Spring! Pizza! Sore butt!

You may be curious as to why I am totally rocking out on what appears to be an air guitar in this picture. The answer is simple: FIRST ROAD RIDE OF THE SEASON! WHOOT! It warmed up all nice-like today, so the game was on. I threw on my brand-new cow socks (created by Sock Guy-a true gift to the cycling world), grabbed my Redline 'cross bike (AKA Bruce-my honey #1) from his basement den, got him and myself primed to go and hit the road. Ah, first ride of the season. Hello, quads, where have you been? Getting back into traffic patterns, heart-rate sky-rocketing from a turtle pace, bloodshot eyes, crotch in unaccustomed agony--yup, must be time for base miles. Every road season starts with the base miles, and I began my countdown at 400. Base miles are great, cuz they're slow. In a month, the base miles will be behind me, and the real work begins. No more rocking out on air guitar. Base miles: The pleasant prelude to anguish.

Anyhow, that's totally not what I was going to talk about today. I was going to talk about the foodings I made for a climbing gym staff potluck last night--vegan pizza and vegan banana cake.

Crust:
(This makes a lot of dough, like 3 pizzas worth, so you can leave some in the fridge for later pizza endeavors)
2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 tsp granulated sugar
1 1/4 cups warm water
3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 T salt
2 tsp olive oil

Dissolve yeast and sugar in the warm water. Let it rest until it foams up, or doubles in size. This takes 3 minutes or so. If you have a kitchen aid, or a big, gnarly food processor, this is the time to use it. Put the salt and flour into the mixing bowl for one of these machines, and mix it up. Turn the mixer on low, and then start adding the liquid slowly. Once a dough ball is formed, let it run for another 30 seconds to knead the dough. Coat the dough ball with olive oil and put it in a plastic bag and knot the top. Let the dough rise in a warm place (I like to use the oven with the light on) for about 45 minutes.

Place the dough on a floured surface, FACE PUNCH IT DOWN, and let it rest for 5 minutes. Take off a chunk, roll out the desired size pizza, and place on oiled or cooking sprayed pan.



FIXINS'
Tofu ricotta, courtesy of the Post Punk Kitchen. I halved the recipe, as I only made one pizza
Tomato sauce
Basil Pesto
Nutritional yeast
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 red pepper, chopped
Mushrooms, chopped
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

This is pretty straightforward. Preheat the oven to 400. You want it on for a good while, as this is best for cooking pizza. First, I made the tofu ricotta. Then I heated about a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a medium pan. I threw in my chopped onion and sauteed until translucent, then added the pepper and mushrooms. I cooked them for a few minutes, salted and peppered, then removed from the heat. I mixed my tomato sauce with the basil pesto and a few tablespoons of nutritional yeast. Spread the sauce over the dough, spread the tofu over the sauce, spread the veggies over the tofu, and BAP-you're ready to oven that shit. I baked mine for maybe 18 minutes.


Now, the banana cake...This was me trying to veganize a very NOT VEGAN recipe my mom and I picked up at Penzey's Spices. Although the cake turned out, I was not entirely pleased with it. My co-workers agreed that it perhaps "missed the mark," but was still very good. The overwhelming opinion was "it needs more banana." The unvegan recipe had called for a mere one banana, and then a whole crap-ton of eggs (1 crapton= 5 eggs). I used two bananas, one of those replacing two of the eggs in the recipe. I used other egg replacers for those remaining. In the future, I know to just go all out and replace them ALL with banana. I'm not going to post a recipe because I think it needs work, but here is a photog:


Carly got to lick my hands after I was done baking, and she thoroughly approved.