Pizza and Salad, Please

Tonight we had pizza and salad for dinner. I decided to make my rendition of a pizza that I saw in the New York Times magazine. Of course, that was made with homemade dough but I'm way too lazy for that. I used Trader Joe's whole wheat crust which is plenty homemade enough for me. After all, I didn't dial up for Cottage Inn delivery. This pizza was pretty good actually. It's fairly simple and is topped with arugula. I also took shortcuts with the salad I made. My daughter-in-law taught me how to roast beets, but I bought these already roasted at Arbor farms Market. So lazy!

Red, Green and White Pizza

1 pkg Trader Joe's whole wheat pizza dough
4 oz fresh mozzarella, broken into small pieces
1/4 grated Parmesan
2 small tomatoes sliced thinly
salt and pepper
2 handfuls of arugula
Juice 1/2 lemon
some olive oil

Preheat oven to 500 degrees and wait about half an hour so the oven is really, really hot. Hopefully you have a pizza stone in there getting hot.

Flour the counter top and stretch your pizza dough out to whatever shape suits our fancy--circle, oval, rectangle--keep your hands floured up so the dough doesn't stick to you. I put my pizza on a pizza peel but you could use parchment or foil--you need to have a way to convey the pizza to the hot pizza stone waiting in the oven.

Once the pizza is stretched, you can crimp around the edges a bit and then drizzle lightly with some olive oil, sprinkle with mozzarella, tomato slices, some salt and pepper and then the Parmesan. Slip onto pizza stone and bake between 5-8 minutes. It will bake fast.

In the meantime, toss the arugula with the lemon juice and some olive oil, salt and pepper. When the pizza is done, slide out onto a cutting board and top with arugula mixture and cut and serve!

Beet, Feta, and Toasted Walnut Salad

Three small beets, cut in large chunks
Some greens--I used romaine and  spinach
1/2 cup toasted walnuts
1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese
Newman's Balsamic Vinaigrette

Combine and toss with dressing.