Week 1: Pizza Night

And then it was Friday, the last day of squeezing produce in before next week's pick-up. Upon assessment in the fridge, I realized that the items we had left were pretty random. And what better to put a lot of random stuff on than pizza? We are frequent consumers of yummy pizzas made at home because I've found that I can get the kids to eat mushrooms if I chop them up and hide them under the cheese. Sneaky yes, but do they stuff their cute little mouths? Also, yes. It's not like I haven't presented them with real, live mushrooms on multiple occasions, but without fail, I get a resounding "NO" every time. So I sneak, and I think it means I care.

We like to use the small, pre-made pizza crusts that come two in a pack because, 1.) it means we don't have to share with each other, and 2.) we can go as wild as we want on our pizzas without offending anyone else. So I made four pizzas with the following ingredients: 

Kids' Pizzas:

crust

pizza sauce

finely chopped mushrooms

very finely chopped sprinkle of green onions (CSA)

mozzarella cheese

blue cheese (just a sprinkle)

Wife/Hubby Pizzas:

crust

pizza sauce

mushrooms

green onions (CSA)

arugula (CSA)

basil (CSA)

tomatoes

mozzarella

blue cheese

truffle oil

Ahhhh, pizza night. The night at our house when everyone is uncharacteristically happy. Except both kids burned their mouths on cheese and had meltdowns, but what can you do? Tears are shed about something all day, every day at our house and I've become very blasé about them. Kids learn through tears. If I see blood or injustice, I step in, but otherwise a tear just means a lesson is being instilled. In this case, if mommy says it's too hot, don't eat it. (Disclaimer: this is not a parenting blog).

I'm not a fan of arugula and actually felt dread at having to deal with it all week. But because I have to take my vegetables seriously now, I followed the advice of an enlightened girlfriend and tried it on pizza. To her credit, it added an earthy taste and a light crunch that went well with the other toppings, but I'm still not a fan. I'd add it to pizza again though, because since my discovery of truffle oil, I'm pretty sure I could drizzle it on carpet and proclaim to have found the best food on earth.

Even through the tears and arugula, pizza night was a great success. With this grand finale to our week, we used nearly all of our first 48 quarts of produce. We raised a glass and patted ourselves on the back for a job well done. It fills me with regret to say, however, that we did suffer one casualty in CSA Week One: the radishes. So next week, I will overcompensate and let no radish go unconsumed.