Few things in this life of mine are more gratifying than engaging in repetitive motion. Had a bad day? To the dishes! Run the sink, plunge my hands into the terribly hot water, scrub, rinse repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Or going for a walk. It’s just proper ear bud placement and one foot in front of another until the sidewalk ends.

Since I can remember, I’ve gotten deep satisfaction from slicing vegetables. It’s the Parker Girl way. As teenagers, my sister and I used to love cutting up onions so much that sometimes we would saute them in butter and eat them over white rice for dinner. That was a life-phase where I can’t imagine we smelled great.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve taken to this practice to calm or distract my mind when I’m feeling less than favorably. If you walk in and find that I’ve prepared fajitas and a tossed salad, odds are good that I didn’t have an awesome day. I have learned and accepted that I can be in charge of my feels but sometimes it takes doing something completely unrelated to take control of those feels. If it weren’t blizarding yesterday, then I would have gone for a very long walk. But it was, and so I went to the produce section.

These may have been around for ages but I just now discovered that you can buy a pillsbury pizza crust in the section of the grocery store that’s filled with canned biscuits and cinnamon rolls. So I bought a whole grain pizza crust (in a tube) and made everything up right there in the grocery store. Sweet tomatoes, salty artichokes, neutral squash, and feta cheese.

And I chopped a full bowl of vegetables (it seems like a lot but veggies not only get more delicious when you roast them, they also shrink down), did all of the dishes, and made enough for leftovers for a few days this week. I served it with a tossed salad but ended up just throwing the salad on top of the pizza and it was pretty delicious. By the time dinner was over, I couldn’t really recall what it was that I was feeling earlier.

XOXO, Lib

Roasted Vegetable Pizza

Ingredients: 

2 small, yellow squash (cut into a satisfying dice)
1 large zucchini (cut into a satisfying dice)
1 carton grape tomatoes (halved)
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning
salt and pepper
1 prepared whole-grain pizza crust
2 T. butter
1/2 T. garlic salt
1 T. crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 c. shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 c. crumbled feta cheese

Directions

-Toss vegetables together in a large bowl with seasonings and oil. Spread out on cookie sheet and roast at 500 degrees for 20 minutes–stirring once. Once the vegetables are done, lower the oven temperature to 400 degrees.
-Press the pizza crust into a prepared cookie sheet and par-bake at 400 degrees for 8 minutes.
-Meanwhile, mix butter, garlic salt and red pepper flakes. Brush onto crust, leaving a dry edge around the perimeter.
-Top with 1/2 of the mozzarella cheese, roasted vegetables, and then the rest of the cheeses.
-Bake until warmed through and mozzarella melts–about 5-8 minutes.