Pizza with Chard

A good time to bake pizza it was emphatically not. We've been in the throes of a no-holds-barred heat wave smack-down since Sunday, with temps consistently in the low to mid nineties. I'm pretty sure you could roast a chicken in our attic. Even the downstairs of our house, which ordinarily stays pretty cool, has turned sweltering, despite the open basement door. To whit: yesterday, the temperature said 92 in the kitchen. That was before I turned on the oven. But pizza was on the menu, and so pizza there would be.

I mix my pizza dough in quadruple batches in the bread machine, freezing the extra lumps until they're needed. In our house, they never last long. Pizza, we've found, is a tenet of kitchen economy. Got leftovers? Put 'em on pizza. Got garden tidbits? Put 'em on pizza. Got moldy cheese? Scrape off the mold first, and put it on pizza. Though last night's pie didn't feature moldy cheese, it was definitely a case of culinary ingenuity.

Sautéed chard from the garden, feta, kalamata, and slivers of red onion, plus a liberal dusting of black pepper, made a tasty, fortifying meal. When combined with a large porch, an oscillating fan, and an ice cold bottle of chardonnay, it was quite the perfect summer dinner.

Stay tuned tomorrow, for Sweetfern's Famous Attic-Roasted Chicken!

(I might be kidding about that last part.)