This-is-what-was-in-the-house-today Pizza

Thursday was a lovely day - one in which we ate too many wieners and burgers, had more than a "serving size" of chips and dip, drank too much beer, stayed out in the sun too long during the day and stayed up too late after the fireworks. That's right, it was the 4th of July! And what's more American than devouring enough calories in one sitting to feed a third-world country for a month? Nothing!!!

Okay, okay. I know it's oaky to indulge from time to time, as long as we're not doing every weekend to celebrate some holiday, birthday, funeral, long horrible week of work, short great week of work, casual get-together, etc. Believe me, I know that it is so easy to slip into that mindset where we make it okay for ourselves to eat crap and loaf around for countless hours time and time again. But try to stay on the bandwagon. Or at least if you fall off, realize that you can always get back on. And it doesn't have to wait until the new year or even until Monday. It can start with your next meal.

So even though I did eat mostly junk food on the 4th, I'm not ready to do another vegetable cleanse. Part of the reason for that is simply because I don't have too much in the fridge right now and I have even less motivation to go to the grocery store to correct that problem. But I do have a few things, and those happen to be enough to make a relatively healthy pizza. Here we go veggie pizza!

Pizza toppings:

• 8 baby portobello mushrooms
• 10-15 baby carrots
• 1/4 cup balsamic vinaigrette
• 2 cups of fresh spinach, chopped
• 1 6-oz. jar artichoke hearts
• 1/4 cup grated sharp cheddar
• 1/4 cup shredded Mexican cheese
• 1-2 cups pizza sauce  

My preferred artichoke brand right now is Progresso

Prepare those darn veggies like this:

• Preheat your oven to 425. Chop up the baby carrots into thin strips and toss them in the balsamic. spread them out onto a jelly roll pan and bake in the oven until they are tender, about 20-25 minutes. 
• Heat up a skillet with a touch of olive oil. Clean, dry, and chop the portobellos. Sauté those shrooms for about 5-7 minutes, adding in any spices you care for. Usually just some salt and pepper will do. Lots of water will come out of them. It's just what mushrooms do. Drain off the water or transfer them to a smaller dish, sans water.
• Chop the artichoke hearts into smaller pieces.

Okay. Your toppings are ready. Be sure you chopped that spinach a little bit too. Now...

• Place the pizza stone in the oven and turn the temperature to 500 degrees. If it's still at 425 from making the carrots, that's probably okay. If you could allow the oven to cool a bit, put the stone in, and then turn it to 500, that would be even better. Or you could just put the stone in when you make the carrots and continue heating it at this point. When you put the stone into a hot oven you run the risk of breaking it. Or rather, it will break all by its little ol' self in all that heat. It needs to gradually reach that temperature. Still not using a pizza stone? F-you. 
• Roll out some pizza dough and cut it to the shape of the pizza stone (or slightly smaller). 
• When the stone has reached 500 degrees, take it out of the oven, place it on your work surface, put the prepared dough on top, and spread the sauce around evenly on it. 
• On with the toppings! Roasted carrots, mushrooms, artichokes, and then all those lovely cheeses. I know I used a very random assortment of cheeses on this here za, but like the title of the post, it was what I had on hand. 
• Into the hot oven and set the timer for about 10 minutes. Could be done in 8, could be 12. Just keep an eye on it, especially with that spinach on there, because those leaves tend to dry out quick and even burn. 

Soup, salad, and pizza for two!

And just look at how rustic that pizza turned out! Actually, I think "rustic" is just a nice way of saying, "deformed." I was definitely hungry to eat this one because I definitely burned my mouth on my first slice. After it cooled down a bit I could actually enjoy the tastiness. All in all, this was a very vegetabley dinner that was really yummy. I never used to think I could enjoy so many veggies all in one meal as much as I did with this one. Maybe it was the added cheese on top of it all. Hm. 

A fresh salad and some of my Nordstrom's tomato basil soup that I had leftover in the fridge went really well with the pizza too. The soup is actually made with lots of carrots, which is probably why it complimented the carrot-topped pizza so well. 

Go on, take a bite...

You may be thinking that the Mexican cheese on the pizza is out of place and slightly freakin' weird. Yes. That's sort of true. But believe me, it was good. It was a small amount of cheese so the few Mexican-ish spices in there were hardly even detectable. Even if you can taste them a bit, they add a hint of warm spiciness that just goes well with the other flavors. No, you don't have to use Mexican cheeses. You can use mozzarella, more cheddar, or whatever else you care for.