Home-made Gourmet Pizza

I’ve blogged about my love for Whole Foods Pizza and also Papa Johns veggie pizza  at one point since I started this blog, but lately they weren’t  the same. In the past weeks my family and I have tried different pizzas from various local pizza shops and they all seemed to be lackluster and blasé.  So my sister and I decided to make our own pizza for a change, and boy was it amazing! The pizza was so easy to make , yet tasted  gourmet and cost nearly half the amount it would cost delivered. I took a short cut and used a pre-package Whole Foods wheat pizza crust that comes with 2 medium to large size crusts. The taste was very similar to Whole Foods pizza crust served at their pizza station and not sour doughy like most pre-made crusts.  The ingredients added where pretty simple and basic, but we added a few simple ingredients that made the pizza taste fancier than your ordinary cheese pizza. We topped the pizza with sliced provolone cheese  in addition to the shredded mozzarella , as well as fresh spinach. We than sprinkle dried basil, red pepper flakes, cracked black pepper, garlic powder and onion powder sparingly over the pizza and voilà : Homemade Gourmet Pizza! One bite out of this, and you’ll wonder why you never made your own pizza.

Happy Baking!

 

 

Grilled Eggplant Mozarella Sandwich

Oh what a joy to get a break from it all,  the semester is finally over and all I want to do is just sleep and eat. This being the hardest of all summers for me , i couldn’t wait for the semester to be over. With this 2 week break from school i planned to enjoy my  break to the fullest as much as possible.First up on the list was making a dish from this vegetarian book i recently bought. This was originally a breakfast recipe but i tweaked it a bit to be a lunch or dinner recipe. I recently bought a grill pan so it was a breeze grilling  the eggplant, but this can be  sauteed as well.The recipe is listed below:

• Eggplant sliced (grilled)
• Sliced tomatoes
• Sliced mozarella Cheese
• Pesto
• Sun dried Tomatoes (optional)
• Toasted Bread of any kind

Layer everything and pop in the oven till the cheese is melted, and you’re done!

Next thing on my list, a Netflix marathon of Dawson’s Creek lol.. Don’t judge me :-p

Whole Foods pizza run

The other day, i was in the mood for some pizza. So for my lunch break i decided to head over to Whole Foods to see if they offered any. Let me be the first to tell you that I love Whole foods, its literally like a new adventure every time i go there. I could spend hours looking at products and sampling new things, to me its like a library, grocery store and cafeteria all in one. I freaking love that place lol!…  I usually try keep a budget of five dollars for lunch a day, whether its fruit salad, salads, veggies , parfaits i try my best to keep it at 5 or under. Sometimes i master it sometime i don’t, usually when dealing with whole foods i don’t. On this particular day i was able to keep it under 5 with 2 slices of  cheese pizza at $1.99 a slice. But me wanting something more than cheese, i decided to try one of their specialty pizza which was a Blue Walnut Pizza.  This particular pizza had blue cheese, walnuts, caramelized onions , spinach and the usual mozzarella cheese . All in all To me  it tasted like a salad but at $3.50 a slice, its kinda of pricey. But if you fancy “fancy” pizza than this might spark your interest, but for me I’ll stick to the basics.

FYI: Not sure if it applies to all, Whole foods cheese pizza are made with Whole wheat dough. So technically their good for you , right? lol

Mediterranean style quesadillas

On my weekly stops at the farmers market, i saw that they had these huge pita breads on sale. Not knowing what i would do with it, i threw it in the basket along with some greens. I than headed over to Whole Foods for some spirulina tablets and decided to grab some cheese. I bought a mozzarella cheese ball and pre- diced goat cheddar. This was my first time trying Goat cheddar but for those who haven’t tried it before , i would say it taste like  a mixture of  goat cheese and sharp cheddar.  Its pretty good but this is coming from a person who likes goat cheese lol, but if you want to try something different this is great to try.

Any-who when i got home i just threw in anything i had in the kitchen and created this Mediterranean style quesadilla. First you spread some pesto sauce on half the pita bread and sliced the mozzarella cheese and goat cheddar. Warm it up for about a minute in the microwave until the cheese is evenly melted. Add sliced tomatoes and fresh spinach followed by a couple splashes of balsamic vinaigrette and dried basil. Fold over the pita bread and cut into 2 to 4 pieces.  🙂

Fancy Smancy Grilled Cheese sandwich

The other day Publix had a sale on the Ezekiel bread, never having tried  it before i figured why not. I ate it with almond butter and coffee one morning , and it was the driest thing i ever tasted. So I contemplated on what i should do with this, cause i wasn’t going to throw away $3.50 just like that. So i looked up sandwich recipes, and came across this Tyler Florence grilled cheese recipe. It asked for  Tomatoes, Mozzarella , Pesto and bread of course. I never had Pesto, so instead of making it the way he did. I used a store bought pesto which was pretty good. Any-who,  I defrosted the Ezekiel bread while i sliced up the tomato and mozzarella. I then proceeded to spread pesto on each slice of bread and layer the tomato and cheese  and closed it up with another slice of  pesto covered  bread. Instead of butter he suggested olive oil to grill the sandwich, i thought it was going to make the sandwich soggy but surprisingly it did not. The Ezekiel bread took the grilling great, it didn’t fall apart or stick to the pan at all .I had my family test it out for me, and they loved it. Little did they know they were eating the driest bread known to  man lol.

FYI: If you have a panini maker it would make thing easier but laying a piece of foil while putting a skillet on top worked out for me.