For many months now the kids and I have been making Monday nights homemade pizza night. I didn't think the kids would ever get tired of pizza! Week after week we made the standard favorites in our household - cheese pizza for Catherine, sausage for Cameron, black olive and mushroom for Dad, and soy cheese or cheeseless veggie for me. Every week we'd follow the same routine. We would come home from our regular Monday classes (swimming and drumming...the only "classes" my kids take) and put the dough ingredients into the bread machine. While the bread machine did all the work we would do whatever it was that we had going on at the time. After the dough was done Catherine would help me roll it out and then we'd each put our own toppings on our individual pizzas and bake them. And every week I heard the same thing..."I love pizza nights!" (from Cameron) and "Yummmm! I love our pizza, Mom!" (from Catherine)
But somewhere along the line someone started to get bored with the "If it's Monday it must be pizza" theme. I'm not sure if it was me or Cameron, but someone decided that we needed to try something new with our weekly pizza nights. A couple of months ago we started experimenting in the pizza department. We still have pizza on Mondays, or at least it *looks* like pizza, but sometimes looks are about all our creations have in common with pizza.
So far we've come up with a few favorites and a few so-so recipes, but no duds. One of our favorites was the cheeseburger pizza with "the works". We've made that one several times because Dad didn't get any the first couple of times we made it. It was gone before he got home! We use catsup instead of pizza sauce and top it with soy burger crumbles and lots of soy cheese. When it's cooled a bit we put all of our favorite burger fixin's on top - mustard, mayo, lettuce, pickles (but only on Cameron's half!), onion, and tomato. Better than a burger imo, especially when the lettuce, onion and tomato come straight from our garden!
Another favorite was the chili cheese dog pizza - a "chef Cameron" creation. Instead of pizza sauce we used chili sauce and topped it with sliced hot dogs and cheese. Served with frosty mugs of root beer, of course!
One of my personal favorites was the Mediteranean bruschetta topping and provolone style soy cheese pizza. We usually have plenty of pizza left over for lunches for a day or two after pizza night, but that night I ate the whole thing by myself!
All of this pizza experimentation started because of an old favorite family recipe. Ever since dh and I were first married 15 years ago we have been making pizza with fresh spinach, feta style cheese, mozzarella style cheese, black olives, and Italian salad dressing drizzled over it in place of the pizza sauce. We were discussing how long it had been since we'd made our "Greek pizza" one night and someone said wouldn't such-and-such a topping be good. The ideas for alternatives to traditional pizza toppings and sauces just started flowing and we started writing them down so we wouldn't forget.
Our next gourmet pizza is probably going to be reuben sandwich style. Or maybe buffalo wing pizza. Or maybe roasted vegetable and pesto. We have a very long list of ideas and haven't decided which one will be next!
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