Cooking with Dr. Monkey

On Monday nights when her back is not hurting my gf, who by the way will now be referred to as Sparky, goes to yoga class. So when she goes I usually make something simple that can be reheated easily because sometimes she does not get home until after eight. So last night I made super simple easy to make vegetarian pizza.


When I was a kid and living with my crazy rageaholic control freak aunt she would make pizza for all of us but it she would only make it the way she wanted to and if anyone, especially me or my siblings, asked for something different toppings wise then we'd be laughed at, derided, or sometimes whipped with a belt for daring to have a food opinion or desire different than she did. So this type of pizza that I made last night would never been something we were allowed to have as children.

I started off with store bought crust. It's low fat and cholesterol free and it cooks up in about 10 to 12 minutes, longer if you like really crispy crust.

Next I tossed about 2 cups of baby spinach into my food processor with about a third a cup of extra virgin olive oil. I pulsed it until all the spinach was chopped up and mixed with the oil. Then I spread it on the crust and I topped it with some red hot red pepper, oregano, and Tuscan herbs mix.
Then I diced up some yellow and purple bell pepper, banana pepper, Anaheim chili, and about three small mushrooms.

Then I spread about a cup of low fat pizza cheese, which was a mixture of mozzarella, Romano, and Parmesan cheeses, on the pizza.
Then I thinly sliced some fresh farmers market tomatoes and I put them over the cheese. Then I added the peppers and mushrooms and I baked the pizza at 425 degrees for about 12 minutes.

This is what it looked like when I took it out of the oven. Mmmmm, tasty looking huh.

We both enjoy the red wine so I opened a bottle of Biltmore Estate Pinot Noir. It's a local, made within 100 miles, to me wine and it totally rocked.

It was 7:45 PM by the time I had everything ready so I went ahead and ate. Sparky got home about 20 minutes later and she ate almost as soon as she got home. I ended up eating half that pizza because it was soooooooo damn good.