Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Saturday night we had planned this vegetarian dinner party which kept leading to crisis after crisis- like, what on earth do you serve at a dinner party if not a big hunk of meat as the centerpiece? (Spinach lasagne was my final call.) And then, what do you do if you plan a dinner party for a three day weekend and all your guests but two are already planning to go out of town and all your backup guests are also busy? (Panic and run around like mad freaking out over how ridiculous a formal dinner for four could seem before realizing that the guests who can come are your friends, not the Snotty VonSnottersons, and you can just say to them, "Hey, we forgot it was a three day weekend- do y'all want to come to a rescheduled full on dinner party or do you two just want to come over and have pizza and play board games?" and they'll say, "Pizza and board games are awesome!")

So I made an eggplant, olive, onion, tomato and lemon pizza topping and a few pizzas. The topping called for pitted Kalamata olives and I don't know if I got a good batch, or what, but instead of trying all the tricks I know for pitting Kalamata olives (banging them with your chef's knife, etc.) I just pitted them by hand and they all pitted like magic.

I also made, for the first time, the neo-napolitan crust, and it was good, but I think I'm a cracker-thin crust person. It did hold up the toppings (which also included Bel Paese and feta cheese) quite well, though.

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