Yoda Pizza: Project Tasteless

Hi Friends 🙂

Thanks for all the nice words about our costumes! I hope you all had a nice Halloween – Jason and I did, thanks to a delicious pizza made by yours truly.

This blog post is my entry to Rachel’s Project Tasteless contest:

The challenge is that your pizza recipe must be inspired by your Halloween costume.

And since we already had a pumpkin with Darth Vader’s face carved into it, I decided to go with the next best Star Wars option:

Yoda.

How would I make this into a pizza you ask? Simple. I’d start by forming my Spelt Pizza Dough into the shape of Yoda’s head:

I then covered my dough with pizza sauce, turkey pepperoni, black olives and soy cheese:

The next layer consisted of spinach and green pepper slices (to mimic Yoda’s wrinkles) and more soy cheese <—- he has white hair you know!

Finally, a few well-placed black olives and carrot shreds completed our Yoda Pizza:

(he’s obviously very happy to be made into a pizza!)

Yoda Pizza

Pizza dough of choice (I used Matt’s Spelt Pizza Dough recipe)

1 jar pizza sauce

½ package turkey pepperoni

½ cup black olives, sliced

1 green pepper, sliced

3 cups spinach

½-1 cup shredded cheese of choice (or more if you prefer a cheesier pizza)

Shape dough into the form of Yoda’s head. Add toppings, bake and enjoy. (follow any specific instructions for your dough type. I had to prebake my dough for 5 minutes before adding my toppings and baking to perfection).

I hope you had a nice Halloween! 🙂

1. How was your weekend? Tell me the highlights!

2. Who is your favorite Star Wars character?

3. What are your favorite pizza toppings?

~Holly

Purple Dinosaur

Hello!

Thanks for all the nice words about my September goals. I’m happy with how things are going so far, but I still have a lot that I want to do! More good news today, I have more interest in some of my Craigslist items, and once again the buyer is driving 2 hours to pick up the goods! A worthy buyer indeed! She’s picking up my chairs and my colored shelves.

Jason and I have a plan to get the rest of the garage clear within the next week (Goal #6!). It will be such a relief when we can both park in our garage 🙂

And speaking of good news, I got something super special in the mail today: Barney

Ok not that Barney. This Barney:

BARNEY BUTTER!!! Crunchy almond butter and creamy almond butter. I won them from a giveaway at Gingerbread Bagels. Thank you Lindsey!

And I have even more good news. I ran to the store after work to pick up some dinner supplies when I happened to walk down the baking aisle and saw Libby’s Pumpkin. I have been checking for a while now, and they are always out! There were only a few cans left (I considered buying all of them but remembered that I need to keep to my budget this month). I bought 2 cans and had to take a pic of one can with the sparkly pumpkins and an ear  of corn:

Since Wednesday is Top Chef night (and no I won’t discuss who won last night in case you haven’t watched it yet), I decided to make something a little extra special for dinner:

Pizza. Yep, I saw Matt’s pizza today and knew I had to make one for us tonight. I followed his Spelt Pizza Dough recipe (subbed agave for honey since I didn’t have any) and it tasted unbelievable. We topped the pizza with fire roasted tomatoes, turkey slices, green pepper, black olives and soy cheese.

I was so happy with how it turned out! Look at all that lovely melted soy cheese!

Going back to yesterday’s post, I was happy to read that most of you do not mind office treats. For a time I thought others were trying to sabotage my diet, when in reality they were just trying to be nice. I think there are people who try to sabotage our progress, but we need to be strong in our goals and beliefs and do what WE want to do, not what someone else wants us to do. I know, easier said than done sometimes!

Questions:

1. What are your favorite pizza toppings? Do you prefer to make your own or do you like to go out? Tell me about the time you had the BEST PIZZA you ever ate? My favorite pizza toppings are sausage, peppers and black olives. I also like “supreme” pizzas with everything imaginable. I like to make my own but every once in a while it is fun to go out and get pizza. The best pizza I ever had was on my 21st birthday. I was living in Duluth, MN going to college and my parents and sisters came up to visit me on my birthday. We went to Old Chicago and had Taco Pizza — it was phenomenal. We have eaten at other Old Chicagos and their Taco Pizza could never compare to that first time!

2. Did you watch Barney when you were a child? What were your favorite shows? I was a little too old for Barney by the time he showed up, I remember watching Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, Disney movies, Looney Tunes and Little House on the Prairie. Also, has anyone else seen Donald in Mathmagic Land? My sisters and I used to watch it when we were younger, but I have yet to meet anyone else who has seen it.

3. Have you heard about the High Fructose Corn Syrup name change? I read about it on Laury’s blog, check it out if you haven’t heard about it!

Enjoy your day everyone!

Holly

Smart Dough

Good Morning!

I feel so privileged that I got to share Zubaz with so many of you! I remember at one point in my childhood seeing almost every 30-40 year old man wear a pair of purple/gold Zubaz with a Vikings jersey or sweatshirt. Yikes.

Tuesday morning I got in a great 3 mile run with J – it is so hot in the morning (we got up at 5:30am!) but we got through it. I saw a 8 wild turkeys all huddled together too – not something you see every day! I only wish I had my camera with so you could see them all.

For dinner I really wanted pizza. Normally we order from Papa Murphys (where you pick it up fresh and then bake it at home), but I wanted to make my own. So, I got some help from Bob:

I really wanted this to work, since it is dairy free (for J) and had decent ingredients. I started by mixing up the crust dough. I was bummed to see that I had to let it rise for 20 minutes (I know, I know, I’m not much of a baker and forget that you have to do these things!) I followed the instructions, divided the dough in two and let it rise.

Meanwhile, I busted out a TurboFire HIIT workout (20 minutes long!) – I think the dough “knew” I needed to workout and the timing was just right.

After 20 minutes I was covered in sweat. The dough had risen quite a bit in just a short time. I pressed the dough in a cookie sheet (no pizza pan here, folks!) and baked it for a few minutes. Meanwhile, I chopped my veggies and shredded my soy cheese:

Red pepper, orange pepper, onion, spinach

I took the crust out of the oven and saw how amazingly thick this crust is. YUM! I threw on the tomato sauce, veggies, some cooked Italian sausage and the soy cheese:

And after 15 minutes in the oven:

Delicious pizza. The crust was so thick and crunchy (and soft at the same time) – it was just perfect. I wasn’t expecting much from a dairy free/wheat free/gluten free crust, but it was awesome!

I did look for some new shoes, but I couldn’t find anything I liked. Where do you like to buy shoes?

I did find something to buy:

I can’t wait to read it!

Question of the day: What are your favorite pizza toppings? Do you prefer to make your own, or do you have a favorite pizza place?