Kid-Friendly: Quick Pizzettas

These pizzettas are easy and quick to prepare, and are a sure hit with my daughter. For a crust, you can use slices of any kind of bread you have. For a cheese, hard cheeses that melt nicely are preferred, like Gruyere. I personally like yellow Balkan cheeses like Kashkeval (Bulgarian) and Kefalograveira (Greek), which you can obtain from Middle Eastern and Balkan grocery stores. For toppings, mushrooms, bell peppers, pitted and halved kalamata olives, and grape tomatoes go well. You can add coarsely chopped garlic if you wish. Bake at 400-425 F for about 10-12 min, until the cheese starts to brown. Top with baby arugula if you like.

Pizzettas with Kashkeval cheese on whole wheat sourdough, topped with bell peppers, mushrooms, kalamata olives, garlic, and baby arugula.

Hint: If using mushrooms, don't chop them too small and don't bake for too long, or their water will seep out and make the bread soggy.

Comments

Staying the Path

Sooner or later, every exercise plan stumbles upon obstacles, such as work demands, travel, weather, or injury. Following are the ones I encountered over the past five years. I will address each in turn in later posts, along with my response to each challenge. Finding the time to exercise. Schedule disruptions such as illness, travel or extended work commitments. Monotony: Boredom from doing the same routines and running over the same trails. Being a single-parent: I have shared custody of my daughter, which imposes the added challenge of integrating my exercise with my parenting. Weather: a significant factor for exercising outdoors. Trail conditions: ice, rain, mud, potholes, construction closures, etc., can interfere with our planned activities. Injuries. Specific adaptations because of lifestyle. For example, I live in a townhouse, so end up doing stairs twice as often as usual, while my work involves sitting in front of the computer for long hours. These ha...

Eating Healthy: CSA What?

In Getting Enough Nutrition , I wrote about my increased interest in eating healthy. Fortunately, a year later, I heard from a friend about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Essentially, rather than getting their groceries from the supermarket, they contract with the local farm to deliver their produce. Pasta sauce from CSA farm vegetables The basil is also from the CSA farm It turns out this nice farm I pass along my way to work - a green oasis amid a growing suburban sprawl - has its own CSA program. For about $30 a week, I share in the produce of the farm, receiving a decent quantity of 10-12 different vegetables a week, all organic, in-season, and fresh from the earth. There are no guarantees as to what we get. We pay for our share at the beginning of the year, and receive whatever the earth gives, which bounty varies from year to year and depends on the weather. Thus we share the risks and rewards with the farmer, and the adventure of finding out what's in store...

From the Farm This Week ...

In Eating Healthy: CSA What? I talked about the Farm program to which I subscribe for fresh produce. Here, I illustrate how the program works with this week's plentiful harvest. Upon visiting the farm, I ended up getting over 11 lb. of tomatoes, lots of several kinds of peppers, a spaghetti squash, kale, and eggplant, and more. Had to decide how to split all that food across the week, especially that tomatoes are perishable. Decided to make a sauce out of the 4 lb. of plum tomatoes and store it in mason jars. The remaining tomatoes, I designated for salsas and salads. That would use up some of the peppers. This week's harvest of CSA tomatoes: Blonde salsa from CSA veggies (made three of these): Tomato Pasta Sauce with Veggies: Roasted veggie wheat-free sandwich, using the eggplant, sweet roasting peppers, poblano pepper, and a summer squash left over from last week's harvest: Finally, I made both a kale pesto and a roasted tomato and vegg...

My Health Journey

Search This Blog