This would be our second time enjoying this year’s greens from our garden – spinach & Swiss chard. It’s also the second variation of this pizza… but small changes can make a big difference!

This pizza was fresh and delicious, a great option for the summer.  Even though the greens star in this pizza, the plum sauce is the supporting ingredient that gives it an unexpected flare that truly sets this pizza apart from others. Here is what you’ll need.

Dough :
1  ¹/3 cups warm water
2 ¼ teaspoons active dry yeast (1 packet)
3 ½+ cups all purpose flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon salt
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 scant tablespoon crushed red pepper
3 tablespoons ground flax seed

ingredients on top :
Swiss chard
spinach
arugula
basil
baby bella mushrooms
plum sauce
garlic
olive oil
kosher salt
smoked gouda

Here are the guidelines…

Before you get to mixing your dough prepare your spices. In a small frying pan, dry toast 1 scant tablespoon cumin seeds with 1 tablespoon crushed red pepper. Cut down on the crushed red pepper if you don’t want the crust to be spicy – half that amount will give it just a hint of spice across the 2 pizzas. Shake your pan over the heat and toast slightly until your cumin browns slightly – don’t burn it!

Mix your dough by hand or with a stand mixer. Start with 1¹/3 cup warm water and add 2¼ teaspoons of dry active yeast (one packet). Let it rest for a moment. Add 1 tablespoon salt, 3 tablespoons ground flax seed, about a tablespoon of honey, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and your toasted spices. Mix in 3½ cups flour; you may need to add more if your dough is too wet, just add a small amount at a time and mix until the dough can form into a nice ball. Let it sit for about fifteen minutes while you prepare your toppings.

We cut down all the chard and spinach ready to be used in the garden and then I added a few handfuls of arugula to the mix as well to bulk it up. I don’t have an exact amount of the greens we used. My logic suggests that more greens are better. While you’re preparing these greens it will feel like there is too much but once you slightly saute them, they will be much more manageable. You’ll wish you had even more.

Start with the Swiss chard. Slice out the center stem and chop it into small pieces, place them in a small bowl and set aside. Gather up the leafy parts of the chard and roll lengthwise, chop into ribbons. Do the same with the spinach. Place each chopped green in its own bowl. Keep them separate so it is easy to cook them at the appropriate time. Toss a few handfuls of arugula in with the spinach – no need to chop.

Gather up your basil – we picked a lot from our little plant. I happen to love the flavor of basil so I wasn’t concerned with having too much. Chop up as much as you think is reasonable or available. We also chopped up a few baby peppers that had fallen from in the garden – the Hungarian hot yellow pepper, and yes, even though it was just a baby it was very spicy! Can’t wait to try the big ones, they’re really getting huge right now!

Chop mushrooms, we used an 8 oz. package of baby bella mushroom. This is a nice amount to stretch across two pizzas, it’s a lot… a lot delicious. Once they are sliced add a few spoonfuls of plum sauce to coat. I didn’t measure this out I just added a few spoonfuls and mixed it up so the mushrooms were lightly coated with the sauce but not drenched in it. This just adds a new element to the pizza, a little bit of sweetness. I got this idea from my friend Alegra; we made a similar pizza a few months back and coated shitaki mushrooms with plum sauce – I thought this idea was brilliant and was very pleased with the results, it’s not something that I had ever considered doing before.  I think in this case it works really nicely as well.

Instead of sauce we used an oil flavored with a bit of garlic and spice. Crush or chop two cloves of garlic. In a very small frying pan add half of the garlic to about 4 tablespoons olive oil and slowly cook over warm/low heat. This will mellow the garlic and flavor the oil – I also add a dash of our pepper powder for an extra little kick. We use a pan designed to fry one egg, it’s actually something we use quite often. It’s very useful for frying spices or small amounts of oil, I use it just about every time I cook with garlic because I can’t eat fresh garlic without feeling a little ill (although I do love the flavor).  While your garlic oil is cooking keep an eye on it to avoid the bits from burning. Remove from heat for a moment if it starts getting too hot or bubbly. This can stay on the stove top until you’re ready to use it.

In a large pan add a splash of oil and toss in the remainder of the garlic. Saute for a moment over low heat and include the Swiss chard stems. They are very tough so you’ll want to saute them until they are tender. This will take a few minutes. Once the stems are tender, add the Swiss chard leaves and toss it around. Allow it to wilt sightly. Add the spinach and arugula and remove it from the burner. The heat of the chard will wilt the rest of the greens enough. We don’t want to completely wilt them, just enough to tame them – that way we’ll be able to fit more greens on the pizza, it will be easier to top!

Prepare 2 sheet pans by buttering or oiling the surface. Our sheet pans are about 12 x 15. Cut the dough in 2 pieces. We use a dough cutting tool, it’s awesome for cutting dough as well as scraping and scooping chopped ingredients off the cutting board, we just love it. Roll out the dough to be thin and about the size of your cookie sheets. My mom gave us a new silicone rolling pin last week for a house warming gift. It’s great; we’ve been wanting a rolling pin of this shape for quite sometime. The silicone feature is nice because the flour sticks to the pin and the dough rolls right off. Really great gift, we’ll be using it a lot this year – thanks mom!

Get ready to top! I like to top both pizzas at the same time so I can evenly distribute the ingredients. Making pizza is great in this way because you can always make it work with what you have – have more? add more! have less? add less! It’s easy to adapt and hard to mess up.

Start by brushing the garlic oil onto the rolled out dough. Brush all the way to the edges. Give it a nice coat but don’t create oil pools. Adding a lightly flavored oil will really enhance this super flavorful dough.

Next add the greens. Sometimes when they’re wilted they clump together. Spread them out as best you can.

Fill in the blanks with the plum sauced mushrooms.

Sprinkle with basil and any other extra ingredients you might like to include, in our case we scattered the little Hungarian hot pepper bits.

Finish it off with shredded smoked gouda cheese.

Bake at 450° for about 15 minutes. Check it towards the end of it’s baking time and remove the pizza once it’s slightly browned and crispy.

This pizza is extra delicious. With out using a red sauce and by including lots of greens, the pizza feels very fresh and light. Great for dinner, lunch, or a snack!

Surprise your guests with a hint of plum sauce and loads of nutrients.

With the arrival of spring comes the urge to get back into shape and lighten our diets. Regular exercise routines start now and for breakfast we’ll have granola.  It was our first attempt at making it and it turned out great.  It’s a loose recipe concept therefore it can be adjusted to fit what you like or to use ingredients on hand. When I was thinking about making granola for us, I wanted to use a variety of nuts and seeds that would otherwise be tough to include in our daily diets, putting a focus on making a highly nutritious granola.

Granola recipe :

(5 cups rolled grains)
18 oz old fashioned oats (5 cups)

(3-4 cups nuts and seeds)
1 cup walnuts chopped
1 cup pecans chopped
1 cup almonds chopped or slivered
¼ cup sesame seeds
¼ cup millet
¼ cup flax seeds ground

(1¼ cup syrup)
¾ cup maple syrup
½ cup honey

(3 cups dried fruit)
golden raisins
cherries
cranberries
blueberries
uncrystalized candied ginger

cardamom (optional)

The oats we used were labeled organic old fashioned oven toasted oats. I think just about any rolled oat or rolled grain would work. It was an 18 oz cylinder which equaled about 5 cups. I measured them out first to give me an idea of the proportions of the other ingredients. Oats will be the base of the granola although I wanted it to be less than half of the entire granola. Place the oats in a giant bowl.

Next up is the nuts and seeds. For nuts we used walnuts, pecans, and almonds. The walnuts we used were pre-chopped and I hand chopped the pecans. The almonds we used were raw and whole, I didn’t want any whole nuts in the mix so instead of chopping again I pulsed them in the magic bullet (or a food processor) to basically make a coarse almond meal. This worked great but I think slivered almond would be ideal. Include other nuts if you have them or love them – cashew, hazelnut, peanut, etc.  As you measure out the nuts place them in the bowl with the oats.

For seeds we used sesame, millet, and flax seeds. It was a heaping ¼ cup of each. We  had flax seeds so we ground them up before adding them to the mix. Other seeds that would be nice are sunflower and pumpkin. Add the seeds to the bowl.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Mix the oats, nuts, and seeds together and get ready to dress it up with syrup.  I used about 1¼ cup of syrup total – ¾ cup organic maple syrup and ½ cup honey. You can use other types of syrup if you prefer or include a little olive oil as well. Pour syrup mixture over the oats and stir.  Transfer the sticky granola to a large baking dish, we used a 9×12 lasagna dish. Sprinkle cardamom over the top, stir and repeat. Cardamom is optional, I just love the flavor. I probably used about 2 teaspoons or so. You may consider using other spices as well like cinnamon or nutmeg. It’s delicious and flavorful without additional spice though.

Place the baking dish in the over and stir every 5-10 minutes. I baked this granola for about 50 minutes, probably could have taken it out of the oven after 40 minutes. Cooking time will vary depending on your oven and your baking dish. But be prepared to tend to it in order to prevent it from burning. It will need to be stirred regularly throughout the baking. When the granola becomes golden it is ready to take out of the oven. Allow it to cool completely.

As the baked granola is cooling measure out the dried fruit. Get a good mixture going, about 3 cups worth. We started off with Trader Joe’s “golden berry blend” which was 8 oz, about 2 cups. It included: golden raisins, cherries, cranberries, & blueberries. Then we added a small handful of uncrystalized candied ginger chopped and topped it off with extra cranberries. Stir dried fruit into cooled granola mixture and transfer to an air-tight container for storage.

My favorite way to eat granola is on top of yogurt!

ps the next time I made this I added dried coconut!

Over winter Joe and I fell in love with kale.  Because it is more of a cooler climate crop it was easy to find and very inexpensive in the fall/winter months.  Kale has become a little harder for us to find as spring has been approaching, meaning it’s not always at our local produce markets.  So what we have been doing is grabbing several bunches of it every time it’s available and freezing whatever we can’t use fresh.  We cut and prepare the kale in pieces (remove the stem), blanch it for a minute or two, cool it down quickly with cold water and/or ice cubes and let it air dry. Shove it in a baggy to freeze.  It becomes surprisingly condensed as well when you squeeze air our of the bag. The first time we did this I was worried that it would all stick together and be difficult to use later, but that wasn’t a problem at all.  All of the pieces pulled apart without struggle.  Using it once frozen is practically like using it fresh, except all of the work of cutting it up has already been done!  Yesss! Do it!

One of our favorite things to do with it is to make kale smoothies.  I know it’s not unheard of, but people who have not tried it before might scoff at it thinking it would taste gross.  It’s actually extremely delicious and anything but gross.   To start, the color of it is an amazing and bright green, & who doesn’t like ingesting beautifully healthy food?

We make the basic kale smoothie with a few simple ingredients :: kale, banana, orange juice, & flax seed.

We use about 2 cups of kale, 1 cup of orange juice, a tablespoon of flax seeds, and 1 banana per smoothie.  Add a bit of honey for sweetness and a heaping teaspoon of nutritional yeast for an extra boost of nutrients.  Adding nutritional yeast to the smoothie does give it a bit of the flavor which I don’t mind, but it doesn’t necessarily make it taste better. (I think Joe would prefer to leave it out ;)

Instructions :: blend all of the ingredients together. Add more orange juice if you like it thinner. We use our Magic Bullet which was an awesome gift given to me by my buddy Dave a few years ago — thanks Dave!  Still using it regularly, it’s a great little tool for smoothies and sauces, but a regular old blender would do the trick just fine ;)  I don’t think the Magic Bullet airs infomercials anymore, but I’m sure many of you remember them — “it’s as easy as ooooone, twooooo, threeee” as if it has magically made your meal. Extend the twooo about another hundred oo’s.  Also, it suggests you can make a lovely diced pico de gallo; not true. This thing pulverizes everything and dices nothing, which is fine with me because I don’t know how to pulverize with a knife!  Plus I love to dice my own vegetables. It’s perfect and extremely convenient for smoothies, dips, and sauces.  It’s super easy to use and clean — I love it and use it often!

As usual we make a lot of variations of this smoothie, you can add just about any fruit to the mix. Frozen blueberries are one of our favorite fruits to include — it’s delicious but turns the beautiful green into a drab grayish purple….  mmmm purple!