Oh, the delight of a perfectly ripe homegrown tomato!
Sigh. Due to our upcoming move, we didn't put in any tomato plants this year. Thankfully, we've gotten lucky with some gifts from friends though. I think the best way to eat garden tomatoes is simply washed and sliced -- hopefully while still a little sunwarmed -- and then sprinked with sea salt and fresh pepper. But when you've had your fill of sliced tomatoes, another lovely way to eat them is in homemade pizza.
A few weeks back I got some Calphalon 7-inch mini pizza pans and they have yielded some of our favorite meals so far this summer.
Whether you're four or fourteen or forty-four, everybody loves getting to make their own pizza -- which takes the guess-work out of having folks over for supper. Also, I used to have to coax Eli into choosing a vegetable to put on his pizza-pie, but now that he gets to be the chef he's adding mushrooms, black olives, baby spinach leaves, and fresh tomato chunks. (Wooooo hooo!)
I think the size of the pans improves our homemade pizza. It can be hard to get a large crust consistently thin, but the small pans make this easier. Also, I swear the small pans cook more evenly and thus result in a nicer texture pizza. I found a recipe online that gives four mini pans worth of crust dough in just fifteen minutes. (Click HERE for Allrecipes.com's Quick and Easy Pizza Crust. And HERE is a recipe for quick whole wheat crust.)
Happy summer cooking!
(Unfortunately, the price went up on the pizza pan set since I bought mine, but perhaps they will go back down soon.)
This post is linked to The Magic Onions website's Friday Nature Table as well as Creative Friday on Natural Suburbia.
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