Pizza Pizza

That whole updating regularly thing isn't working out so well, and after being on skates for 4.5 hours today, I have just enough energy for this one post. So you'll have to wait for a catch-up tomorrow. Tonight's menu was as simple as simple gets: pizza and salad. I've tried homemade pizzas before (okay, more like homemade pizza sauce on a store-bought crust because whenever I see the word "yeast" used in a recipe, my brain shuts down, either from fear of making dough or from a fear of knowing that, if I could make the dough, we would gain 100 pounds from eating bread, doughnuts, etc., so I just choose to act like I can't make dough from scratch), and this sauce I pulled from Cooking Light has been the best so far. It wasn't quite as thick as I prefer, so I may experiment with the texture the next time I try this, but the recipe overall was simple and full of flavor. Because I'm such a food dork, I had actually heard of the San Marzano tomatoes specified in the recipe as being the more superior of the canned tomatoes. And I have to say, they were right about that. It's just a lighter, almost sweet version of the regular canned tomato, and the salt ratio was much easier to control. If you can find the San Marzanos in your Italian section of the grocery store, go for it.

Because of that aforementioned phobia of making dough from scratch, I'm always a little weary of trying out the store-bought brands of pizza crust. We've tried the Pillsbury refrigerated crust, but it always ended up a little soggy in the middle and didn't really hold up to the toppings (and it did NOT reheat well if any leftovers remained). This time around, we tried a Boboli crust (usually hanging out in the Italian aisle). This was crunchier and held up well to the sauce, so this will probably be our go-to crust unless something better comes along. I just spread the homemade pizza sauce on the crust, leaving about a 1/2-inch border, and topped with thinly sliced fresh mozzarella (another ingredient that shouldn't be overlooked; if you reach for that pre-shredded pizza blend in the cheese aisle, you'll be doing yourself a huge disservice--go with the fresh, which may cost more, but the taste and texture far exceeds the bagged "cheese"). This was supposed to be a traditional pizza Margherita, usually a red-white-and-green pizza comprising pizza sauce, mozzarella and fresh basil, but I'm admittedly not the biggest fan of fresh basil. So I just sprinkled on some dried basil before popping the pizza into the oven on 450 degrees F and baking for 8 minutes.

The side was just a basic salad with chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots.

Now, for dessert....I really can't rave about this recipe enough. I'm a big, big fan of salty-but-sweet desserts, and this hits the spot every time. It's a Strawberry Pretzel Salad, and really, I just followed the linked recipe step-by-step. I did allow the pretzel crust (really the genius part of this recipe) to cool before topping with the cream cheese mixture. I let those two layers chill in the fridge for about 30 minutes to allow it to set, then I made the Jell-O mixture and popped it into the fridge for about 5-7 minutes just to get it set a bit before pouring on top of the cream cheese mixture. Within about 2 hours, the dessert had set enough to be consumed. Yeah, it all sounds very white trash-y (for some reason, Jell-O in a dessert seems to have that stigma), but I find it to be a...well, a delightful dessert.