What does it for you? Chocolate, pretzels, garlic bread, the crunch of pop-corn, or is it the smell of bacon frying up in the morning?  Temptations come in many forms, especially food temptations.  Krispy Kreme cake donuts on a Sunday morning or the best is a Friday night tradition.  How many of you consider certain days of the week a designated meal category?  You know what I mean. Sunday was always fried chicken with Grandma and Grandpa, Monday usually consisted of meatloaf while Wednesday was a day to clean out the refrigerator and be creative.  But come Friday it was a standard for Pizza!

Think about how certain foods become milestones in our own history.  During my youth (so many years ago) our junior class was in charge of the basketball concession booth.  This gave us a way to raise funds for the Jr. & Sr. Prom in the spring.  Mind you we had been raising monies for this event from the first week of our freshman year.  The bake sale mentality was very prevalent.  We sold anything and everything that was legal. The strangest sale was that of selling a bulletin board type thingy in the shape of cartoon animals, frogs and fish I believe. They were ugly and to top it off were painted in black-light paint so they would glow in the dark if you were one of the lucky “cool” guys to own a black light for your basement or bedroom.  I was not such a person. 

These adventures of becoming salesmen would give us skills we could use later in life once we left the hallowed halls of LHS. Negotiations, barter, research, demographics of territory and not to mention how to out race someone chasing you in your mother’s borrowed car as you are suppose to be picking up the pizza for the canteen. That’s right Mom, your son was involved in a car chase in the middle of the winter with a car full of 17 year olds buzzed on adrenaline and Pepsi. Being chased by god knows who because someone (I’ll omit the guilty – she knows who she is) decided to yell out the window and make some sort of enticement – only to be heading the wrong direction in an alley finding a set of headlights coming right toward us.  What does one do in this situation? I tell you what; you make a big U-turn as quickly as possible, cut across somebody’s yard and head back to the street.  The pizza wasn’t getting any warmer and we needed to get back to the high school! My minimum wage of $3.25 an hour job at Hume & Rayburn didn’t pay me enough money to pay for twelve large pep & cheese pizzas. Between the panic of being chased, having a car full of screaming classmates and the thought of what “Mother” would do to me when she found out (is 35 years a safe buffer of time?) I didn’t know what to do but to get my fat butt back safe and sell some pizza.

By the time the basket ball game was over all the pizza was sold as well as the buzz had worn off of being chased. Stories were fabricated to cover ourselves and I’m sure we all ended up in someone’s basement under black light posters.  There we would again learn the art of negotiations, barter, research and learning the demographics of the territory.  Not to mention learning the art of the chase.  Temptations like I said comes in many shapes and forms.

Let’s get back to Friday night pizza.  Who hasn’t been on a diet only to get that urge for Pizza? I was having one of those urges the other night and had the phone in my hand to call Cappy’s for one of their large pepperoni pies with extra cheese and sausage when I remembered what the scales read earlier in the morning. Tonight was not the night to stray from the diet, but I still had to get that pizza. For goodness sake it was Friday night and I needed, no I desired, graved and insisted on pizza.  I thought about taking a slice of toasted bread with spaghetti sauce spooned over it.  No too much like a stoner’s cop-out.  I needed a true pizza that was oven baked and topped with meat, cheese, tomatoes and a crispy crunch that would satisfy my taste buds.  That and it needed to be diet friendly which meant I had to be creative in what I used. 

Here is what I came up with. The recipe makes six servings cut in pie shape which will feed three people.  Yea I know we all could eat the six pieces in one sitting but don’t.  Bag and store it for another evening when temptation is banging on the door

FRIDAY NITE PIZZA - .

6 SERVINGS   

Preheat oven to 425 degrees

Crust - One loaf of frozen bread dough – cut in half – thaw only one half

            Let raise till doubled. Punch down and rise second time.

Sauce – Basil Pesto – 2 TBL

              Roasted chopped garlic ½  TBL

Toppings – Sliced tomatoes – one sliced ¼ inch thickness

                   Fat-Free Shredded Mozzarella Cheese ½ cup

                   Button Mushrooms – canned or fresh (if using fresh pre-cook to eliminate excess water) 5 oz.

                  Turkey Sausage – I’ve used the hot or the sweet sausage – two links, casings removed.

Assembly

1.      Place ½ of the frozen bread dough loaf in a 10” cast iron skillet sprayed with a non-stick type cooking spray. Cover with plastic wrap and let thaw till doubled in size.  Punch down, knead onto itself, recover and let rise for a second time.

2.      Roll out dough to ¼” thickness lightly covering with either corn meal or all purpose flour. Return to cast iron skillet re-sprayed with non-stick spray.

3.      Using basil pesto spread a thin layer as your base for the pizza.  This will give you a hearty flavor needed for the Italian craving. Sprinkle garlic on top of pesto.

4.      Slice tomatoes go on next placing next to each other with a half inch from each other.

5.      Scatter Mozzarella cheese across pizza

6.      With the sausage casings removed “thumb” place sausage evenly around pizza

7.      Scatter mushroom slices across pizza

Oven is pre-heated to 425

1.      Place on middle rack for 5 minutes at the 425 degrees

2.      Lower oven temp to 350 and bake for 15 to 18 mins till bubbly and golden brown.

3.      Remove from oven and slip pizza from skillet to cutting board letting it rest about 3 minutes before cutting. 

Approx. nutritional guidelines*

Servings per recipe – 3

Calories per serving – 407

Protein grams per serving - 26

Carbohydrate grams per serving - 44

Fat grams per serving - 13