What I Ate: Veggie Pizza

I'm headed to Italy in about two months' time and I have a feeling that the pizza I make at home will be put to shame. Before that happens though, I will thoroughly enjoy my homemade pizza. Though I live in an area known for its (American) pizza - hello, New York Metro area - I tend to enjoy the homemade stuff a little more. I skimp on the cheese (because I prefer it that way) and go overboard with the toppings.

My new favorite pizza dough only takes ten minutes to make and it doesn't need to rise. And that means that I won't become a hangry mess waiting for pizza to magically appear in my hands.

Sometimes I'm in the mood for a v. specific kind of pizza. On this particular day, I was in the mood for a colorful veggie pie. But alas, I was limited to the contents of my fridge so I ended up with some red onion rings, yellow bell peppers, brown mushrooms, and green basil for my toppings. Brown is not a type of mushroom, nor is green a type of basil. I just had to tack on the color adjectives because the sentence seemed to flow a bit better. After all, I'd just described the colors of the onions and the bell pepper, right? Anyway, each vegetable (minus the basil) got a good sear in a hot cast iron pan for color and flavor.

And despite the healthy looking salad and the relatively healthy pizza, we had to have ourselves a big plate of fried chicken wings. Because.

The pizza was baked without the basil because basil goes black when it's baked. It was torn and sprinkled on just before serving. The heat of the fresh-from-the-oven pizza hit the basil and made it oh-so-fragrant.

And because none of us were watching our waistlines, we opted for a heavy dusting of grated parmesan.

That's a good looking plate, isn't it? We've got all of the major food groups covered - grains, produce, protein, fat, and hot sauce. Oh, hot sauce isn't a major food group? Well, it is in our house. Seriously, in our house, there always has to be one spicy component to our meal. Otherwise, it tastes so bland. We've also started doing this thing where we drizzle the hot sauce that's meant for the wings onto our pizzas as well. Which means we've started making extra hot sauce, otherwise, the last few wings are dry. It's not a bad thing. It's a v. good tasting thing.

xoxo.