Homemade pizza -- mostly

We like pizza, but when you live where we do the options are limited. One delivery chain will come to our house, but their pizza is pretty much a last ditch, starving to death, anything is better than nothing sort of product.

Then there's Papa Murphy's. They don't deliver, but they do have good tasting pizzas: Made primarily of real stuff. Still, planning ahead for one of us to stop before getting home ... what ... planning a-head. What the hell does that mean?

Plus, by the time we're thinking we want pizza it's usually one of two situations: Either I get home and realize that I don't feel like cooking or we've had a couple of pints and desire a filling, spicy pub-like meal.

Last night was a bit of both, so we had our first-choice pizza: Pillsbury pizza dough with our own toppings.

We start with the dough popping out of the package, scaring the crap out of me and continuing the fun by pissing me off as it tears and rips and basically falls apart.

Once you're past that part, though, it's only a matter of squishing the dough together and out and around until it's more or less a flat, rectangular sheet on a baking pan covered in olive oil.

Do NOT form a ball of this mess and then try to reroll it -- just pinch together the tears. This dough is more or less elastic until you form that freakin' ball ... then it'll only be a ball. Forever (or what seems like forever).

Put more olive oil on the top (I enjoy dumping a bit on then using my hands to spread/squish the olive oil on the dough).

Our herb and spice choices change every time, last night we used oregano, celery salt, garlic powder and freeze-dried chives (the fresh ones are buried beneath snow).

Finally, our toppings Du Jour were red onion, pineapple, black olive, diced tomato, feta crumbles and roughly 1 1/2 cups shredded Monterrey Jack (I took the photo before adding the Monterrey to show off the pretty).

Bake as instructed on the *&^% Pillsbury package ... cool ... cut ... eat. Yum!

One of these days I'll post something about a fully homemade pizza with our own dough and everything. I know I will. One of these days.

Until then, the main bonus of the probably-not-healthy Pillsbury stuff is that it's good for a couple of months. Buy it, toss it in the fridge, use it after you've had too many pints to stand over a hot stove searing and steaming and sauteing.

Oh, and this dough makes super delicious pull-apart cinnamon bread, too.

Alas, we must save that for another day.