Let's Eat!

5-A-Day Pizza

This pizza is so good. The ingredients are simple and healthful and the prep is practically non-existent. What a delicious way to get in your daily servings of fruit and veg!

I make it for my girlfriends for lunch and for the family for dinner pretty regularly. At dinner I make two of these pizzas so there is at least the possibility of leftovers for my lunch the next day. Somebody usually beats me to it, though. It breaks my heart when that happens. It's a hardship is what it is, having to eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch when you had your heart set on this veggie pizza.

5-A-Day Pizza

1 Boboli pizza crust
part-skim mozzarella, shredded - about 2 cups
a couple of plum tomatoes, seeded
a red or green bell pepper, use about half
a red onion, you'll use about 1/4 of it
4 or 5 mushrooms
a big handful of fresh baby spinach

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. I like to spray the edges of my pizza pan with some cooking spray so any cheese that falls off my pizza isn't permanently encrusted on my pan. It makes clean-up a little bit easier.
Lay the pizza crust on a pizza pan or baking sheet. Sprinkle about 1/3 cup of cheese on the crust. Arrange the spinach leaves on top of the cheese.

The cheese under the spinach makes the spinach stick to the crust. We are going to put a little bit of cheese between the layers of veggies too. So, add some sprinkles of cheese on top of the spinach.
Not too much; this pizza isn't all about the cheese. Not that cheese pizza isn't one of the best things ever. But this pizza is about the fresh vegetables. The cheese just holds it all together. If you skip this step then the pizza gets a little too juicy from the moisture in the vegetables. Juicy pizza gets soggy and falls apart when you try to eat it. Juicy pizza is not good eats.

Slice your peppers, mushrooms, seeded tomatoes, and onion thinly. You want the vegetables thinly sliced so they'll cook quickly and dry out a bit in the short baking time.

Now layer on all those beautiful vegetables. I used about 1/4 of the red onion and half of the green bell pepper. Put them on in any order you like. I like the tomatoes on top so they get a chance to dry out a little in the oven, but if I'm making it for dinner for my family I put them underneath. Some of my kids think they don't like tomatoes. So I hide them under the mushrooms and other stuff. They never know. Sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top of the whole thing.

You can't tell in the picture but this pizza is fully loaded. It stacks up pretty high before baking. Don't worry! During baking it all blends together, and flattens out, and gets down to the perfect height for eating.
Bake the pizza for 15-18 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and is a little bit browned and toasted.
Try to grab a slice of this pizza for yourself before your kids eat it all. It's so...well...it's just so yummy. You'll want to eat it every week. Have an apple or a pear with it and consider yourself a success.

Look at that. It's a lovely thing, isn't it? Come to me, my darling.