tomato basil pizza

Judging by the content of food blogs and food magazines, you'd think every gardener had bumper crops of tomatoes, but that's not the case with me. Not exactly. 

I have two tomato plants, both volunteers, and one is about 3 times the size of the other. So I guess I have like one and a third tomato plants, not two. Until the past week or so, I was fighting with the snails, who liked to eat chunks out of each tomato just as they turned red (the tomatoes, not the snails). I have no idea what happened to the snails (I was not doing anything to get rid of them), but now I'm relieved that I can finally allow the tomatoes to ripen on the vine and stop picking them as soon as they turn the faintest shade of red. 

In contrast to past years, I haven't bothered to keep track of the garden's productivity. I have no idea how many pounds of tomatoes each plant produces, but I estimate that every week or so, I find myself trying to figure out what to do with the ones that just seemingly appear on my windowsill.  

Last weekend, I made pizza, which was, for the most part, from the Pioneer Woman's recipe (though the crust is from the Smitten Kitchen. While the tomatoes marinate in balsamic vinegar, sauteed garlic, and basil, I par-baked the crust and then assembled the bottom layers of the pizza-- pesto, parmesan, and mozzarella. I returned the pizza to the oven to melt the cheese, then topped it with tomatoes, and returned it to the oven long enough to warm the tomatoes. 

The pizza must have been good because, and this is embarrassing to admit, I ate it in two sittings. 

balsamic onion, mushroom, and goat cheese pizza

This meal is inspired by a recipe from the Vegetarian Times magazine. If you're not familiar with the magazine and you're interested in eating more vegetarian meals, I highly recommend you take a look. The recipes are low maintenance and easy to follow, and the results are good. Drew and I used to be subscribers, but we stopped only because I began checking the magazine out from the library. 

Last week, we made a balsamic onion, mushroom, and goat cheese pizza. The original comes from Mario Batali (he was doing a pizza special for the magazine) and doesn't contain mushrooms. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the recipe on VT's website but a quick google search took me to the recipe posted on this food blog, if you're interested.

But really, no recipe is necessary. I caramelized 2 sliced onions, and when those were almost finished, I added 8 ounces of sliced mushrooms. When the mushrooms were cooked through, I dumped in a couple glugs of balsamic vinegar and let the onion-mushroom mixture simmer for a few minutes until the liquid evaporated (I repeated this a second time because I decided that the mixture was not sufficiently balsamic-y, but do whatever you'd like).

The pizza crust recipe is from the Pioneer Woman. A couple years ago, Drew really got into pizza making (and bread making) which means that we got a pizza peel and a pizza stone. It's not terribly high maintenance to make "real" pizza, but lately, we haven't been feeling it (okay, the truth might be that when you make "real" pizza you can't use a lot of toppings or else the pizza won't slide on or off the pizza peel easily, and I fail to understand this because I like to have lots of toppings on my pizza, and I got tired of having Drew admonish me for overloading the pizzas), so we use PW's recipe and make it in a pan. We always double the recipe so we have an extra crust in the freezer, and besides, what else would we do with half a yeast packet?

We par baked the crust for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees. Then I sprinkled on some olive oil and covered the pizza with the balsamic mushroom and onions, and then Drew dabbed gobs of goat cheese over the top. Then we put it back in the oven for about 8 minutes or so until the cheese was sufficiently melty. As was the case the last time we made this pizza, we were really satisfied. And the best part is that there is another crust in the freezer, waiting until the next time we do it all over again. 

pizza

It's the end of the quarter, so we haven't had much time or energy to cook. We are getting smarter about managing mealtime during this hectic time. Each week, instead of cooking 2 or 3 times like we normally do, we cook once and then eat off the leftovers we've stashed in the freezer from previous meals. 

This week, we thawed out leftover pizza dough (made earlier in the quarter when we made Thai Chicken pizza), and topped it with jarred marinara, kalamata olives, sun dried tomatoes, chopped garlic, and mozzarella. After pulling it out of the oven, I topped it with arugula from our garden. We ate the pizza with a salad made of romaine and carrots with a homemade lemon-garlic dressing.