Breakfast Pizza

Happy Friday!
It's going to be a great weekend, minus the bit of rain we are supposed to get by tomorrow morning.
We have a concert to go to tomorrow night..... Folsom Live, 5 stages and one of my all time favorite bands
The English Beat is playing!  I can't wait!!!

Yesterday morning while my stomach was growling I noticed in my refrigerator that I had a little bit of pizza dough left.  Light went off.  Breakfast Pizza!  I had some cashew cream chipotle sauce leftover as well.  So this is how I put it all together! It got a huge thumbs up from my husband.

Preheat oven to 450. While letting the pizza dough warm to room temperature I sauteed up some fresh spinach.  Next I cooked up some scrambled tofu (tofu, nutritional yeast, salt, garlic powder, onion powder) in a bit of oil.  Then I heated up some Soyrizo.  When the dough is ready I rolled it out and put on my pizza stone,  sprayed some olive on it and put in oven for 5 min. to partially cook.  Took it out and spread the cashew cream on it, spinach, tofu scramble and Soyrizo.  Put back into the oven for about another 5 min or until the pizza crust started to turn golden.  A couple of nice additions would be to top it off with cilantro and avocado, which I had neither on hand.
The end result did not disappoint!  It tasted as good as it smelled.

My go to pizza crust:
from Organic Style
1 C. warm water (110-115 degrees)
Pinch of sugar
1 Pkg.(1/4oz)active-dry yeastt
3 C. all purpose flour, plus more as needed
(you can substitute 1C. whole-wheat flour for 1C. all purpose flour)
2 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for bowl

1. Pour water into small bowl.  Add sugar and sprinkle yeast over the top.  I like to do a quick stir to mix it all in. Let it sit in a warm spot until the mixture proofs, is bubbly and active, about 8min.
2. Combine flour and salt in mixing bowl.  Add the yeast mixture and olive oil, mix to combine scraping down he sides with a rubber spatula.  The dough should form into a ball.
Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead 10-12 times with your hands, until dough is no longer sticky and appears smooth and elastic.  Shape the dough into a ball.
3. Transfer dough to a large bowl coated lightly with oil.  Turn dough to coat.  Cover with a clean dish towel .  Leave in a warm place until dough has doubled in size, about 1 hour.
4. Punch dough down and knead 3 or 4 times.  Divide the dough in half or if you really want a thinner crust you can divide it into 3 balls.  Roll out on a lightly floured surface and use as you wish or you can pat each disk and wrap  in plastic wrap, place in freezer bags. You can freeze it up to 3 weeks.  (I usually use it all so freezing isn't an option for me). Before using the dough from the freezer, let it sit at room temperature until it becomes springy and pliable 1-2hrs.

Chipotle Cashew Cream
from Veg News
adjusted by dreaminitvegan

1 C. raw cashews
1 C. filtered water( you can add a little more water at a time to make thinner)
*1 canned chipotle pepper with seeds taken out
1/4 C. nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp. sea salt

In a blender, puree all ingredients until smooth.

*note: canned chipotles can be very hot so add according to desired heat. You may only need half a pepper or maybe more due to the heat.
You can also make this sauce without chipotles.

Have an amazing weekend!

Happy Birthday Merlin kitty! Yummy 4th of July food!

Happy July!  It's Wednesday and things are getting back to normal from 4th.  It's been a bit cooler in the mornings here the last few days but I can't complain, I know that everyone back east is dealing with record breaking temps.  Sorry for all of you that live in those states, try to do your best to keep somewhat cool.  Just think about about those states that deal with 110-120 temps every summer.  My brother lives in Arizona and a few days ago it was around 115 that day.  I'll stick to living here on the central coast of California.

It's our cat Merlin's 15th birthday this month! 

He joined us for dinner one night.

 

I was washing dishes one evening when I noticed something out of the corner of my eye.  Merlin was just sitting up there watching me.  It was really funny!

 

I couldn't leave Cleo out!  This was on the houseboat. 

We grilled pizza's last Saturday night for the first time for my in-laws.  It was also the first time

I've used Daiya(dairy free cheese).  I know... but better late than never.  We usually make cheeseless pizza's but I figured since my father-in-law was here I'd try out the Daiya.  I must say I was very pleasantly surprised!  It is so far the best non-dairy cheese I have ever tasted.  Everyone really liked it too! In the future though, I think we'll stick to cheeseless pizza's, just because I'm not used to having any type of cheese product and putting the cheese on all 3 different types of pizza's were a bit too much for me.  I didn't get a chance to take a pic of all 3 pizza's but this one was a tomato, onion, mushroom, vegan sausage with daiya cheese.  Yum! 

Our favorite black bean burgers with a grilled corn and tomato salsa.  This salsa is so good you can use it to top off tortilla chips!  Just grill up a few corn on the cobs, then cut the corn off the cob.  Chop up a couple of ripe tomatoes, cilantro, scallions/red onion, lime juice, jalepeno(to taste), s & p. 

So my plan for dessert on the 4th was to make berry hand pies but the Pate Brisee was so fragile I only got to making 4 little ones and they were falling apart at that.  Soooo....I opted to use all the berries I had, mix them together and make a Triple Berry Crumble Pie!  The berries were blackberry, blueberries and strawberries.  I mixed in some arrowroot and sugar, then poured into the pie crust.  

For the crumble top I used, flour, brown sugar and Earth Balance.

This doesn't look so great,  but I had wax paper covering the top so it kind of softened the crumble topping.

I must admit this was one very delicious tasting Triple Berry Crumble Pie!  This is the first time I've used strawberries in a baked pie.  It's also the first time I've used a crumble top on a berry pie.   Since I didn't use much sugar with the berries the crumble top sweetened it nicely.

  

Last week I had a visit from 2 of my best friends.  We have been hooked on succulents lately and there is a great place in Los Olivos with amazing arrangements and succulents.  One of my girlfriends made me this cute arrangement from some of her succulents.  When the girls come out we've been exchanging propegated plants and succulents from our cuttings.  It's a nice way to add to our collection of plants and make for nice little gifts.  It's alot of fun too!

This is an arrangement I made using a Corona pail.  I just made some holes in the bottom of the pail, added rock for drainage, filled with cactus/succulent soil mix and then the succulents.  There is some Irish Moss in the middle.  The nice things about succulents are that they grow pretty quickly, easy to care for and don't require much watering.

Upcoming reviews: POM

Pizza, pizza, pizza!

I know it's been quite a few days since I've blogged but I've been catching up on

house and garden work. Last Monday I came down with the stomach flu and it was BRUTAL! It totally screwed my stomach up and I've only just gotten some what of an appetite back.

On to better things. Homemade pizza! (This was actually made before I got sick). In our house homemade pizza is definitely a treat due to it being kind of time consuming(making the dough, cutting and grilling the veggies, making the pesto etc) and it's just a family dinner that is kind of fun! My intentions were to grill the pizza but it was so flippen cold out that I will have to wait until summer. Oh well. We like thin crust and with the recipe dough I can make 3 pizzas from that one pizza dough recipe. So I made 3 different pizzas. I only remembered to take a picture of one, my husband said it was definitely a blog worthy photo. First I grilled the vegetables and set aside. This pizza consists of a basil pesto base layered with zucchini, eggplant, portobello, artichoke, sundried tomato, onion and sprinkled with oregano. This was our favorite out of the three. The other two were a marinade base and a cilantro pesto base. The cilantro one was my second favorite, i'll post more about this one in the summer.