Zucchini Pizza

Back in March I was catching up on one of my new favorite blogs, Eat, Live, Run, and some how came across an old post, "Cheesy Zucchini Pizza That Will Rock Your Face".  With a name like that, how can you resist trying it?  Plus I am a huge fan of zucchini and baking things so I new I needed to try this sometime soon.
I tried her homemade Pizza Dough which was super easy and tasty.  Plus, a wheat crust with zucchini just seems right.  The recipe is enough for two crusts which is very good cause I did manage to screw up at the last minute.  Not thinking, I put the dough between two sheets of wax paper to roll it out, and there it stuck.  Luckily the other half of the dough I had thrown into the freezer had not froze yet and I pulled it out to save the day.  Since you can just buy dough or a crust already done up, you can easily avoid my mess up.
The pizza I made was probably a large, definitely enough for four people.  That said, I had way too much zucchini/cheese mixture to put on the pizza, so it is hiding out in my fridge to become something tonight. (Maybe some sort of quesadilla?) I don't know if my zucchini's were too large or if it is just too much.  I would say you might only need one zucchini and one to one and a half cups of mozzarella cheese. I also added peppers to her recipe and was going to add some of my brother's dried chili mixture, but since my spice sensitive friend was joining me for dinner I decided I had better not. All in all it was really tasty and you think your eating healthy with all the veggies and whole wheat and cheese. Plus, it reheats excellently for next day lunch!


Ingreidents

• Pizza dough! (see link above or buy some)
• 2 large zucchinis, seeds removed 
• 1/2 red pepper, diced
• 1/2 green pepper, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup ricotta cheese
• 2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese
• sea salt
• pepper
• red pepper flakes

1. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees when you begin preparing the zucchini & peppers.  Spray a cookies sheet or pizza baking stone with nonstick spray. Set aside.
2. Grate the zucchinis and press with paper towels to soak up the liquid. Mix the zucchini and the peppers with the mozzarella cheese and a dash of salt and pepper. Stir well to combine.
3. In a small bowl, combine the ricotta cheese and garlic. Season with sea salt and pepper to taste.
4. Work the pizza dough into whatever shape your heart desires. Spread the ricotta cheese on top and then top with the zucchini mixture. Add some pepper flakes. 
5. Reduce oven temperature to 450 and bake pizza for about 12 minutes, or until the crust begins to turn golden and the cheese has started to bubble.

Enjoy! 

Best Ever Pancakes

That is the actual name of this recipe written on my little yellow recipe card.  This recipe is, perhaps, perfection.  I refuse to eat Bisquick pancakes because of these pancakes. If you ever go out to brunch/breakfast with me at a restaurant, you will notice that I will never order normal pancakes. It's because of this recipe.  I have been at friends houses in other states and called my mom for it.  My mom's cookbook (I think it was a Pillsbury one, it was old when I was little) is missing pages in this area and the page with the base recipe is torn out and barely legible.

I have been helping make these pancakes for as long as I can remember.  I remember being so excited that there was a secret ingredient that my mom and grandma added, I thought no one else knew. On time when I was maybe 5ish, I accidentally added twice as much milk as necessary which resulted in the need to double the recipe, which, to me, was the most brilliant idea ever.  From that point on I "accidentally" added too much milk so that we would have to double the rest of the recipe.

Below is the recipe as I made it today( the full recipe).  Lately I have been adding wheat flour for half of the normal flour and I typically half it now, unless I am making it for several people.  This round I also added some raspberries since I was in the grocery store this morning.

The Best Ever Pancakes

• 1 cup of Flour
• 1 cup of Wheat Flour
• 5 tsp Baking Powder
• 1 tsp Salt
• 3tbsp Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1/3 cupButter
• 2 cups Milk
• 1 tsp Vanilla
• about a cup or so of Raspberries

1. Mix the liquids and dry ingredients in separate bowls.
2. Slowly add the dry mixture into the liquid mixture and stir until combined then and raspberries. 
3. Pour 1/4 cup in to a skillet or griddle on medium to low heat.  Flip over when bubbles are forming all over the pancake.  Let rise and turn golden brown and remove from heat.  Repeat and repeat and repeat. 

                                      
Enjoy!