Friday Night

...is pizza night!

This week's pizza is made with homemade marinara sauce that we canned several weeks ago. I made the dough from a recipe out of Vegan with a Vengeance, and affixed the whole pie with:
- Daiya vegan mozzarella and cheddar cheeses
- Tomatoes
- Green bell peper
- Black olives
- Onion
- Zucchini
- Yellow squash

 I've always loved pizza, especially when I wasn't vegan or vegetarian. But when I gave up eating cheese, my obsession with pizza didn't it stop; I just had to adapt the traditional Italian dish to my dietary restrictions. For a while I would simply order a vegetarian pizza without cheese. Even though it tasted good, it never truly satisfied my craving. So I tried making my own pizza.

When the homemade pizza idea first came about, we just used store bought pizza dough (from Trader Joes or Whole Foods). Once I felt more comfortable with the whole pizza making process, I found a pizza dough recipe in a vegan cookbook we already owned. I'm sure there are tons of similar recipes all over Pinterest, but I'm happy with the one I've been using, so I'll stick with it. Eventually, I started substituting some of the white flour with whole wheat flour...you know, to make it a little bit healthier. My favorite "cheese" to use is Daiya; I find it tends to melt and taste the best.

The work week always tends to drag on, so we came up with Friday Pizza Night as something to look forward to at the end of a hard, busy week. It's also a good way to use up the last of our produce in preparation for the farmers' market on Sunday. Even if some of the vegetables are getting a little squishy, it won't make a difference once they're cooked on the pizza. It's a win-win; I get to eat pizza and I'm also eating some vegetables.

It's finally starting to get pretty windy and the weatherman says there's a chance of rain tomorrow...bring it on, Autumn!