BBQ Chickpea Pizza

Look at me...I'm finally getting past my fear of making bread and pizza dough from scratch!

Yesterday, I baked a kick-booty BBQ Chickpea Pizza. It rocked my socks! I made the Tried and True Whole Wheat Pizza Dough (from scratch!! kneading and rolling and stretching the dough and everything!!!) and Everything's Better With Barbecue Sauce from Peas and Thank You. The barbecue sauce is an answer to my prayers, because I've yet to find a bottled barbecue sauce that meets my strict criteria:
1) vegan
2) no tomato paste (hello, acid reflux!)
3) no crappy artificial ingredients like HFCS
4) not too spicy (hello again, acid reflux!)

Thanks to Mama Pea, I can have tummy-friendly barbecue sauce in just 30 minutes. Yay!

Here's my beautiful dough, all rolled out, stretched, and ready to bake. I'm so proud of myself!

Next, I topped the dough with the barbecue sauce, some thinly sliced onion, and a can of chickpeas.

On top of that went a mix of Daiya mozzarella and cheddar shreds:

Finally, it went into the oven for 18 minutes. What emerged was a gooey, melty vegan pizza that rivaled this pizza I used to shell out $18 for. Not anymore! I think this pizza cost me less than $5 to make, huzzah!

*Drool...* it was SOOOO good, especially with some frosty cold beer on the side. I think this is my new favorite pizza!

What are your favorite pizza combinations?

Weekend Yums

Nothing like being Captain Obvious, but I love the weekends.

Weekends mean movie nights, family hikes, longer runs, visiting with friends, and spending time outside. 

It also means enjoying some favorite treats that I don't indulge in during the week.

Such as...homemade pizza. I usually make a quick/non-yeasted crust, but I just tried Mama Pea's Tried and True Whole Wheat Pizza Dough, and it was great. I topped it with some tomato sauce, chopped mushrooms, diced red onion, and Daiya mozzarella. If I ask my son what he wants for dinner, he will say "PIZZA!" every time. He loves it as much as I do!

It was ooey, gooey, melty, and delicious, although I think some kalamata olives would have really kicked it up a notch...next time!

Another Saturday evening, we came home late and wanted to eat pronto. I grabbed a package of sourdough wraps, some hummus, and vegetable errata (arugula, tomato, cucumber, carrot) and made some quick sandwiches while frozen fries were baking in the oven. A frosty glass of Colorado Native beer hit the spot! Beer + french fries + ketchup = awesome.

Sometimes, it's fun to indulge your inner college kid and just have snacky food for dinner. I made some OMG Oven-Baked Onion Rings from Appetite for Reduction and some Avocado Chimichurri Bruschetta and went to town!

After having onion rings and bruschetta for dinner, it just makes sense to follow up with some "Not Guilty" Chocolate Chip Cookies. I mean, really. You've got to hit all your food groups!

As much as I love my big salads and smoothies, I also love to have fun foods on occasion.

What are some of your favorite weekend indulgences?

Thai Chickpea Pizza

There is nothing better than kicking your weekend off with a pizza, right? Pizza just makes me happy. I love making all different kinds of pizza, too. Tonight it was an old favorite, Thai Chickpea Pizza. The recipe is a hodgepodge of different recipes, but it's largely based on the Simple Thai Pizza from VegWeb.com. A homemade crust is brushed with a delectable ginger-sesame oil mixture, par-baked, and then topped with a homemade peanut-lime sauce, chickpeas, scallions, carrot, pineapple, crushed peanuts, and cilantro. I often add a chopped bell pepper to the mix, too, but I didn't have any tonight (or cilantro, for that matter). No matter - it was still delicious!

Here's the par-baked crust, topped with the peanut-lime sauce and chickpeas:

Then it's covered with shredded carrot and sliced pineapple:

And finally topped with the scallions and peanuts:

It's an awesome blend of flavors and textures!

Question: What's your favorite pizza combo?

But It's Not Quite 450 Degrees In My HOUSE....Yet!

For the love of Pete, I have no clue why I thought it would be a good idea to turn my oven up to 450 degrees and bake a pizza on the hottest day of the year. Perhaps the heat addled my brain a bit. But I'm stubborn like that - I had planned to make pizza for dinner, and doggone it, face-melting heat and humidity would not stop me!

Full disclosure: I had already pre-made some of the pizza toppings the day before, so I was somewhat forced to go through with said pizza-making. The truth was, I just wanted to drink some carrot juice and eat frozen bananas for dinner.

Feast your eyes on this deliciousness: Amazing Caramelized Red Pepper & Vegan Feta Pizza from VegWeb:

Did that grab your attention?

This pizza takes a little bit of work. There are several steps involved, and things that need to be done ahead of time, so it's definitely not a pizza you can make on the fly. But with a little advanced prep, you can assemble this pizza rather easily and throw it in the oven without too much fuss.

Here's what I did:

Step 1: early in the day (or even the day before, like I did), roast your peppers and onions.

It's amazing how much they shrink!

Step 2: prepare the red pepper jam, then set aside to cool.

Step 3: cube your tofu, prepare your marinade, and place in the fridge so it can get all tangy and feta-like:

These are the two steps I did the day before. These are also the two most time-consuming elements of the process, so putting the pizza together was actually a breeze. I made a quick pizza crust (whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder, spices, olive oil, and water), topped it with some quick pizza sauce (canned tomato sauce, garlic, basil, and oregano), the pepper jam and feta, and baked it for 8 minutes:

Then I pulled it out of the oven, topped it with some steamed baby spinach and sun-dried tomatoes, and baked it another 2 minutes:

Here's my plate all loaded up:

This is probably my hubby's favorite pizza. It has a great medley of flavors...tangy faux feta, sweet pepper jam, garlicky sauce, zesty sun-dried tomatoes...a veritable symphony of flavors exploding in your mouth.

I think I just used up my quota of adjectives for the day.

Greek Pizza and Other Weekend Eats

I love the 4th of July, especially when the holiday falls on a Monday. It always means a weekend full of fireworks, food, and fun. We had a great time at our family cookout on Friday night (although, with a 2-year-old, we had to leave before the fireworks began). Yesterday, we began our day with a nice family run (that is, my hubby and I ran and pushed our son in the jogging stroller!) and then drove to LL Bean in the late afternoon/evening just to get out and go somewhere. Since I wasn't sure if there'd be any vegan-friendly restaurants in the area, I packed sandwiches and snacks for us to take with us.

Of course, with the three of us, that means three completely different sandwiches :) I had almond butter, banana, cinnamon, and raisin; hubby had cashew butter, almond butter, cinnamon, raisins, and jam; and my son had sunflower seed butter, cinnamon and jam. At least we all ate the same kind of bread.

I also packed some drinks and some bags of Trader Joe's Lite Kettle Korn. We'd never tried it before, but all three of us loved it!

After church today, I made some Basic Scrambled Tofu and Cornbread Waffles from Vegan Brunch. I added spinach, kalamata olives, red onion, broccoli, and ketchup to my scramble. Along with a cup (or four) of carrot juice, it was a tasty, filling lunch.

For dinner tonight, we wanted to have pizza so I looked in the fridge and pantry to see what I could find. I'd bought some baby spinach earlier in the day, so I thought a Greek pizza might be nice. While my hubby made the dough, I sliced some red onion and tomato and chopped up some spinach and kalamata olives. I layered the dough with some pizza sauce, basil pesto, tomato, spinach, red onion, kalamata olives, and some Daiya vegan mozzarella cheese and baked it on our pizza stone.

I was really happy with how easy this pizza was to make - and tasty, too! My son devoured it, which made his Mommy happy since it was loaded with fresh veggies.

Here's my pizza recipe:

Easy Greek Pizza
Serves 2 hungry adults and 1 hungry toddler

First, place a pizza stone in your oven and preheat to 450 degrees. Then, start making the dough:

Dough:
1 cup white whole wheat flour
1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup water

In a large bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, sea salt, basil, and oregano. Make a well in the center, then add the olive oil and water. Incorporate the liquids and the dry ingredients until combined, then knead dough on a floured surface for 5-7 minutes. Stretch dough into a round shape (keep in mind, since this is a "quick" dough and not a yeasted dough, it doesn't stretch like a normal dough would. Just use your hands and shape it into a circle). Place on a greased metal pizza pan, then place pan on pizza stone. Bake for 5 minutes, then remove from oven and top with pizza ingredients.

Toppings:
1 large vine-ripened tomato, sliced thinly and blotted well with paper towels
1/4-1/3 cup kalamata olives, chopped
2 large handfuls baby spinach, chopped
1/4 of a medium red onion, thinly sliced, then chopped
1 cup Daiya vegan mozzarella
basil pesto, to taste
pizza sauce, to taste

Top pizza as follows: pizza sauce, basil pesto, sliced tomatoes, spinach, red onion, kalamata olives, Daiya mozzarella.

Bake an additional 10 minutes. Slice and serve!

The only thing that would make this perfect is to have some leftover CCK Deep-Dish Cookie Pie for dessert - but alas, it's all gone :( I'm sure I'll be making more very soon...like tomorrow, maybe?

Pizza on the Grill

Mmmmm....pizza. It is one of life's greatest pleasures. I love all kinds of pizza, and we usually make it every weekend. When the weather gets warmer, my hubby and I team up and make some killer grilled pizzas! This is a Fig, Spinach, Basil, and Cashew Goat Cheez pizza. The cashew goat cheez is a spin on Gena's Raw Curried Cashew Spread, where I change up the spices (subbing oregano and basil for the curry, cumin and cinnamon), add more lemon juice, and stir in a good amount of white balsamic vinegar. It's tangy and delicious and goes perfectly with the fig jam! I use the Grilled Pizza crust recipe from How to Grill and it comes out perfectly every time.

After the dough has risen and been stretched, we lay it on the preheated grill and spread some olive oil on it:

It starts to puff up right away!

 After several minutes, it's time to flip the crust and add the toppings. Look at those grill marks!

 I have to work quickly to get the toppings on before the crust gets overcooked. I spread some fig jam on first, then top it with dollops of the cashew goat cheese:

 Next I add handfuls of baby spinach and some fresh basil leaves:

 Then we let it cook a few more minutes until the spinach starts to wilt a bit. Then we take it inside, slice it up, and devour!

Grilled pizza is pretty easy to do and it's such a nice change from regular pizza. I also like to do a simple Neapolitan-style pizza with fresh sliced tomatoes, basil, olive oil, and Daiya vegan mozzarella. I'm sure you'll be seeing that one on my blog some time this summer!

Smoothies and Sandwiches and Pizza, Oh My!

Yesterday, I said that I was going to make one of our favorite raw soups for dinner. But then...life happened. More specifically, I was verrrrrrrry tired yesterday afternoon. So tired, in fact, that I couldn't be bothered to even make a raw soup - one which is nothing more than juicing some carrots and throwing the juice (and a bunch of other raw ingredients) into the Vita-Mix and blending it. No, I couldn't be bothered. All I wanted to do was open a Kombucha and drink my dinner (too tired to chew). Fortunately, my hubby is awesome and came to the rescue. He cooked up one of his favorite easy meals for himself and our son - some whole wheat pasta tossed with some navy beans, fresh spinach, olive oil, and nutritional yeast (aka "nooch," to us vegan folk). It's actually the perfect easy dinner - you only need one pot (well, two, if you count the strainer), you have your nutritional bases covered (carbs, protein, fiber, veggie, fat, B-vitamins), and it only takes about 10 minutes to make. Plus, it has nooch - yummy, yummy nooch. My son is a nooch-aholic and wants it sprinkled on everything. It's kind of funny to hear a 2-year-old say "nooch! nooch!"and see him gesture with his hands as if he's sprinkling something on his food. I love it. He had his nooch and I had my "booch!"

Why was I so tired? Well, my son hasn't been sleeping well at all the last few days. He's been waking up 3-4 times every night, for no apparent reason. Last night was the worst - he must have woken up 5 times :( Ugh! So we're all pretty tired again today. Since I was already tired, I figured I may as well go for a short run this morning. I mean, my rationale was that I was going to be tired whether I ran or not, so I may as well go, since I was too zombie-like to do any kind of exercise yesterday (unless vacuuming and dusting counts :) Even though I was tired, it was nice to get out and enjoy the beautiful spring morning.

After my run, I had - you guessed it - a Chocolate Cherry Smoothie. I threw some spinach in there for good measure. My hubby and my son shared a pot of 7-grain hot cereal mixed with frozen blueberries, Craisins, and walnuts. My son is also a "boo-berry"-aholic so he was thrilled with his breakfast ;)

Since my hubby is a sweetheart, he decided to vacuum and wash my car for Mother's Day. To say thank you, I decided to make a special lunch for him - avocado sandwiches. Yummmmmm. We love these sandwiches! And they couldn't be easier to make.

First, slice up a ripe avocado, a large tomato, and some green olives.

Next, toast some bread:

Drizzle the toast with some olive oil, then top with half a sliced avocado, six sliced green olives...

...some sliced tomato and sea salt....

...a big handful of baby lettuce....

...and the other slice of toast.

Take a big bite and say mmmmmmm....

Hubby was happy to see his sandwich waiting for him :) My son loves it, too. Then again, he loves just about anything with avocado!

Dinner tonight was something we all love and eagerly anticipate - Mexican pizza! This is another really easy dinner to make, even when you're tired :) It's also great because my hubby can make the dough while I'm prepping the other ingredients. With teamwork, this pizza is ready to be eaten in less than half an hour.

To start, I take the flours out of the freezer during the afternoon so they can come to room temperature. I like to use half white whole wheat flour and half whole wheat pastry flour. Depending on what kind of pizza I'm making, I'll also add various herbs to the dough batter. For Mexican pizza, I'll add some dried oregano, coriander, and cumin. Then I turn the rest of the dough making over to my hubby, who can coax and stretch a pizza dough way better than I ever can.

While he's working the dough, I'm chopping up the cilantro and scallions:

Once the crust is stretched, we coat it with some cornmeal and then bake it for 5 minutes before we add the toppings. I told you this was an easy pizza to make - here's why. After you prebake the crust, you take it out of the oven and top it with some sour cream and salsa:

Some canned black beans:

The cilantro and scallions:

And, finally, the cheese:

Then you bake it for 10 more minutes and drool when you take this out of the oven:

This pizza is so ridiculously delicious.

Now...go make this yourself!

Mexican Pizza
Serves 2 hungry adults & 1 toddler

Place pizza stone in oven and preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Dough:
3/4 cup white whole wheat flour
3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup water
seasonings to taste (oregano, coriander, and cumin are great)
Cornmeal for dusting the dough

Mix flours, baking powder, sea salt, and seasonings in large bowl. Make a well in the center, then add the olive oil and water. Stir well with a spoon, then mix and knead with your hands on some waxed paper. Cover with another piece of waxed paper and roll to desired thickness with a rolling pin. Sprinkle both sides with cornmeal. Place dough on an oiled pizza pan, then place pan on the pizza stone and bake for 5 minutes. Remove from oven and add toppings, in this order:

1/2 to 3/4 cup sour cream, to taste (I use Tofutti Sour Supreme)
1/2 to 3/4 cup salsa, to taste (I use Chi-Chi's Mild Thick and Chunky)
1 15-oz can black beans (organic, if possible)
1 cup loosely packed cilantro leaves
1 bunch scallions, chopped
1 cup cheddar cheese (I use Daiya Vegan Cheddar Style Shreds)

Bake an additional 10 minutes. Slice and enjoy!

Well, I'm off to watch the Celtics game. I hope you have a Happy Mother's Day tomorrow!