Happy meal.

It's funny - I remember back when I was working full-time before, what seems like 100 years ago. By the time Friday rolled around, I'd had enough of home, and cooking, and was always ready for a dinner out. Maybe it's our surroundings, or maybe I'm older, but now I find it is completely the opposite. When Brad im'd me this afternoon and said "What's for dinner," my first thought wasn't "Oh, we should go out to X," it was "What do you want me to make?" Brad was working from home, so I had him take a peek at a recipe I'd pulled from a magazine this week - he was sold, so he helped me determine what I needed and I headed to the store after work. Taco pizza night!

The funny thing about this taco pizza is that it came from a "special kids issue" of Food Network Magazine (really just 5 to 10 pages set off within the regular magazine). There was a feature on mixing up your kids' favorite meals - so instead of tacos and pizzas, they have recipes for pizza tacos and taco pizzas. I've made taco pizza a handful of times (it was a good transition pizza for me back when I first started eating pizza), but this recipe had a few elements I'd not thought of in the past.

As I've bemoaned before, it is impossible to find non-frozen fresh pizza dough here. This leaves me with two options for day-of pizza: Boboli and Pillsbury (from the dairy cooler). We've tried both and I definitely prefer Pillsbury. I grabbed their new "artisan" crust - not sure what makes it artisan, but it was whole wheat. Oh! AND I had a mini-breakthrough! As much as I am for local, fresh produce... I haven't bought local corn since "the summer of almost eating worms in corn twice" - I buy the unhusked ears wrapped in plastic (I know, I know). Today, I said to myself, "Stephanie. Don't be such a wuss." And good news - when I unhusked them... No worms!

The recipe has you bake the pizza with refried beans - it calls for black refried beans, but I had regular old veggie refrieds (but with a twist - also with lime and chilis), so I used that. So you bake the pizza with a thin layer of beans, topped with a half cup of salsa, then sprinkle 1/2 cup of sharp cheddar, a handful of green onions, and a handful of diced jalapenos. While that's baking, you mix up the secret ingredients...

Top - 1/4 cup of sour cream mixed with the juice of half a lime and a tablespoon of water. Bottom - sliced romaine and chopped tomatoes tossed with the juice of the other half of the lime and a little salt. When the pizza comes out of the oven, you top it with these (and some avocado, of course. YUM.). It made Brad say all sorts of yummy words.

I have to agree with Brad and his gushing... This was pretty darn good. And I even liked the sour cream mixture - definitely adds something that was missing in previous taco pizzas. A few years ago I didn't like lime. Now I think it makes things amazing.

Look ma, no worms!

Did I mention we ate the whole pizza, save four tiny squares? (By we, I mostly mean Brad. And that is good because making his belly happy makes me happy!)