Hello Summer Pizza

City living isn't always kind to gardeners, but we have the good fortune to have a slab of fenced-in concrete for container gardening, a garden plot in a nearby community garden, and a CSA share from a local farm. Summer produce in abundance. Currently, our CSA has been overflowing with lettuces and kale and our garden plot has been exponentially producing cucumbers, so we've been gorging ourselves on salads while we wait for everything else to ripen. (Picked one cherry tomato today!)

But frankly, we're getting tired of salad and our various attempts to creatively prepare cucumbers are losing their novelty, so we recently gave in and picked up some tomatoes and peppers from a farmer's market.

Tonight, in spite of the 95-degree heat, we thought it was time for our favorite summer veggie pizza, so we fired up the oven (yikes), sliced tomatoes and already-roasted red peppers and walked out back to snip some fresh basil. It was exactly as delicious as we remembered it, although I'm sure when we make it again entirely with vegetables we grew ourselves, all of that hard work and nurturing attention will make it taste even better.

TOPPINGS (layered in this order):

1. par-baked very best pizza crust ever
2. brush of extra virgin olive oil
3. minced garlic
4. shredded mozzarella cheese
5. sliced fresh tomatoes
6. sliced roasted red peppers
7. fresh basil leaves, snipped into small pieces
8. a sprinkle of salt

Bake at 450° F for about 7 minutes, then top with more fresh basil and a sprinkle of Parmesan.

Someday soon we need to experiment with grilled pizza and keep all of that heat outside!