We had a little homeschooling play date here today and we broke from watercolors and horse play (really, Ava loves to pretend she’s a horse) to have lunch.

Veggie sandwich anyone? Well make your own cause this one is ALL. MINE.

There’s avocado in there but it’s hiding until a forest of red leaf lettuce. Plus tomato and mustard too on toasted Ezekiel.

Post lunch we hit up the playground for some “Outside Voice” time and large motor activities on something other than my furniture.

Our friends had to leave but we stayed to enjoy a totally vacant park. Where the heck is everyone?? Oh yeah. At school.

So yup, it was just us. Well, us and the imaginary birds flying over the water that the girls threw rocks at. I guess we weren’t totally alone.

While we were at the park my sprouts were at home trying to make their escape!

Heeeelp!!! Heeeelp! She’s going to eat us! We’ve got to get out of here!

I hope they’re freaking ready because that jar is not getting any bigger. And now I just realized where Ava is getting the word “freaking” from.

I rinsed off their hulls and they are now trapped in an air tight container in the refrigerator. As soon as I hit publish I’m going to get back to work on 1000 tiny pair of sprout shackles. Try to escape me, will ya? We’ll just see about that.

I spent a little QT this evening with my good buddy the food processor.

More gazpacho and a double batch of sun dried tomato hummus. (I used up the last of the sun dried tomatoes tonight. Phew at least I got THAT out of my system.)

I followed the cue from a certain Kubicle Kitchen and prepped me some carrots and tore up and washed a mountain of red leaf lettuce so I can have salad at every meal from now until October. That should do it.

I was also blog-inspired tonight to try what I believed is going to an amazing new dish with a lot of possibilities – Portabella Pizza! I bought three portabella mushroom caps for my veggie lasagna on Saturday and only used two of them. When I saw the third one in my produce drawer tonight I was reminded of the awesome dinner Heather made last week.

(OK is portabella or portobello?? Google returns both!)

I googled around for some different approaches on how to use a portabella mushroom cap for a pizza. I only got to make one because it’s all I had – but Zak’s working late and eating at work tonight so it’s all good. But beyond that there’s hummus and gazpacho and fixings for salad… the man will not go hungry, trust me. I know you’re reading this all concerned he’s wasting away to nothing because I only made one portabella mushroom pizza tonight.

I preheated the toaster oven to 350 and popped the stem out of the cap and washed away any dirt and debris. Every recipe I looked at said not to peel the mushroom cap (like I usually do when I make burgers) so I followed the internet’s orders and obeyed.

I baked the naked cap on a baking sheet sprayed with a little olive oil for about 10 minutes and then poured off the mushroom water before topping it with canned diced tomatoes, diced green peppers and onions and some Parmesan cheese. I would have used mozzarella but I didn’t have any so parm was going to have to do.

Back into the toaster oven with toppings for another 8 – 10 minutes and voila! Portabella pizza! Served with a giant salad.

It was love at first bite.

What a great idea for a pizza “crust”! Thanks again Heather for the fabulous idea! I will very likely be making these tomorrow or Friday, I can’t wait have this again and to get more creative with the toppings and sauce too. And oh yeah, so Zak can try one too I suppose.