Monday, July 2, 2007

Homemade Veggie Pizza, Who Knew It Could Be This Good

Let's just say that JD was always raised as a meat and potatoes kind of guy. There is Polish in my blood, so there was always a steak or sausage at our dinner table. In the spirit of branching out to try new things, and in the quest to get back down to the college fighting weight, JD has agreed with the Wife to try some vegetarian dishes. Now of course I laid down some ground rules:

1. No fake meat - If we are going to have soyburgers, lets just have a burger. There is no reason to try and fake something that God has already perfected in the fleshy counterpart.

2. Veggie dishes must stand on their own - I have no problem eating vegetables as long as they are good as vegetables. This means that I will not compromise good taste just for the sake of eating vegetarian. There are plenty of veggies I like, so lets find a way to work around those.

3. No Tofu....Ever - I think this one is self-explanatory.

Anyway, so we have been eating 1-2 vegetarian meals a week, which has been pretty good. Sometimes it approaches a "hot and ready" night. This is when the meal fails and we go get a pizza. Thankfully there have been none that fully meat this criteria. so tonight it was time to try some homemade squash and sage pizza. Let me tell you, this was delicious. I am going to post some pictures, but unfortunately that does not do it justice. The aroma was amazing and the taste was so good I burned the top of my mouth shoveling it in so fast. Major kudos goes to Wife, for making an excellent dinner that was also pretty healthy (note: blue cheese is not a healthy ingredient, but it's damn good) If anyone out there wants the recipe, just leave a comment and I will type it in. Also, as a side comment, this is partly to show off to our good friend Rosiecat over on Life, Love and Food. On to the pics:

This is Wife showing off her HOMEMADE pizza crust
(She was painting earlier in the day, hence the clothes)


The finished product......yummy


3 comments:

Rosiecat24 said...

Hi JD and Wife,

I LOVE your pizza! It looks amazing. I totally sympathize with you about burning your mouth because you were too impatient to let it cool. I burn my mouth virtually every weekend eating whatever I've made for dinner.

I think your approach to eating more vegetables and more vegetarian meals is very wise. It's often too much of a change to go from eating meat every day to eating little or no meat, so your healthiest option is to try to eat more vegetables. If eating vegetarian meals is one way to accomplish that, then it's a smart choice.

I also agree with you about the fake meats, although I do occasionally indulge in a fake chicken patty or soysage. I am under no illusion that these foods are not without their problems: they are highly processed and contain all sorts of weird ingredients that may or may not be healthy for your body. That being said, I don't have a problem with eating them from time to time. I limit myself to buying one fake meat product a week, and most weeks I don't buy any because of the questionable nutritional content and the price. My goodness, they can be expensive! And I don't even care for the taste of a number of them so I don't buy those products at all.

But you might want to reconsider your position on tofu. When prepared well, it's delicious. I like it a lot in curries and spicy stews where it absorbs all the yummy spices. And it does bump up the protein content of a vegetarian meal, which is nice. I myself would like to try out some desserts that make use of tofu, such as a "Chocolate Dream Pie" in which tofu is used to make a pudding-like filling. Unfortunately, pies are more fun to make for multiple people, so I haven't made any dessert pies in a long time.

JD, did that last part about tofu in desserts make you shudder? ;-)

Happy Friday!

Rosiecat24 said...

PS Kudos to the Wife for her beautiful pizza crust and finished pizza! Hurray!

Anonymous said...

This sounds like an awesome recipe to try. Would you send it to me? I am trying to eat less meat and more veggies, so this would be great.

send to: StarGemGirl@gmail.com

Thanks!