Pizza Pizza Night!

We are really bad at Fridays.  Unless we already have plans, we never really come up with anything to do.  I’m usually fine with this – especially in the winter when it’s cold and dark outside anyway.  It started snowing on Friday afternoon and we discussed going somewhere for dinner (the nice thing about living where we do is that the roads are never bad enough for us to get to one of about 100 restaurants within 5 miles).

Instead, upon the suggestion of Lo’s sister the night before, we downloaded the Words with Friends app and ended up playing against each other for a couple of hours.  When we finally decided we should eat, pizza was an easy solution.

We had some pizza frozen that we had brought home from Mellow Mushroom a couple of weeks ago.  They gave us a free gluten-free pizza because they accidentally made our non-GF friends a gluten-free pizza (instead of just mine).  So they made them a new pizza (for free), gave us the extra GF pizza, and also gave each couple at the table a $10 gift card for the mistakes.  That was some seriously good customer service because none of us were even mad about the mistakes and they had already made up for them with the free food.

Earlier in the evening I decided that I’d make Pizza Hummus to snack on, based on a recipes that I had seen somewhere.  I don’t know if I followed that one or not – I was just winging it.

Pizza Hummus

1 can of garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained and rinsed
1/2 jar of pizza sauce (Trader Joes), or about a cup of tomato sauce
1/4 cup of nutritional yeast (for a cheesy flavor)
1 T. olive oil
1 t. fresh basil (I use the frozen cubes from Trader Joes) or about 1/2 t. of dry
red pepper flakes, to taste
garlic, to taste (fresh or dried)
pizza seasoning, optional, to taste
salt and pepper, to taste

Blend it all up in your blender or food processor until smooth!  I used our single serving smoothie blender.  Go crazy when making this dip – you can add other spices, cooked sausage, pepperoni pieces, cheese, veggies, or whatever.  I’d probably blend up a red pepper in it next time to sneak in some vegetables and for some extra flavor.  I’d imagine that if you don’t have nutritional yeast, you can just stir in some cheesy.  It would probably also be great heated up a bit and served warm.  As with all dips, the flavors will develop the longer you let it sit, but it was good right off the bat.

We used veggies chips as dippers – and may have also dipped our pizza crust in it.

We pretty much just watched tv for the rest of the night and had some tasty beverages.  We went to bed pretty late – around 2 a.m. – and the sky outside our window looked SO bright!  I know we live in the city, but it doesn’t usually look like this.  These pic are completely un-enhanced.