Summer Pizza Adventure

The return of warm days are always a subtle reminder that I've spent another winter season doing something that approximates hibernation, but with a lot more eating. And I guess a lot of reading. Sometimes knitting. So maybe it's not like hibernation at all except for the fact that my house starts to feel like a safety cave and I sometimes fail to visit friends and places I love as frequently as I'd like. So this May, I took a much-needed trip to Philadelphia to the home of my friend, Andy, with the company of Caroline, where we all ate a completely silly amount of wonderfully prepared and beautifully colored food--on a backyard patio too (the novelty!).

Perhaps the most satisfying of the foodmaking was the two pizzas,* which, while they looked totally normal, were filled with a variety of experimental surprises; I think the general idea was how can we put this food on a pizza rather than should we.

One of the pizzas is pretty traditional, except for the fact that it was SO DELICIOUS. Let me share the simple magic: chunks of fresh tomatoes + slices of leeks (I think the goal was to use all the leek we had leftover, so it was a lot of leeks: do not be shy about the leeks) + mozzarella cheese. The other pizza was, I think, sauteed potatoes, squash and garlic with CUMIN (can't live without cumin, though, no, I did not travel with my own spice jar) + feta + mozzarella.


So, ok, maybe you had to be there. And maybe this post is more about friends and the outdoors than it is about recipes. But I promise that there was something revelatory about this pizza party and at least part of it had to do with eating pizza.

*This is not to disparage Caroline's delicious breakfast pie, which contained eggs, cream, leeks, and...hash browns!