Day 3 - Very Excited!!

The bus ride home from work can be great thinking/planning time.  That's just what happened tonight.  I had no clue at 4:00 p.m. what dinner would look like.  By the time 5:30 rolled around and I landed at my stop, I had a plan.  I knew I had some fresh spinach that had to be used.  I had some cheese ends that needed to be finished before they got 'furry'.  (Don't laugh ~ you know what I mean and I know it's not only at my house!)

Here's a picture of the ingredients I pulled from the pantry and fridge.  Any guesses yet?

I pulled out my baby Bosch machine and my Joy of Cooking cookbook (Christmas present at my request ~ thank you DH) and gathered my flour, olive oil, warm water, yeast, salt and sugar.  You figure it out yet?  It's Pizza Night!  The dough is currently rising on the pizza pans.

My son chopped the black olives we found in the pantry (I love it when the family cooks together) and rolled out the dough for me.  I grated the cheese and washed the spinach, peeled the garlic and made the garlic butter for the crust.  I didn't have any tomato sauce but that works well for my plan because I happen to love the Spanakopita pizza at our neighbourhood Pizzaz Pizza and they use garlic butter with spinach and it's divine!!  So my version also features melted butter with crushed garlic, brushed lightly on the crust. 

In reference to my mention yesterday of Weight Watchers, the garlic butter doesn't impact the points plus value of the pizza much because I used only a teaspoon over the whole crust.

So now the crusts are sitting there, while I blog here, soaking in that wonderful garlic butter infusion, waiting to rise so I can add the remainder of the toppings ~ fresh spinach, black olives, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, onion, more sliced garlic (DH has a cold and it will be my contribution to his cure), and lastly the fine assortment of cheeses in my fridge.

It smells heavenly in here and all I've done so far is melt the butter and add the garlic.  The oven is heating up with my pizza stone in place and we eagerly await the pizza masterpiece!  I'm so pumped.  My daughter just gave me a hi-5 and is SO very proud of me.  It's nice to have the family behind you to the point of helping you chop olives and giving you a hi-5 when it's deserved...and apparently it's deserved!

So dear readers, I hope this inspires you.  I'm inspired!   I was exhausted on the bus and wondering how I was going to accomplish the evening's task of dinner and then some office work. I'm now totally rejuvenated ...by the idea,  by my success of coming up with a dinner plan, but more by the creativity of producing a meal without a trip to the store, using what I had on hand and it NOT being Kraft dinner.  Yay!

Here's some progress pictures:

Waiting for the dough to rise and then we spread these yummy ingredients.

These are beginning to look fantastic!

Ready for the oven!

And Voila!  Here's the final product:

And yes, the house smells fantastic and the family is happy!

Results:  DD says 15/10 so I guess I did alright! 

Fridge:  Down 2 leftover blocks of cheese and one partial container of Romano cheese; partly used some parmesan cheese; used some sun-dried tomatoes from Costco ~ huge jar which thankfully lasts forever without going bad but we so far are only about 1/3 down in the jar; butter from the fridge for the melted garlic butter on the crust; spinach from the fridge used about 1/4
Pantry:  Used flour and yeast and some olive oil.
Weight Watchers:  Fairly low fat ~ used about 1 tsp butter per crust on the base, spinach is zero points, used skim milk cheddar and mozza (didn't count the points but it has to be around 3 points plus per serving); olives ~ I'll have to check. No meat so that's a bonus!  My best guess is that for 1/4 of the pizza made I would say between 9-11 points plus, which isn't too bad... especially considering it's pizza!!
And lastly....
Spent at the store:  Zilch for 2 days running!!

Ciao for now!
Mavis