Vegetable Pizza

Nursing is a hard job, with small rewards, but one of those rewards comes around the holidays, when everyone and their visitors brings us goodies. Cakes, cookies, candies galore abound at the nurses' station for oh, a week or two before Christmas.

It's wonderful, and gratifying, but it gets to the point when there's sugar overload, and you just can't look another brownie in the eye.

Such was the case one year, when one of our visitors brought in this lovely gem of a food: Veggie Pizza! It was such a lovely, welcomed change of pace. It didn't take much prodding for me to get the recipe. Of course, it's all over the place now - and with good reason. It's fabulous; yummy; looks great; and it's EASY.

Need to bring something to an office party? Bring this, and they'll be begging for you to bring it everytime. I know. I get asked to make it time and time again.

Here's the ingredients:

2 - canisters of Crescent Rolls (they make a "recipe creations" variety now that works great)
2 - 8 oz boxes of cream cheese, room temperature
1 small bag of raw pre-washed broccoli and cauliflower mix
2 Roma tomatoes
Shredded Cheddar cheese

Spray the cookie sheet with PAM, unroll the crescent rolls out of the canisters and fit them onto the sheet to form the pizza dough. If you want, you can sprinkle the edges with herbs and/or garlic powder. Bake it in the oven according to the directions - except, the "recipe creations" says to bake it almost 20 minutes; they lied. Ten minutes would be more like it. You want it brown and done, but not burnt.

Bring it out of the oven, and spread the cream cheese over the dough. Then it's just a matter of adding the toppings!


Cut the broccoli and cauliflower into smaller pieces, spread them throughout the pizza. Chop up the tomatoes, seed, and add those. Top with shredded cheese. Cut into slices. Try to keep yourself from eating it all before the party. MMM! Good stuff. And relatively healthy for you, too!

Fried Okra

My Great-Aunt Alice, who was really my first cousin twice removed, once lamented to me that "young people just don't know how to do the BASICS of cooking anymore. I had a young lady ask me how to snap beans, once!"

I sympathized, but I couldn't say anything. I sure knew how to snap beans - I think my grandmother taught me how to do that on her front porch when I was three years old - but at one point I didn't know a whole lot about cooking, either. My mom used to run us out of the kitchen!

So when I can, I'll include "basics of cooking" - such as, fried okra. It's one of those things that's really easy to do, but unless you've ever been shown it - you just don't know how to do. So I'm going to show you.

First of all - don't get the biggest okra you can find. As okra gets bigger, it generally gets tougher and bitter, and no one will want to eat it. The only caveat to this is - there ARE some varieties that are short and squat that are really sweet and good, but unless you grew them yourself or got them from someone who grew them themselves, you're not likely to run into them. So - buy some okra that is relatively small, like these. They're about - oh, I dunno, 4 or 5 inches -

Rinse them well, then trim off the heads and the tails; discard those.

About this time you'll need to get your oil ready; I just use a large frying pan with about 1/2 inch of oil. I use canola oil. You'll want the oil hot, so I set the burner between med. high and high. When it starts to pop, it's ready.

Cut the okra up into about 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch pieces. If it's a large piece of okra, cut them thinner. As you're cutting, throw them into a bowl of corn meal and coat well. The insides will be gooey like snot.

Now the fun part - fry those suckers up! Shake off the excess corn meal, and add them to the oil - few pieces at a time. Add them fast, but don't get burned!

Turn them as they start to brown. It shouldn't take more than 5 - 10 minutes, each side. When they're brown, take them out and put them on paper towels to drain.

This is when you add salt to them. Doesn't have to be much, just enough to enhance the flavor. You can now stick them in a warm oven while you finish cooking the rest of your dinner - but be sure to pop a few in your mouth, too! All good cooks have to taste test.

Fried okra, if done right and done with the right sized okra, is almost sweet. Serve it with your favorite meat & side dish. Tonight we had it with panfried pork chops and mashed potatoes.

Pan-fried Summer Squash

Nobody in my family likes summer squash, but me. I don't care. I'll cook it till the day I die.

Especially when it's cooked like how my mom used to make it, pan fried in butter, with lots of vidalia onions and topped with parmesean cheese. I don't care WHO you are, that's some good eatin.

First - slice up a vidalia onion - or, if you are unlucky enough not to have vidalia onions where you are - any sweet onion will do. Start panfrying it up with a healthy dab of butter, with the burner set between medium - medium high.

While that's starting to cook, peel your squash. If it's really small, you can omit this step, but as they get larger the peel starts to turn bitter. Chop them up and add them to the onions.

When they start to wilt a little bit, you can turn it down to medium and cover it with a lid. Continue to stir every few minutes, until it starts to brown and caramelize a bit.



When the onions and squash are good and wilted and have a nice, gooey texture to them, add a couple of tablespoons of grated parmesean cheese and salt and pepper to taste. Let the parmesean melt for a minute or two over the fire, then plate it.

MMMMmmmm. Good eat'n.