When the Moon Hits Your Eye, Like A Big Pizza Pie.....

Normally Sundays are my "cooking" day, where I prep or prepare all the dinners for the week so I don't have to cook during the weekdays. I started doing this about 5 or 6 years ago and its worked well so far for us and we're eating much more healthy. We used to get groceries each night and would always end up getting starchy carbs for dinner that were quick to make (i.e. chow mein, instant noodles, KD) and then while we were preparing dinner we'd inhale a bag of chips or snack on crackers. Uhhhh...not that healthy. And no wonder that our waistlines kept expanding. I'm inherently kinda lazy, so the thought of coming home and preparing dinner makes me tired.

I didn't used to like cooking much and prided myself on being an undomestic goddess. Slowly though, I ended up really loving it and look forward to the Sunday morning marathon cooking session. I pore over cookbooks looking for recipes and love testing them out on Hubs. One of the best sources of healthy, easy to make and tasty recipes is the cookbook "Eat, Shrink and Be Merry" by Janet and Greta Podleski. Seriously, this cookbook is a staple in my house and there is this killer pizza recipe in it that is awesome. I've adapted it a little, but its vegetarian and uses hummus as the protein source. Sounds odd, but it is deeelicious...and you don't miss the meat. Hubs even loves it and he is a meatatarian - that's how good this is. So without further delay, here's the recipe....

Born to be Wild Mushroom Pizza (adapted from ESBM)

1 19 0z can tomatoes with italian herbs
2 tsp olive oil
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced red onion
1 tsp garlic
5 cups sliced mushrooms (you can use cremini or portobellos, I just use regular button ones)
small can black olives
1 sliced green pepper
2 tsp minced fresh thyme and rosemary, or 1/2 tsp dried
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 cup hummus
1 12 inch prebaked thin crust pizza shell with sauce packet (or buy a can if it doesn't come with it)
3/4 cup mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Drain tomatoes in a sieve, pressing down to remove as much liquid as possible.

Heat olive oil in a skillet, add 1 cup of onions (set aside 1/2 cup of onions for topping) and garlic. Cook until onions have softened. Add 4 cups mushrooms (set aside 1 cup of mushrooms for topping), and cook until mushrooms are tender. Stir in thyme, rosemary, salt and pepper. cook 1 more minute and remove from heat.

To assemble pizza, spread hummus over pizza crust, leaving a 1/2 inch border. Open pizza sauce packet and spread on top of hummus. Top with the drained tomatoes. Spread cooked mushroom mixture on top. Layer with the reserved raw mushrooms, raw sliced red onion and sliced green pepper. Top with cheese and black olives. I put a little olive oil on the edge crust but you don't have to. :)

Bake for 20 - 25 minutes or until cheese is melted.

1 slice (8 slices in a pizza) - 192 calories, 7.3 g fat, 22 g carbs, 2.7 g fibre, 424 mg sodium.

Seriously....try this pizza! We're actually having it for dinner tonight. The original doesn't use the sauce packet or the extra mushrooms/onions/green pepper/black olives, but I did it one day as I had some extra veggies leftover and it just added an extra dimension. The original recipe is pretty darn awesome too.