I'm off to do my yoga practice but I thought I'd write a quick post. Since it's Wednesday and the deadline for the Blogging Again blog post, I decided to include my recipe for a fast and easy summer time pizza.
I hate cooking during the summer but unfortunately unless I wish to starve, I have to. I don't have a gas grill and charcoal is just too time consuming and messy so I'm stuck with cooking inside.
I live in New England, and this summer has been reasonably mild, with low dew points and mild temperatures, but yesterday was a killer. Temps in the 90's and dew points close to 70. It was just a yucky, sticky day. So I went looking in my frig for something quick to make.
If you read my Chicken Sausage and Quinoa Rice recipe post, you know how things in my frig tend to crawl to the back and sprout legs and teeth and molder into a sloppy mess. Yesterday, I found some spaghetti sauce that hadn't quite gotten to that stage, so I pulled it out. I had a French bread in the freezer, so out that came.
Peppers, onions and garlic, lurking in the veggie drawer were next. There was some leftover chicken in the cold cut drawer that didn't fight too hard when I tried to retrieve it, so I figured it was still edible. My garden supplied me with fresh basil, so I was off to the races!
Here's my recipe for French or Italian Bread Pizza. I'm sure there's a million of them out there but here's mine.
French or Italian Bread Pizza
French or Italian bread
Canned or home made spaghetti sauce
Peppers, onions, mushroom or whatever you like on your pizza, thinly sliced
Garlic, chopped. (We like fresh chopped garlic on our pizza, but you can omit it if you don't.)
Fresh or dried basil
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Leftover chicken, sausage, meatball, or pepperoni, or whatever you have in the frig
Preheat oven to 375 degrees
Warm the sauce up a bit to make spreading easier.
Cut bread in half lengthwise. Spread sauce and cheese over bread. Add thinly sliced veggies and meat. Top with chopped garlic and basil.
Bake for 10-15 minutes and there you go! Serve with the salad of your choice.
This is great left over, as well. My husband takes it for lunch and he has his co-workers drooling over his desk. Quite messy but a hazard when you bring something home made and tasty to work! I suggest you supply extra napkins.
A yummy way to clean out the fridge! Your high temperature and high dew point day sounds like a typical summer day here in northeast Florida! :) It won't cool down much until October.
ReplyDeleteYum! I think I'll be trying that one very soon!
ReplyDeleteHmm...yucky and sticky...here in Ohio we call that 'average'!
I know a lot of the country experiences those conditions for a good portion of the summer. But this year I got spoiled so when it does get hot and sticky, it seems to hit me harder than other years. Today, it's warm but dry. I don't even need the fans. Glad you both liked the recipe. It's a quick and easy way to have "pizza" without all the hassle.
ReplyDeleteInnovative and tasty, I'll bet. Here in the California Valley, from June to October, I never turn on the oven, not even to bake my polymer clay beads and pendants ;) I do have an oven in my crafts room outside in the barn, so I do the baking early in the morning and then don't go back into that room to work until it cools down in the evening. We don't have humidity here; even when it rains the barometer does not show high humidity???? Very strange.
ReplyDeletesounds awesome. homemade French Bread or Italian Bread pizza recipes are the best and usually much tastier than the store bought stuff, plus usually quite a bit cheaper as well!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your recipe... it sounds quick and easy and a good way to use up leftovers! When it is hot here, I don't use my full size oven. I either use the grill or the smaller counter top oven. We rarely have much humidity in our semi-arid climate of Western Montana, but we do get very hot! Especially at supper time, which is our hottest part of the day. But with September has come cooler temps so I can use my regular stove and oven more. Even made chili the other night! Summer is gone here, and a wider variety of cooking and baking options is back! :)
ReplyDeleteI just read your post after experiencing nearly a month of unseasonably cool weather here in central Colorado. I've been fortunate enough to be able to bake almost whenever - especially on rainy afternoons this summer. I like recipes or cooking ideas like this that help control and use food wisely...and deliciously. Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeletePizza sounds good! We were traveling a couple of days ago and saw a Godfather's Pizza, which we don't have where we live. Unfortunately, it was closed :(. I think we will have to make some.
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