Grilled Pizzas

Back to the daily grind of cooking dinner! I have had a fantastic Memorial Day weekend. Hope you have too! Saturday it was just the boy and me as the husband spent the afternoon playing golf. The husband and my uncle installed a ceiling fan in our play room before golfing, so the boy and I hung out in there since it wasn't so blazing hot in there anymore. Yesterday we went to church, returned a ceiling fan at Lowe's and then hung out at home for the afternoon. My mom came over after the boy's nap and took him home with her so the husband and I could have a date night. Woo hoo for date night!!! We went and saw the new Indiana Jones movie (pretty decent, kind of cheesy ending, but worth seeing on the big screen) and went out for dinner. What a treat! This morning we were super productive...he did yard work and I worked on cleaning out our disaster area of a garage. I only got one wall of it done (hey, I said disaster area!) before our garbage can and recycle bin were full, but it's a vast improvement. Hopefully I can get the other two walls done before it gets ridiculously hot here. It's been so nice this weekend, I wish the weather would last!! I was supposed to get a pedicure today, but all the nail places around here were closed! So I got some Coldstone instead. ;) once the boy got home from my mom's, I got busy listing stuff on Freecycle and Craigslist that I had found in the garage. Hopefully it will earn me some extra moolah!

ANYWAY. Since it is Memorial Day, I figured we couldn't go all weekend without grilling, so we'd grill tonight. Actually I'll grill tonight because it's game #2 in the Stanley Cup finals, so the husband will be glued to the TV watching that and cheering on the Red Wings. I've been trying to use up things we have in our freezers and pantry, and we had an almost full pacakge of frozen bread dough, so I figured grilled pizzas were the way to go! And we haven't had them in quite awhile. I'll probably put them back in to rotation now that it's heating up because we like to grill in the summer so the kitchen doesn't get as hot.

Here's a nice tutorial on grilling pizzas if you haven't done it before:

Cooking Light's How To Grill Pizzas

My directions for it are below. I use the frozen bread dough you get at the grocery store, like Rhodes. Only I get the store brand because it's cheaper. You can also make them with the refrigerated dough from stores like Trader Joe's or Fresh & Easy. I don't think I've tried them with the Pillsbury refrigerated pizza dough, but I imagine it would work. Or you can make your own dough. I've done that before when we didn't have the frozen bread dough. I just like the frozen becaue it's cheap and easy. I'm all about cheap and easy. I make two pizzas from each loaf of frozen bread dough, then we can pick our own toppings.

Grilled Pizzas
Preheat grill to medium heat. Place dough on grill rack, close lid. Dough will take 5-7 minutes. Check it occasionally for bubbles. Once the bottom is golden brown (or at least not burned...ours don't always get golden brown I guess), flip the crust over. This can be tricky and may require two spatulas, depending on the size of your crust. Turn heat down to low or move pizza(s) to top rack if your grill has one. Put toppings on the side you just cooked. Close lid. Check after five minutes, cook until cheese is melted.

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Tonight I'm making four different pizzas. Last time we had grilled pizzas as a family, I found out that one loaf of dough wasn't really enough for the three of us, so I'm using two loaves tonight. We're having:

pepperoni

cheese

mushroom and black olive

spinach, roased red peppers, and caramelized onion

Normally I throw some feta on the red pepper pizza, but this baby growing inside me makes me think feta tastes like puke. So, no feta this time. Oh how I miss it so!! I haven't decided yet if I'll saute the spinach first or just throw the leaves on the pizza. I wanted to do a super veggie pizza, but I cheaped out when I was at the grocery store. Green peppers were $1.25 each!! Lordy mama that's expensive! They were the same price as red peppers. So, mushroom and black olive it will be. Which is fine with me...that's one of my favorites, and I rarely get to have it becaue the husband doesn't like olives.

Man alive, this was a long post! I'm off to continue my productive day and assemble a bookcase for our play room. It's only been sitting out in the garage since March.