day five: leftover happiness and homemade pizza!

Cooking recipes for one person is not easy, and wasting leftovers while trying to eat locally seems counter-intuitive to me. So the reality of this project is that sometimes I will have to eat leftovers. So yesterday (yes, I am a day behind on the blogsphere, but such is life) I had flatbread leftovers for breakfast and lunch. But I discovered something amazing -- my day old flatbread was much softer and more flavorful AND it split open in the middle like pita bread! I was so excited about this that I stuffed it full of havarti cheese and melted it until it tasted like the cheesy bread from Stella's Bakery! Okay, maybe not THAT good, but still, I was totally freaking out about this discovery.

For dinner I made homemade pizza! After the flatbread kneading incident I knew what to expect; so things went a little more smoothly with the pizza dough. I thought I had more than enough tomatoes for the sauce, but after the 40-50 minutes of cooking that Martha recommended, my sauce thickened so much that I barely had enough to spread over the crust! I compensated with tons of local mozzarella and added mushrooms and ukraine peppers for toppings. About twenty minutes later I had 100 percent local and homemade pizza!

I was happy to enjoy this meal with company, so Troy came over and brought some Capital Island Wheat beer, which is not within 100 miles of Madison, but still made with wheat from Wisconsin. Troy loves pizza more than anything, so I thought he would be a good judge, and he said it was very good! I also loved the whole wheat crust and the entire eating experience. Apart from Troy's pizza love-affair, I also wanted to share this meal with him because he is one of the reasons I undertook this project to eat locally. He knew I was interested in local food and sustainable agriculture so when he ran across an article on the 100 Mile Diet, he emailed it to me. From there I found blogs and other resources to begin the experience. The dinner was fantastic and I am really happy it turned out!

Tonight I try homemade pasta ... stay tuned!