Pizza Day

Parker has a weekly pizza day at school and even the other kids who bring their lunch from home usually buy lunch on pizza day. I remember pizza day from my school days and it wasn't ordered from Papa Johns or some other chain like the schools do today. I don't know where it was made, but what I do remember is it had seeds. I remember coming home and telling my mom about them. She didn't believe me at first and we finally figured out they were fennel seeds (I am thankful my kids know what fennel seeds are and they aren't some exotic ingredient). Anyway, I like to mix it up and send different pizzas each week so he doesn't get bored. This week I sent pizza with our old standby Vicolo cornmeal pizza crusts. See here for an example, but we (meaning Rob) usually make our own crust these days so this was a treat. I made a batch of Herbed Breakfast Sausage Patties from Vegan Diner early in the week, but I made it as a loaf instead of patties to use in all sorts of different ways for Parker's lunches. I crumbed some onto his pizza and it reminded me of the fennel seeds I used to find in my school cafeteria pizza. He requested kalamata olives, carrots, and mushrooms as toppings too. The pizza sauce was slow cooked earlier in the week from fresh tomatoes. He can eat an entire pizza on his own so I packed everything except a couple slices he ate with his breakfast (I had everything ready the night before and cooked it while he was eating oatmeal and getting ready for school).

As a side while the pizza cooked, I made Curried Puff Pastry Nibbles from Quick-Fix Vegan* by Robin Robertson for a new twist on bread sticks. I made these for the first time on Sunday right before I left for my radio show and I was able to make two batches and the kids were able to devour them within minutes. Parker immediately knew these would make awesome lunch time eats. So I kept them in mind for pizza day. We don't usually have puff pastry on hand, but I bought some in preparation for Josie's party that turned into a little afternoon tea and I needed to use it up. The lunch was easy to eat, since school doesn't allow much time for eating this is key, Parker loved it and it with a little forethought it was easy to make that morning. Dema and Josie were happy to have pizza and Curried Puff Pastry Nibbles for breakfast (I was going to save the second crust and nibbles for lunch, but when they smelled it cooking they couldn't wait) so it all worked well. I want to try these with pizza dough sometime for a healthier take.

*Quick-Fix Vegan is Robin Robertson's newest cookbook. She generously sent a copy a couple weeks ago for my testing efforts. I was so happy to receive it, but didn't crack it open immediately since the tester recipes have become staples in our house I feel like I already know this cookbook. Check out my tester posts by searching for "Tester Tuesday". You will be seeing much more from Quick-Fix Vegan in the near future. It came to the rescue last night when we had guest showing up in one hour and I still had no clue what I was going to prepare. I've talked about how I'm not a huge planner so this cookbook has a special place in our house already. Quick-Fix Vegan is available for pre-order now and the release date happens to be Rob and my anniversary.