Well I haven’t posted any dinner ideas in a while and I’m all about fixing something quick, using the crock pot or doing some of the prep work the weekend before.  Life for most of us is busy and the quicker we can get dinner on the table the quicker we can get in front of our computers and blog (YEAH!).  Because we know that blogging is what is important, or at least it’s important to me and helps keep me sane.

Back to dinner.  The idea of the week, this week, is pizza.  This is always a kid friendly (and adult friendly) meal.  I had bought a loaf of French bread and proceeded to forget about it until it sat on the counter for 3 or 4 days.  French bread has a tough crust to start with and you can imagine what consistency it was after it was 4 days old.  I don’t really like having to throw food away and was trying to figure out a way to salvage the loaf.  One option would have been bread pudding, but if I had made that then I probably would have consumed the whole pan as I just love warm bread pudding with half & half poured over it.  So instead I decided to cut the loaf in half (lengthwise) and make pizza out of it as this would be something the whole family would eat as opposed to me eating it all by my little self.  I always have homemade spaghetti sauce on hand, or can make some if I don’t so I lathered up the bread with some of that, some left over breakfast sausage (crumbled), the rest of a jar of roasted red peppers, sliced black olives and of course plenty of cheese. 

I’m pretty sure that most of us have pizza makings on hand or at least the basics:  some kind of bread, pizza (or spaghetti) sauce and cheese.  Any kind of bread can be used such as French bread, bagels, English muffins; hot dog buns (toast them first) just look around and see what kind of bread you have and toast it first if it is soft bread (toasting soft bread helps it stand up to the sauce better). Next, put the red stuff on and then go through your fridge and cupboard to see what toppings you have and like – I always have a jar of roasted red peppers, some kind of canned mushrooms and either black or green olives on hand.  Now go see if you have any leftover meat, any kind will do, chop it up and sprinkle on top.  Breakfast sausage will cook up pretty fast and you can nuke bacon in the microwave in about 6 minutes to crumble up if you don’t have any leftover (cooked) meat, or drag out the leftover chicken from last night spread BBQ sauce instead of pizza sauce, sandwich meat will work too in a pinch.  Finish it off with cheese, lots and lots of cheese and cook in a 350 oven until the cheese melts and becomes bubbly (about 20 minutes for the French loaf).  I cooked mine on a cookie sheet that was covered with aluminum foil first so that the clean up was minimal.  Served with a salad, which was prepared and the table set while the cheese was melting on the pizza and the whole thing took about 35 minutes from start to setting it on the table.  Using paper plates the only dish washing was rinse the cookie sheet, utensil’s and of course baby bottles – Walla dinner is served.

Another good thing about this meal is that if you have kids and use something small like bagels, English muffins or hot dog buns the pizza’s can be individualized for each kid.  Getting the kids in the kitchen to help “decorate” their pizza and letting them decide exactly what they want will almost always ensure that the finished product will be eaten by said kid.  So go make some pizza!