Vegan Pesto Pizza is Real

One too many people I know consider vegan food

weird,

or something only skinny people eat.

I’ll tell you, I could get downright plump on vegan food. Especially this pizza. I go through phases where I feel the need to balance out my proteins with vegan foods, like when I’m on this ridiculous South Beach diet (currently on hold, indefinitely) and I just hate eggs and meat of all kinds, passionately (but just right now, promise).

I’m a fan of this girl’s recipes. I have never once been disappointed by her ability to make vegan food real. As in, Real tasty.

I made her pesto pizza (click to print) and I have some suggestions to make it the number one pizza on the planet, against all other kinds. I know this because I’ve made this pizza three times in the last two weeks.

Use This crust recipe.

Throw a diced eggplant into the roasting pan for the topping if you like. Roasting these veggies before actually making the pizza was a genius move. I’ve always been a purist in the pizza making—I always just thinly slice raw vegetables and make a very scant topping in favor of cheese. This recipe proved that whole idea wrong. Load those roasted veggies on there, please.

Variations for the pesto: add a roasted jalapeno for spicy pesto, or a handful of sundried tomatoes for a sweeter one.

A slice is delicious for breakfast too. Yes, I did. Three times.

The pizza tastes fresh, sweet with roasted tomato and onion, and crispy crackly garlic oil crust under a savory pesto. I was sure that the pesto wouldn’t live up to my standards, but I can honestly say I like this vegan version better than the original parmesan standard. That is saying a lot.

I had been craving pizza like crazy, since I wasn’t supposed to eat any, which is completely torturous. I was totally convincing myself that I was starving. Riiiiight, you’re saying. My hunger was eating up my soul, or so I told myself when I started making this pizza.

Being hungry is really, really distracting. It's hard to concentrate on anything. And please. I was just on a diet. I am one of the luckiest people ever to consider myself deprived while on a diet. The fact of it doesn’t escape me. I try to count my blessings, even when I’m being an angry witch and hating everyone who is allowed to eat carbs.

I want to tell you, before you go out for your weekend, that Foodbuzz is partnering up with Yahoo! to support Share our Strength, an organization I really care about. They create food programs for hungry children in smart and effective ways. Yahoo! will donate $20,000 to Share our Strength on behalf of Foodbuzz and their community of readers and bloggers.

Here are two things you can do raise awareness about this important cause:
1. Make Yahoo! your homepage now to let them know you like what they’re doing to help Share Our Strength.
2. Share the campaign with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

I’ll be talking about Share Our Strength during the campaign, and in return for my participation, Foodbuzz is going to donate some $ on my behalf to Share Our Strength, too.

Win-Win in my book.