Mix Doctor® recipes, so I checked the Cake Mix Doctor® website and found this.  I hesitate to use peanut butter in anything for a school function, in case of allergies, so I swapped in my roasted pumpkin and made Chocolate Pumpkin Bars instead.  Actually, I made the pumpkin part, and I took photos of my tree sapling daughter making the rest.  Check it out!

Chicken Cider Stew (from Kitchen Parade): My Personal Fall In A Bowl!

Kristy of Gastronomical Sovereignty is on vacation in Merrye Olde Englande, so I'm sharing with her readers how I get two 'storage amounts' of my favorite cook's crops--garlic and basil--out of one garden plot over the course of a year.  The time to start this endeavor is now, and if you like to cook with garlic and pesto, you need to check it out!  You can read all about it here.

I'm doing this whole "I've got a guest post up, go see" thing completely wrong. Instead of just directing you to Kristy's blog today and calling it good, in fact I'm sharing the second installment (but first post) of my Food Bloggers Change My Life series.  Confusing?  Yes, sorry--I shared Rebecca at Foodie With Family's Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala previously, but I started the series because of Alanna of Kitchen Parade and A Veggie Venture.  She is my friend and Food Blogging Mentor (and I'm so grateful last year that she didn't laugh at my email of 'I'm thinking of starting a food blog').

Chicken Cider Stew is a savory stovetop dish that comes together quickly and uses the great stuff I'm getting from my CSA and my garden right now:  sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, onions and apples.

We like this served with a hunk of sharp cheddar cheese.

Every time I read a food blog, I get inspired to try all sorts of new flavor combinations, and sometimes I actually follow through with my ideas.  Rarely, though, does a recipe--exactly as written--become part of my regular menu rotation.

I'll digress at this point and say by 'menu rotation' that would imply that I actually have a menu plan.  Ha!  During the CSA farm share season (mid-May to Thanksgiving-ish for me) I never know what I'm going to get in the farm share crate.  And other than the cow in the freezer I never know what protein I'll have on hand.  So I just kind of wing it on a daily/weekly basis.  However, there are some meals that, when the right elements collide, I already know what I'm making for supper.

This recipe is one of those.  I read it when Alanna put it up on Kitchen Parade in 2007, had almost all the ingredients--still don't have savory--and made it.  Loved it.  The following Fall when it cooled off and my thoughts turned to stew, my farm share box had sweet potatoes, apple cider appeared in the farmer's market and the stores, I craved it again.  The next year, again.

And so it goes.  Reading that recipe six years ago made a permanent change in my Fall menu rotation. See, food bloggers are making a difference!