Pizza with Beet Greens, Potato and Sausage

A savory and satisfying pizza with a roasted garlic oil base topped with sautéed beet greens, potatoes and sausage.

When life rattles you, go back to basics to find your groove.

My groove is Friday night pizza night. My family likes to eat pizza and watch movies in the basement on Friday nights, and I like to use the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm share to feed us.

You could say it's a winning combination.

Making pizzas using farm share ingredients is a technique I've developed over time, 10 farm share seasons to be precise. I've shared homemade pizza how to do so in My Pizza Primer and Seven Tips for Making Pizzas at Home posts. Not all pizzas have been winners so they don't appear on this blog, but for the most part adding some farm fresh vegetables to a pizza greatly enhances the flavor and decreases the remaining amount of veggies in the fridge.

My fridge--no, I want to talk about my freezers. I've defrosted and reorganized all freezer space in the past day, all because my neighbor called and said she was half an hour out with half a cow, and did we want any? Thanks to a friend who offered empty freezer in her garage for the 'ack I don't know what to do with all this there's no room'--i.e., the heart, tongue(s) and liver--I managed to fit everything in while still saving room in the fruit and vegetable freezer for putting up summer produce. I'm not back in that groove yet though--there are banana peppers to be pickled, and they can just keep hanging out on the plant because I am not yet ready!

For other recipes using beet greens, please see my Beet Recipes Collection. For other recipes using potatoes, please see my Potato Recipes Collection. These collections are part of the Visual Recipe Index by Ingredient. For other pizza ideas, and I've got a whole mess of them, please see the Visual Pizza Recipe Index, or my Friday Night Pizza Night Pinterest board.

Fast and Easy Fruit and Yogurt Crepes

Boughten* crepes stuffed with seasonal fruit, topped with a bit of honey-sweetened yogurt, makes a fast dessert out of what's on hand.

*Yes, still on my "boughten" kick. I've re-read all of the Little House books and will start on Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder (Amazon Affiliate link) next. Seeing a bunch of Little House sites in Iowa, Minnesota, and South Dakota on our recent vacation has me in the mood.

Reading the books is one thing, but actually seeing some of the buildings Laura lived in as a child? Whoa. Her description of the surveyor's house, where she and her family spent their first winter in what would become De Smet, SD made it seem like a pretty big place. I was not prepared for the reality of standing in the same building--thinking of it filled with overnight guests when our small tour group could barely squeeze in! Then again, after seeing claim shanties I can see why she'd think a house positively palatial.

When I was a kid, my mom had the knack for making dessert out of nothing. She'd slice up some bananas into a bowl, add a sprinkle of brown sugar and a splash of milk and boom--something sweet that satisfied.

With these crepes I'm attempting to do the same thing--a quick and easy dessert to satisfy a sweet tooth. I've made them with put up peaches as well as ripe bananas. They'd be great with fresh blueberries as well. It's a simple dessert, but I don't usually think of easy and simple desserts so I'm sharing it in case someone else is like me and needs to make something out of nothing.

Grilled Napa Cabbage and Chicken Skillet--Using the Grill as a Summer Kitchen

Too hot inside? Power out? Use your grill as a summer kitchen to make this Napa cabbage and chicken skillet supper.

I could start off by saying my kitchen is hot.

I could make innuendos about how hot my mattress feels. [In my opinion, Tempuerpedic sleeps hot.]

I could whine about my 80+ year old windows and their lack of insulation [what they lack in insulation they make up in charm?].