recipes: moral-laden pizza

Trying to cook for yourself comes with many lessons. Sometimes it's the cooking part, and sometimes it's what comes long before the cooking part, and even before the grocery shopping part. Since my boyfriend is visiting for the next couple of weeks, he decided to make dinner for me and my parents one night, with help from the sous chef: yours truly. We decided to just go to the store sans list because the ingredients for making pizza should be pretty simple, right? Not. The base for the sauce we bought was terrible, all of the eggs in the refrigerator were cracked, and oregano was nowhere to be found in the pantry. This supposedly "simple" dinner required six trips to three different grocery stores and much sighing and odd looks from cashiers that had seen me maybe four times in the span of two hours. While my parents and my boyfriend had regular versions of the pizza, I had great gluten-free pizza that was some of the best I have ever had post-Celiac diagnosis. While everyone loved the pizza my boyfriend made, I couldn't help but think that there was a lesson or two to be gained from aforementioned grocery store fiasco: 1) Make a list. 2) Make sure you actually have the ingredients you need, and that they have not gone bad. These may seem like obvious things, but I thought I would pass the message along. However, it was all worth it, because it resulted in a really, really good pizza for me.

Moral-Laden Pizza 
makes 2 servings


Ingredients: 
One package of Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Pizza Crust Mix (just follow the directions on the bag to make the dough)
4 slices fresh mozzarella
Small spoonful of pizza sauce (use whatever kind you like - I'm normally lazy and just go for some marinara)
Small handful basil
1/4 cup of pitted Greek olives
1/4 cup shredded Italian cheese mix

Directions: 
1. Prepare dough according to instructions on bag, and preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. After making the dough, spread out over a floured surface. I made a 10-inch crust, about 1/2 inch thick from this dough, but you can definitely make more if you spread the dough out more to make it thicker.
3. Bake just the dough for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden.
4. Take out the crust, and layer with sauce, shredded cheese, mozzarella slices, tomatoes, basil, and then olives. Bake for an additional 8 to 10 minutes, or until cheese is melted.