Photo #3: Friday night homemade pizza
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Summer supper outside, Friday evening
Photos of What We Eat #3
- Pizza number 1: Tomato, basil, and olive pizza: homemade olive oil bread dough, tomatoes from our CSA, basil from our kitchen garden, olives, and extra virgin olive oil
- Pizza number 2: Prosciutto, onions, and gruyere on a light béchamel sauce: Prosciutto with the fat trimmed, fresh lightly sauteed onions from our CSA, gruyere cheese, and a light béchamel sauce made from scratch. The one ingredient this is missing, believe it or not, is fresh pear. The light sweetness is a great balance to the saltiness of the prosciutto.
One sidenote: these pizzas look bigger in the photo than they actually are. Each was about 10-12 inches or so, which is about the size of a personal pizza at a lot of restaurants (not that I’ve actually eaten any of those. Heavens no.).
Friday night traditions
Friday night is generally my night to come up with something for dinner. April has had the kids and meals for most of the week, and it’s time for a well-deserved break. With Dad in charge, pizza is a common occurrence for us on Friday evenings.
Growing up, this was also somewhat of a family tradition, although our pizza was generally ordered and delivered in a vehicle with an illuminated pyramid strapped to the roof. Nowadays, I make our own for a variety of reasons:
- I am cheap. With two kids, cheaper is better. I can make either of these for about $3-4 dollars (or less) from ingredients we have at home.
- Convenience. Pizza on Friday nights can be pulled together quickly, particularly since I’m baking our own bread and always have dough in the refrigerator. And I’d rather not drive anywhere on Friday night if I don’t have to. The pizza takes about 10 minutes to prepare, and cooks in a blazing hot oven (or even on the grill, on a stone) in about 6-8 minutes.
- Health. Pizza, if you do it right, can be a healthy alternative. Although the gruyere and béchamel are somewhat of an indulgence, in moderation there is very little harm done. (As an aside, I weighed myself this morning, and lo’ and behold: hadn’t gained an ounce.)
- Popularity. I admit it: I like being popular in my own household. And everyone in our house loves my pizza. It’s a great ego boost.
- Indulgence. I love pizza, but eating pizza out can be dangerous for me. So, rather than just denying life’s pleasures as we have been trained to do, I plan on this indulgence. I know that Friday night will likely be something like homemade pizza, so I build my other meals around that knowledge. It’s essentially a mental dinner reservation.
- Value. When I’m eating at home, I am in charge of what I eat, and how much. When I go out for a meal, though I think that despite my best efforts otherwise, I still struggle internally with the “getting my money’s worth” concept from time to time. At home, it’s not an issue.
- Uses up leftover odds and ends. Pizza is a really good way to throw together all of those smaller bits of good things that are left in the refrigerator, destined for an otherwise untimely demise. Little bits of meat left over, or nubs of cheese, or that second half of the red bell pepper that didn’t get used. All would otherwise not be enough to make a whole meal, but are perfect on a pizza.
- Variety. This pizza is so easy to make, we often have several different kinds on pizza nights. It’s a much better alternative than the same old pizza each week.
- Seasonal. We typically top at least one of the pizzas with food straight from the garden, the CSA, or from the farmer’s market. There are a surprising number of vegetables that really work well on pizza.
And did I mention, it’s popular with my kids?
Question to you: Do you have a Friday night tradition?
What do you do at the end of the work week? What is your family’s tradition?
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We don’t have a *Friday* night tradition, but a beautiful new tradition that got going in the last year or so around our house is my husband cooking on Sundays. One of his popular meals include Beer Butt Chicken… oops, I mean Beer Can Chicken (on the grill, obviously, and from our farm where chickens are raised on pasture and not fed any junk), along with mashed potatoes and a couple different veggies (organic, from the farm market with lots of organic butter). Last Sunday I also made a lemon blueberry pie - homemade crust, blueberries from the farm market, sugar from…ok, fine, the sugar was just from the grocery store, but it was organic.
Ah yes, Sundays are a great day…
You know, visiting this blog is starting to make me seriously hungry.
No Friday night tradition as of yet but we’re looking at instituting one.
@Kelly: Hi Kelly! That sounds like a great meal. I saw beer can chicken on one of the Food Network reality shows and it looked great! One of the things we used to do when we lived closer to our old friends was have a sunday evening dinner together. It was usually an earlier dinner with work the next day, but it was a great, great thing to do. We’ve actually been talking about starting that again here, even if it’s just us for now.
@Andrew: Hey there Andrew — Yep, I am risking that my fellow health and fitness writers won’t banish me, but I think showing real food meals has some value….Moderation being the key!
Making pizza at home is a perfect way to induldge. I like to try fun toppings such as carmelized onions, goat cheese and even greens like swiss chard. It’s hard to make a pizza that isn’t tasty.
My Friday night tradition isn’t as home-made as yours, but it usually involves a DVD from netflix and a bottle of wine. After a long week, it’s the perfect combo!
@FBG: Well truth be told, that is part of ours as well if we can get the kids to bed early. Well, the wine part is regardless of the sleep patterns of the kids.
We have our traditional Friday-Night-Pizza-and-a-Movie-Night. The kids take turns inviting a few friends over for carb-loading and a dvd. Nothing as awesome-sounding as your creations (we usually have the garlic chicken d’lite pizza from Papa Murphy’s) but still a good time and wildly popular. It occurs to me that we’ve been doing this for about 12 years now– geez, that’s a lot of pizza (and explains a thing or two).
hmmm.
caint get my comment to ‘take’
Yum this is my kind of pizza. It looks and sounds so yummy and healthy. For me, hunger begins with my eyes so the wonderful photos are making me so hungry.
Thanks so much for this great new addition to Almost Fit.
Robin
So, I finally got over here to check out your pizzas and I must say they look yummy! I wish I would have dropped by sooner.
I think I know what we will be eating this weekend. lol
LOVE THIS POST.
so creative and thought provoking.
Jewish woman up in herre so we light candles on friday nights…I can not wait until my daughter is older to instigate more traditions (she’s 2)