Snowpocalypse Pizza

I know, I have been M.I.A. lately, but I'm finally getting back to normalcy after the return of my electricity, heat and digging out of 3+ feet of snow. A blizzard like this one was not something I ever expected in this area. After all, I moved down here from central New York to get away from this type of weather. This area clearly has a difficult time handling storms like this, and so do my above-ground power lines. We found ourselves without power or heat for a day and a half. We made a "camp" in the living room by the fireplace and kept feeding the fire.

Unfortunately, my stove is electric, so we had to come up with alternative food options. For starters, I MUST have coffee. You don't want to see me if I can't start my morning with it. Thankfully, we remembered that we have camping equipment in a box in the basement and dug out a percolator. We've never done this before, but like McGyver (or in our case, probably more like McGruber), we tried our hand at making coffee in the fireplace. It actually wasn't bad!

Breakfast and lunch were easy- we had bagels and lunch meats. Dinner, was something I wasn't so sure about. We didn't have much around the house and were really hoping for something warm. I remembered we still had gas in the grill, so we could at least clear the snow off and use that. I took burger out of the freezer in the morning and thought we were set. Sadly, a house that's only 46 degrees does not thaw food well. Time for plan B. I rifled through the cupboards and found yeast, flour, salt, pizza sauce, onions and basil.  We could do grilled pizza! I made the dough about 2 hours early. Recipe is here. Everything else was easy, you just throw it on the pizza. One problem... no mozzarella. I found a couple dabs of ricotta, but we really needed something more. Then I remembered I bought a giant pack of Polly-O string cheese for snacks. I spent about 10 minutes pulling 19 little packets apart and then chopping them up. I was so proud of myself.

When we were ready, we put olive oil on the grill grates and heated it on medium heat. We threw on the dough and cooked one side and then flipped it to cook the other side. While it's on the grill, you dress it with the toppings and cook until melted and bubbly. Easy! I have to say, it actually was pretty good. I wouldn't recommend the string cheese in the future if you can avoid it- it gets pretty rubbery.

One thing to be learned is that you can eat well during a blizzard with no power. You just have to be creative. Necessity is the mother of invention!