Day 2 of Shopping at Home (and possibly Day 3): Babybel Pizza

I peered once again into the depths of my refrigerator, looking to see what was on the brink of becoming compost.  I saw little darker green spots in my box of spinach, and knew it was time to use or lose.  Also, a little container of leftover cooked Italian sausage peeked out at me, and I knew homemade pizza was inevitable.  Easy-peasy, I thought, I always have the ingredients for pizza!  There’s a bakery’s worth of flour, both whole-wheat and white, in the pantry for the crust; I remembered seeing a couple of cans of Muir Glen organic pizza sauce, my favorite brand; I had ordered pepperoni from Triple S last time; and I always have shredded cheese in the freezer, always.

Well, except when I don’t.

Good lord, how could I not have cheese?!

But I didn’t panic.  I emptied one chest freezer, and then the other.  Then I scoured the shelves of my refrigerator freezer.  Nothing.  In my refrigerator deli drawer lay the only cheese in the house:  shredded sharp cheddar, parmesan, light string cheese sticks, and packages of Babybel for my son’s lunch.

Hmmm.  Well, when it comes to pizza and cheese, for me, less is more.  I prefer a strong-flavored cheese, and less of it, to flavor and enhance the vegetables and meats.  The Babybel and the cheddar were by far the best contenders, and I could string up a couple of cheese sticks to round out the cheese ratio.  So I set about peeling off those red wax pods, reminiscing about when my son and I saved these from his lunches and actually made a candle.  I sliced them thin.

After my dough was ready, I pre-heated my pizza stone and prepped my ingredients.  More D & P (Discovery and Purge).

Discovered:  1. some leftover oyster mushrooms from Claybank Farms. 

2. pre-cooked Triple S bulk Italian sausage.

3. ½ a box of baby spinach, which I “chiffonaded.”  That’s a fancy word, improperly conjugated, to mean that I stacked up the leaves, rolled them into a big roll, and sliced, creating long-ish strips.  I like this for basil, sage, and spinach on pizza.  It’s more difficult to chiffonade arugula.

Purged:  1. the leftover mushrooms from Claybank Farms.  They didn’t look right, and I didn’t want to spoil the pizza.

The little ovals of Babybel lay gleaming between pepperoni, and a light sprinkle of cheddar added just the right amount of cheesy goodness.  And I didn’t have to run to the store for Italian cheese!  Pizza night was a Shopping-at-Home success.  And the best news of all?  The recipe makes three pizzas, so more leftovers!