Easy Vegetable Pizza

*Pictures will be posted on this post later this evening, sorry for the delay
Well the weekend is over and we are back to another Monday.  My blog schedule will be changing a bit due to some of the events of the weekend, namely, getting a flat tire on my way home from Spokane on Saturday night.  


The weekend started off nicely with a drive up to Spokane with Kevin.  When we got to my parent's house, I helped my mom make this great pizza recipe from Dr. Fuhrman's book, Eat to Live.  The recipe is called Easy Vegetable Pizza (recipe copied below if you are not a Dr. Fuhrman member).  My mom has been ranting about this recipe to me for a while, so I loved getting to try it.  It tasted great, and was nice to have a small amount of cheese, which I haven't had in over a month or so.  The broccoli topping the pizza had a nice crunch to it, while the mushrooms added good texture and the onions good flavor.  I will definitely be making this again on my own sometime soon.  I think it would be a great weekend dinner when I'm tempted by Kevin ordering Pizza for watching football.  This option is much more nutritious and will leave me feeling full, and not food-guilty.


Easy Vegetable Pizza

Ingredients: Serves 4

4 large whole grain pitas

2 c pasta sauce, no salt added or low sodium

1/2 c chopped shiitake mushrooms

1/2 c chopped red onion

10 oz frozen broccoli florets, thawed and finely chopped

1/2 c shredded mozzarella-type cheese

Directions:  Preheat oven to 200 degrees F.  Place pitas on two baking sheets and warm for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and spoon on the pasta sauce.  Sprinkle evenly with the mushrooms, onion, and broccoli.  Add a light sprinkle of cheese.  Bake for 30 minutes.

Amy's notes: We used halved pita pockets, which was a nice choice because side-by-side with another pita pocket, it makes a whole pizza shape, but after baking there is no need for cutting and was nice and easy to eat.  For our mushrooms we used basic white button mushrooms.  Instead of frozen broccoli we used fresh broccoli, which ended up being 2-3 c when chopped.  We used regular (not nondairy) mozzarella cheese, but mixed it in a large bowl with the rest of the veggies before piling them on top of the pitas with tomato sauce.  We also added red pepper flakes on top just before eating the pizzas to add a bit of heat to the pizza.  Yum!

For the rest of Friday night, Kevin and I made a trip downtown to go to Real Steal in the IMAX theater.  It was a pretty good movie, a little cheesy at times, but had great music and action scenes.  The IMAX screen was huge, and I got a free body massage from all of the vibrating bass of the room!  Haha!  Big thanks to my mom and dad for donating your free movie pass to us!  We haven't seen a movie in theaters since I don't know when!

On Saturday morning we got up nice and early to go up to Green Bluff orchards to pick apples again.  This time the golden delicious (my favorite) were ready for the pickin'!  We found a smaller orchard this time to pick from and found that the prices were quite a bit better, at $1 per pound for every type of apple.  We got a very large box of beautiful golden delicious apples, a small amount of red delicious (for some reason they were not as fresh and sweet as we had been hoping), and some empire apples that were surprisingly yummy.  We also found another farm with some good produce.  I got a small pumpkin, which I will attempt to bake and make a few dishes out of this week.  My parents also got two aromatic sweet onions and a few fresh picked pepperoncinis (banana peppers).  They sent me home with a few of the pepperoncinis, which I will be including in a salad or something this week. 

For lunch on Saturday I ended up making my parents Thai Peanut Lettuce Wraps (recipe coming this week on World Wednesday).  The peanut dipping sauce turned out a little salty because they had regular soy sauce, when I had used low sodium when I had made it for myself before.  They liked it all the same.  Also, for the insides of the lettuce wraps, when I had made it before it was cold and more like a salad, but for theirs, I made it sauted with onions and mushrooms in their iron skillet.  Can't wait to share this recipe (the first recipe I've created from scratch) with you on Wednesday.

During the afternoon Kevin and I played Backgammon, which I may or may not have kicked his butt at!  I got him the backgammon game as a fun surprise for us to play.  It is a pretty nice travel set that I found on ebay for super cheap.  We both love the show Lost, and backgammon is symbolistic in it throughout the series, so we loved learning the game.

Later that evening, Kevin and I decided to drive back to Pullman so we wouldn't have to get up as early to get back for watching football.  About halfway through the drive we realized that the car was not driving right, and was swerving when it went into potholes and ruts, so we stopped at a po-dunk gas station to check the car for problems.  To our dismay, the front driver's side tire was running pretty low on air... uh-oh.  Because it obviously had a leak, we sat around debating to call Triple A to change our tire, or to do it ourselves, or to have my dad come help us.  We decided to just call Triple A, but were helped out from some people driving through who happened to be a gal who's husband was a mechanic with their friend who was a tow truck driver.  Thank god it wasn't a lawyer or docter in the car haha!  They looked a the tire for us, helped us use the hair pump and gage to get our tire to a good level, and said we'd be fine till we got to Colfax at least.  We got the rest of the way home safely, and I've decided to just keep filling the tire up when it gets low until my dad comes down in a couple weeks for dad's weekend and will be changing my car to winter tires.

Sunday was gloriously uneventful for the most part.  I got some knitting and chores done, then Kevin and his roommates and I went to play intramural flag football.  Our team, for yet another week, mercy-ruled the other team (got so far ahead before the clock ran out that they called the game).  

Now it is Monday, and because I am trying to keep my driving to a minimum, I was unable to get groceries on Sunday like I usually do, to today I won't be able to make a crockpot dish.  Instead I will be making Baked Sweet Potatoes with Apples and Cranberries from Dr. Fuhrman.  I will be posting this recipe tomorrow along with my exercise discussion.  Wednesday will feature Thai Peanut Lettuce Wraps, and Thursday... who knows!  Hope you all have a great Monday!

Have you ever felt stranded and unable to (god forbid!) get groceries (example: car problems, weather)?  What is your go-to recipe when this happens?