Thursday, April 08, 2010

What's for dinner? Pizza. It's not hard.

Pizza is supposed to be complicated. At least that's what it always seems like to me--because all the best-ever recipes swear that you're going to get something exactly like restaurant pizza, which isn't even really possible unless you've got a mighty hot oven and a pizza stone and all that. Or at least unless you're very ambitious.

But is it okay to just have "pretty good" or "very good" pizza without it having to be international-pizza-competition quality? Sure. You don't have to have a Pampered Anything. You can even have an uneven oven like ours, and store-brand mozzarella cheese, and the simplest possible sauce (thinned-down tomato paste with a sprinkle of dried basil and oregano). And you know what, you can still make pretty good pizza that saves you a phone call and the best part of twenty bucks. (That's what two mediums with delivery go for here.)

This is what we had for dinner:

Two pizzas, made with 2 lbs. of bread-machine pizza dough, the above-mentioned cheese and sauce, a little piece of pepperoni, a bit of deli ham, a few mushrooms, and canned pineapple tidbits. The Squirrelings did most of the putting together. We have no strange magic for the baking--we just put them in at 425 degrees, which is probably hotter than that in the top and at the back of the oven, so I switched them partway through. Bake till somewhat brown on the edges. Let cool a few minutes before slicing.

Soup, made with 4 cups of chicken stock, 2 cups of water, 1/2 cup green lentils simmered in the stock/water, then some cooked rice, leftover chopped potato, and frozen mixed vegetables added and cooked until it was soup. You know it's soup when it stops looking like a potful of water with vegetables and lentils floating in it.

Ponytails' special Pineapple-Juice-Gingerale-Orange drink, made partly with the drained pineapple juice.

Giant chocolate cookies, made from an on-sale chocolate cake mix+egg/oil/water, with a cupful of oatmeal mixed in. (Everybody's seen that recipe, right?) And grapes.

2 comments:

Sebastian said...

I love homemade pizza. I use a Hot Roll mix, which makes two large crusts. And about a third of a jar of spaghetti sauce for the pizza sauce.
I think it might be better than some of the delivery options here. And lots cheaper. I just have to think about it before we're starving. But isn't that the real trick to dinner in the first place.

Ang said...

We like thin crust pizzas here so while deciding lunch one day, I slapped barbeque sauce on tortillas, added leftover meat and some cheese, laid them on my griddle and placed a pan lid over the whole concoction. Instant oven. The tortilla crisps up just like thin crust would. This has become my boys favorite lunch. This week, we had leftover spaghetti sauce with meat to add but the youngest says he prefers the barbeque sauce. Cheap, easy and uses up the leftover odds and ends of a meal.
Ang in OKC