Trying to Eat Cheap: Dinner, Day 21

I have been making this pizza since at least 1983. The recipe was in World magazine back then and I took a shine to it. I followed it religiously until the mid-90s, when I started mixing things up--like pre-cooking the crust, adding strange ingredients like radicchio and seafood, and trying different kinds of flour. I've pretty much gone back to the original recipe at this point (dough, tomato sauce, "normal" toppings), but I'm working on a blender version of the dough. It's still a work in progress (it gets really elastic-y in its current incarnation, and is hard to spread to the edges of the pan). I'll keep you posted.

Toppings tonight were turkey sausage, red pepper, garlic, and mushrooms.

This is a handy dish because it's an all-in-one. Vegetables, dairy, protein can all be piled on, and you don't even need a fork. Here's my cost breakdown:

yeast, sugar, salt: $1.00
flour & oil: $1.00
pizza sauce: $2.49
part-skim mozzarella: $2.94
1/3 red pepper: .75
garlic: .25
5 mushrooms: 1.32
3 turkey sausage (1/2 package): $2.00
Total: 11.75

I guess one area where I could cut back is the pizza sauce--I could use plain tomato sauce sprinkled with oregano and basil. But I have a strange weakness for canned pizza sauce. I just like the idea of it, though my own homemade sauces are probably tastier... and cheaper. Also there don't have to be so many toppings, of course!

Here's another shot of the pizza--I was trying to get the whole tray from end-to-end in this one shot. The cut-up pizza makes 8 rectangular pieces--we ate 6 of them.