grilled pizza

The last few days have been miserably hot and humid again. Yesterday I made K whisk the little guy and I off to a restaurant as soon as he got home from work. I wasn't craving any particular food, but was eagerly seeking a blast of cold AC. My seat in the restaurant was directly over a vent. Had I spent the entire day in an air conditioned office I would not have liked this but as I had spent most the day in our hot house I loved that my legs were turning numbingly cold.

Although the rains today did help cool things off I still was not eager to turn on the stove let alone the oven in order to cook dinner tonight. And we have too much delicious farm fresh produce to splurge with a restaurant meal again tonight. So we fired up the grill for a delicious seasonal flatbread.

• fresh basil pesto
• grilled zucchini and yellow summer squash
  
• grilled onions
• and as always passed the hot pepper flakes at the table

Despite my indifference towards zucchini and summer squash this was a tasty pizza. I'll give it an 8.

"tomorrow is farm day so use up any leftover produce" grilled pizza

Tomorrow is our CSA pick-up at the farm so I'll be coming home with a bunch of fresh produce and I needed to make room in the fridge. Besides I don't need to accumulate produce from week to week or it will just end up lost in the bottom of the crisper until it eventually gets thrown in the compost. So the pizza today was a hodge podge of any leftover produce. A scrumptious hodge podge!

Although the heat wave is officially over my body is still feeling the unbelievable heat and stuffiness from yesterday so I couldn't stand the idea of turning on the oven. Instead I decided to make a grilled pizza, something I hadn't done in quite awhile. The toppings I had were perfect for a grilled pizza b/c they all needed to be precooked anyway. On a grilled pizza the toppings don't get cooked on the pizza so if they need more than a simple warming they need to be pre-cooked.

On the pizza:

• Root Vegetable Marinara (a favorite in our household b/c it tastes surprisingly like tomato)
  
• 2 small fennel bulbs - thinly sliced
  
• whites and greens of 2 leeks - thinly sliced
• half a dozen chard leaves - sliced in thin strips
• 1 medium zucchini
• As always we passed the nutritional yeast and red pepper flakes at the table.
  

Note: The only items not from the farm were some of the seasonings in the marinara, the olive oil, the crust, the nutritional yeast, and the red pepper flakes. This is truely a seasonal pizza!

The fennel and leeks were sauteed in olive oil until soft and slightly brown. I stirred in the chard as the leeks and fennel finished cooking and turned off the burner.

The zucchini was brushed with olive oil and grilled for a few minutes on each side.

The overall pizza was delicious!! The grilled crust was crispy and flavorful and all the toppings went really well together. I gave it an 8 and really only because zucchini just isn't my favorite vegetable (although I must admit prepared this way it was better than normal). K on the other hand loves zucchini so he gave it a 9 -- I think he is holding out rating anything a 10. Of course, "I could eat this every day" is a pretty high standard to achieve.