Pesto Pizza and Oven Fried Green Tomatoes (but not together)

Today's big adventure was some homemade pizza made with some pizza dough from Trader Joe's. (I've never bought a plastic bag of dough that I can stretch out and toss up in the air. How fun!) I know it's practically un-american for me to be a little ambivalent about pizza. I'm just not a rabid fan. As a teenager, my parents always encouraged me to have pizza parties (feed friends cheap), but I was not and still am not that excited about pizza.

But PESTO pizza is a whole other story! The short version: I made a pizza for everyone in the family. Green chiles, bell pepper, onion, mushrooms, and less cheese on one. No mushrooms and more cheese on another. And green chiles, onion, bell pepper, and tomato on my homemade pesto version. *drool* I can't WAIT to make pizza again!

I know all the components of Pesto, but didn't measure anything out, so here's my guess-timated recipe:

I Love PESTO

2 cloves garlic
1 packed c. basil (washed)
1/4 c. pine nuts
1 Tb. olive oil
1/4 c. parmesan cheese (I didn't have the fancy grated kind, so I used the kind that comes in a green plastic can from Target. It worked just fine)

I just put everything into my mini-food processor that I've had since undergrad and whizzed away. I processed everything in the order listed. Once I put some olive oil in, everything incorporated really well.

Now that school has started again, we're trying to prep a lot of our meals so everything is a healthy, hearty no-brainer when we get up... when we get home... when we get munchie. (While my goal is for these to be healthy, it is absolutely essential they be no-brainers, since I'm a complete zombie when I wake up and also when I get tired!) This weekend we're excited to pretend summer isn't over yet, so we made the pizzas, tonight I'm making soy yogurt for next week's breakfast smoothies. And we're going to try making veggie broth from scratch. Zips just discovered the blog Vegan Yum Yum who has a link to this Fat Free Vegan blog ("sinlessly delicious" I love it), both of which I have bookmarked. So we're going to try Yum Yum's vegetable broth. I'll post more when we have more to show for it.

AND I'm so excited to try baked green tomatoes! I'm thrilled. And perhaps tomorrow, after we go to the local grower's market, we'll have some green tomatoes to bread and bake. Zips is over my shoulder finding recipes for vegan quiche, tempeh potato breakfast patties, vegan paella, seitan stir fry, chickpea spinach soup... we already have designs to make a blackened cajun chik'n dinner tomorrow. SO I have a feeling I'll be posting again real soon.