Garden Pizza!

Two nights ago we made our own pizza.

We picked up some whole wheat pizza dough from Wegmans.  First we roasted some sliced banana peppers and bell peppers from our garden (and artichokes from the Wegmans olive bar) on a pan in the oven for probably 10-15 minutes.  In my experience, this helps prevent a soggy pizza later on.

Whole Wheat Pizza Dough; picture from Wegmans.com

We used some pesto that we made with farmer's market basil a couple weeks ago and had frozen (our basil we planted never really took off) on the dough.  We added a little shredded "pizza cheese" (a mozzarella/provolone blend - not from our garden).

Wegmans Pizza Cheese; picture from Wegmans.com

 
Then we put the roasted peppers and artichokes on the pizza and stuck it in the oven.  Toward the end we added sliced tomatoes (from our garden) and popped it back in the oven for a little bit. Adding the tomatoes toward the end also helps prevent a soggy pizza, and I think it prevents the tomatoes from getting mushy too.  It tasted great! and it gave us each lunch for the following two days.

Ta Da!  Hubby slicing up the Pizza.

Garden Update & A nice COOL run!

Here's what we picked from our garden on Saturday, 7/17:

We used most of the tomatoes and two bell peppers by just cutting them up and cooking them in some olive oil and serving over pasta.

And here's what we picked from our garden Thursday 7/22:

We're still working on using this stuff up... Saturday morning we had tomato and pepper omelets for breakfast.

Some banana peppers cut up

Last night we cut up some of the above cucumbers and some of the tomatoes and tossed with a little dressing and had a cucumber and tomato salad before dinner. I must say, the big tomatoes are SO flavorful compared to what you find on your sandwich or in your salad at most restaurants.

Look how red those tomatoes are inside!

I'd also just like to say...yesterday we had a serious thunderstorm roll in with heavy rain and high winds. It cooled things off quite nicely (for the rest of the day anyway). Last night I ran an easy 4 miles at 9:30 pm and it was only 72 out and breezy. It was glorious!! I headed out with my watch, cell phone, and my fun little clip on blinking light for visibility:


I just ran at what felt like a comfortable, easy pace, without checking my watch continuously (only when it beeped at me every mile to check my pace). My pace per mile was about 15 seconds faster than my last "easy" 4 mile run on Friday morning, and my average heart rate over the course of the run was 16 bpm slower. Woo hoo!

I am not ready for summer to be over, but when you run outside, cool days/evenings are greatly appreciated! It gave me a little confidence boost. As it's been so hot, I've been worrying about being able to run the pace I want to for the half marathon in 2 months. Hopefully it won't be above 80 on that day and I can know that when it's cooler I will be able to run at a faster speed, more easily than I can in the weather we've been having for the past month. I checked my notes on my Garmin Connect program and saw that the last time I ran outside when it was at least 72 or cooler was June 30th (last night's pace was faster and my HR was slower than my June 30th run too, hopefully that's an indication of progress). It's been nearly a month since I've been able to run in weather that cool. Anyway, back into the 90s this week, but at least our overnight lows are going to be around 70 again, maybe I will plan for more evening or early morning runs when I can.

Garden Update

A belated picture of what we picked from our garden this past Monday night (7/12):

We went to the garden this morning to water and weed and came back with all these goodies:

Looks like maybe we'll be making some salsa.

I meant to bring my camera to the garden with me but forgot. The tomato plants got huge since we had two days with rain recently (It's been about a month without rain before that! We've had to rely on us watering the garden about every other day). I think we need to get more twine or garden tape to hold them to their stakes.

Anyone else garden? What do you grow?