There’s no way around it. I dream about pizza. If you ask me to clear my mind and say the first word I think of… usually that word is “pizza.”
No, I don’t know why. You can psycho-analyze it if you want to.
I’m not overly picky about what kind of pizza either, although I’ll bet you already know I prefer it to be homemade, with local, organic ingredients.
You can analyze that, too.
I’ve always liked pizza, but it’s only been in the last ten years or so that I’ve had the truly good stuff. Like Zachary’s Chicago-style, either stuffed or thin crust. Or Cheeseboard’s always special pie, one-kind-only-made-daily.
I don’t get these pizza’s anymore. They were the worst casualty of being laid off seven years ago. I just don’t get down to Berkeley very much. Neither restaurant is the kind you can really “go to” for lunch, either. Far too crowded. When I worked at the lab, we always had someone pick it up and bring it back.
But I’ve been craving Cheeseboard’s lovely corn-and-zucchini pizza, and I just happen to have the recipe for it:
One thinly sliced zucchini, a bit of sliced onion, 1/2 cup of corn, mozzarella and feta cheeses. A little olive oil with garlic, a sprinkle of cilantro, and a squirt of fresh lime juice finish it up.
Here’s my whole-wheat dough, ready for business.
The finished product. Go ahead, enlarge that baby. It’s worth it.
And if you find yourself in Berkeley at lunch time, you know where to go.
Marlene Dotterer 
Yum. Great looking recipe. I’ll pass this along to Loreena, though she can’t do dairy, she loves zucchini and corn.
We bake our own pizza at least once a week. I usually top it with turkey bacon and peperoni, fresh basil, textured soy protein (like chicken chunks), roasted red peppers, banana peppers, and fat free mozza. It is still a lot of calories, even though I’ve cut back considerably on the fat. Love it all the same.
Once in a while, I buy pizza from the parlors, just to remember what the real thing is like. It always taste great, but I usually feel gross a few hours later from all the oil and fat in the cheese and toppings. Oh, pizza…
Mmmm. Bacon and pepperoni. Yes, I do love pizza with meat on it. I refuse to worry about the fat. I think the whole low/non-fat thing is a big non-issue, a holdover from the days when they also thought Crisco and margarine were better than butter.
I do realize that LOADS of fat on a regular basis is not good for us. But if I eat cheese, or ice cream, or yogurt, etc., I’m eating the real thing in a moderate amount. And not every day. Maybe not even every week.
I get most of my fat from nuts, plus whatever’s in whole grains. A little olive oil or butter occasionally. Meat, sometimes. It easily adds up to 30 – 50 grams of fat a day.
FYI, I’m not trying to tell you how to eat or spread my low fat ways. *grin*
I generally skip dairy fats because my body has trouble breaking them down, which is really sad because I LOVE ice cream. Soy ice cream isn’t the same and neither is low fat/fat free cheese. But I have to have cheese on my pizza, so I suffer through fat free.
I generally try to go low fat on meats because I eat a fair amount, which generally leads me to mostly chicken, turkey, and fish. I do have a weekly burger though from a place in New Haven that cooks up small farm, grass fed beef. Yum.
Back to pizza. Are you posting any other recipes soon?
Cheers, Dave
Me, either! I think you eat pretty smart, already! My soapbox is just always close by.
Oh, and I forgot to say where the rest of my fat comes from: sweets. Cake, pie, chocolate in any form… and ice cream, oh yes.
It’s true I don’t eat nearly as much as I used to. But, lordy, I love that stuff.
Recipes for pizza? Well, if you’re going to twist my arm, I guess we’ll have to have pizza again in a few days. Stay tuned…