Dinner Meetings

Here's a topic of discussion for the multitudes reading my blog. Dinner meetings. Could there be any more annoying addition to corporate life than the dinner meeting? Client dinners, office holiday dinners, dinner with colleagues for fun, these make sense. But now, apparently there's the dinner meeting. My husband has one tonight. Oddly, it was scheduled by a colleague who has a family, not some corporate tool with no life. I put up with the Blackberry, I'm patient about working on the weekends or late or (worst of all) while on vacation, but I think I might have to draw the line at dinner meetings. Your comments are welcome.

Here are two easy ideas for pizza, one of which is kid-friendly, for when you're stuck at home while the spouse is eating at a fine restaurant or country club and you don't want to call The Pizza Man, but have a craving:

Onion Pizza With Gorgonzola
Thanks to the availability of fresh pizza dough from the grocery store (I shop regularly at Trader Joe's), fresh, delicious pizza is at your fingertips. I won't call it healthy, but, it will have less cheese and calories than delivery pizza.

Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees. Follow the directions on the dough for bringing to room temperature, rolling crust and placing it on a pan or pizza stone. Slice an onion, heat a frying pan, add 2 tablespoons of butter or 1 tablespoon of butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Cook the onions, stirring every few minutes, until they are golden and soft. Pour onions and melted butter/oil onto crust. Crumble gorgonzola, probably about a half cup (I don't like too much cheese on anything, but you might be from Wisconsin, which necessitates tripling the cheese in all recipes or cooking it into soup) and sprinkle on pizza. Bake until pizza is crispy, about 10 minutes.

Pizza With Mushrooms
Sounds boring, but not when you make it with a 2-year-old. Pizza is a great way to introduce kids to cooking. I let my son play with dough and put on toppings. Tonight we made a whole wheat crust with jarred tomato sauce, pre-sliced mushrooms and very finely shredded mozzarella.