I’m always looking for fun ways to help our CSA members get creative and feel inspired in the kitchen. The last thing we want is for you to feel is overwhelmed by your huge box of vegetables and for you to want them to stop coming! We want you to want to cook. We want you to spend time at home, in your kitchen, whisteling while you cook with ease and confidence! So I wanted to share with you one of my favorite ways to use up some of those weird and unusual vegetables that might end up in your compsost pile if you don’t find a way to use them. All vegetables are delicious when prepared properly (I hold this belief solemnly in my heart). 
And you can’t go wrong sneaking your caramelized fennel, swiss chard, kale, fresh tomato overload and even thinly sliced zucchinis on top of a home-made pizza crust and layered between your favorite tomato sauce and a pile of cheese. We have enough tomato sauce in our basement to make pizzas for an army for a week, so this is one ingredient I always have on hand. I also stay pretty stocked on an array of cheeses because we get high quality cheese from the Organic Valley Retail Stores which we frequently visit in La Farge and Cashton. And flour for a home-made pizza crust is a pantry staple. I also always have plenty of garlic and vegetables on hand since, well, I live on an organic vegetable farm. So making home-made pizza has become something I can do with very little creative energy. It is also a crowd pleaser because everyone loves pizza!
There is also no wrong way to top a pizza. I also make enough dough for two pizzas every time I make dough, so if someone in the family absolutely will not eat a certain vegetable, you can simply put that veggie on the ‘other’ pizza. Our family loves leftovers, so having an extra pizza in the fridge is a good thing. We put kale and chard and spinach and truly whatever is in season on our pizza. We recently made home-made taco pizza which helped inspire this newsletter. Instead of a red sauce you make a refried bean spread for the bottom. Have chips, romaine lettuce, olives, tomatoes, and taco sauce for the top and you have a really fun Friday night! Sometimes we have leftover chicken in the fridge from cooking a whole chicken and we have made thai chicken pizza with a thai peaut sauce on the bottom instead of a red-sauce. This pizza uses shredded carrots, bean sprouts if you have them (we’ve skipped those a lot since we rarely have them on hand) and maybe some sweet peppers, chopped peanuts and some cilantro. Oh, and when Grandma Jane comes over we even make an alfredo pizza on a Blue Moon with asparagus or broccoli or anything green that you love and want to hide on your pizza!
If you’re really in a hurry and it has been a long day, you could pick up a store-bought crust to make the process even quicker. But I want to share with you my favorite pizza dough recipe by Ree Drummond that calls for oil. I think oil in a pizza crust helps it get crispy, which I love. I’m not a total pizza crust snob. I know some people have really strong feelings about it being thick or thin, but I’m happy with whatever. My crusts are usually on the thinner side. But I do love crispy on the bottom. One little tip that this recipe does not tell you to do is to sprinkle your pizza pan/stone with oil and corn flour, then roll your crust out on the pan/stone. The corn flour adds texture and it also helps let in a little air between the pan and the crust which helps it crisp up when baking.
OH! And if you’re gluten free or trying to stay away from flour, you can make a home-made crust out of potato, cooked cauliflower, or another gluten-free flour/grain of your choice. I have patted out left-over mashed potatoes or grated left over baked potatoes on a pan before to be used as a pizza crust. It’s more messy when it’s time to serve, but it tastes good going down!
Ree Drummond’s Pizza Dough Recipe
