charlotteann

Time is money, and I have a lot of the former. This can be frustrating because in these dwindling days of summer vacation I often have nothing better to do than cook stuff and eat it. I’ll get an idea, spend some dollars on the ingredients, and make it. My spice cupboard is what it is today thanks to these one hit wonders throughout the past two years. But in light of yesterday’s credit card bill I am making an effort to eat all the stuff I already have. This means a lot more pasta and rice. And I mean a lot. I’m allowing myself to get fruits’n'veggies at the farmers’ market however, because I simply can’t eat buttered noodles every day. And I don’t want scurvy.

For lunch today I made pizzas on English muffins. I saw the tomato and basil spaghetti sauce, mozzarella, and fresh basil wasting away in my fridge and thought they might like to get together on dough generally reserved for breakfast. In fact, I had an English muffin this morning. They turned as well as can be expected.

English muffin mini pizzas (serves 2)

• 2 English muffins (split or cut in half)
• 1/3 cup grated mozzarella
• 4 tbsp red sauce
• olive oil
• fresh basil

First give your muffins a light toasting in the toaster oven. Remove them to your food prep area and turn the toaster oven to broiler mode and set it to 350 degrees. Spread the red sauce onto each half, about a tablespoon each. Sprinkle on the mozzarella and one or two drops of olive oil. You can add other things at this point (I put some onion slivers on one) but make sure they are small enough to get properly cooked. Place your little pizzas back into the toaster oven and let them cook until the cheese bubbles and starts to brown. Garnish with the basil and serve. Aren’t they cute?