Party Ideas: Pizza Bar

During the summer, my family often gets together for dinners on the weekends. Usually that will involve meeting at a restaurant. However, a few weeks ago I decided to host a family dinner at home.

When cooking for a lot of people with various likes/dislikes and dietary restrictions, deciding what to make can be quite a chore. Similarly, you don't want to end up spending a small fortune just to make dinner.

I thought through a few options and settled on pizza. I have always been a huge fan of pizza. There is just something about making pizza from scratch that makes it taste even better.

My next task was to determine what kind of pizza to make. Not to mention, making multiple pizzas can be a lot of work.

After pondering the idea for a few moments, a light bulb turned on and the brilliant idea of a Pizza Bar came to mind.

I mixed the dough and let it rise ahead of time and then chopped, browned and made all the toppings. The idea is, each person will roll out his/her piece of dough and add the desired toppings from the selection creating their own personalized pizza.

At first, not all of my guests were thrilled about having to cook their own food. But it turned out to be a really fun night and the pizzas were amazing.

A few notes for this party:

1. Make sure that you begin early, as it takes time for each pizza to be made and then bake.

2. To cut down on cost, have each guest bring their favorite pizza topping. That way you can provide the dough, sauce and cheese and it will significantly lower the cost.

3. Have fun with it. Put on some Dean Martin "When the moon hit's your eye like a big pizza pie" and have a dough throwing contest. (One of my guests tried this and his dough ended up falling behind a table. Can you say comic relief?)

Let me know how your pizza bar party goes!

My "Greek" Pizza - Pizza dough brushed with minced garlic and olive oil and topped with spinach, tomatoes, feta cheese, mushroom and mozzarella.

Here is a great dough recipe I use courtesy of The Food Network's Tyler Florence.

Leave me some comments. What's your favorite pizza topping?

Lemon Almond Oat Bran Cookies (Dairy-free)

I had a hankering for something sweet the other night. Usually when that happens my go-to cookie recipe is a quick and easy one from a children's cookbook for chocolate chip. However, I wanted a bit healthier option.

I just decided to start throwing ingredients in a bowl and see how it turned out. The results were delicious! Here's the recipe I came up with.

Lemon Almond Oat Bran Cookies

Ingredients:
Canola Oil 3/4 cup
Brown sugar 3/4 cup
1 egg
All purpose flour 1 cup
Toasted oat bran 1 cup
Baking powder 1 1/4 tsp.
Lemon extract 1 cap full
Sliced almonds for topping


Preheat oven to 350 degrees
1. Pour canola oil (can use butter, shortening or coconut oil as well) and sugar into bowl and mix together.
2. Add the egg and mix again until blended together.
3. Sift the flour and the baking powder into the bowl and mix until about half blended together.
4. Add the toasted oat bran and mix well.
5. Add the cap full of lemon extract and mix together until smooth.
6. Drop by teaspoon full onto a lightly greased cookie sheet.
7. Sprinkle a few sliced almonds in the middle of each cookie.
8. Bake at 350 for 12 minutes.
Makes about 16 cookies