Three nights each week I’m responsible for feeding our three children. My wife works long shifts at the hospital as a nurse. I often struggle to make quality meals, as the kids are young — five, three, and one — and after a twelve-hour day with them, they’ve won.
But there is one meal that we go back to again and again because of our lifestyle: garden pizzas. I announce to the kids that we’re having garden pizzas for dinner, and they run out into the yard to begin collecting toppings.
Once they return, I start heating the oven to 425, get the frozen Costco pizzas out and we begin slicing and placing whatever the kids have collected. Tonight (also seen in the photo above), it was tomatoes, zucchini, onions, peppers, basil leaves, strawberries, pluots, plus some sausage and olives from the store.
Earlier this summer there was one with peaches, tomatoes, grapes, basil leaves, onions, peppers, and some slices of sausage from the store:
In the winter, there is often broccoli and cauliflower, and sometimes spinach.
Here’s one from two summers ago that had some kale on it:
And here’s another one that includes toppings of strawberries, blueberries, and slices of carrots and pluots.
What I’ve learned about garden pizzas is that I need not supervise the collection of toppings. If necessary, I limit how much of an ingredient we put on a pizza, but as for the combination of ingredients, it never matters. Even the strangest combinations always, surprisingly, taste great.
And we put everything on all parts of the pizza, including things like spicy peppers that I might want but they don’t. They know that they can take the peppers off if they get some on their slice.
It’s also more fun for the kids to have a lot of stuff to spread all over the pizzas. I redistribute the toppings they’ve spread very little; I let them be artsy and imbalanced with it. It’s hard to see, but on one of the pizzas we made tonight (top, right) my oldest made a smiley face with zucchini and strawberries.
The Costco pizzas underneath are not health food: white-flour crust with sugary tomato sauce and cheese. However, I console myself with the fact that the toppings from the garden are high quality and healthy. Let’s just eat from the yard as far as is reasonable with the time and energy we can muster after a long day.
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That’s a very cool idea! I haven’t succeeded with basil yet though — I think a pest eats it. It always looks wilted and bedraggled. It’s a bummer because we LOVE basil.
Hi Melissa,
That’s too bad. There’s no substitute for basil. I’ve only had problems with bugs eating basil seedlings but never bigger plants. My main method of dealing with this is to plant only in June, July, or August when it’s very warm and the plants will grow fast.
Although I don’t have the pest problem, I also grow basil in the kitchen. You can root a few cuttings in water, then plant in pots. Give them lots of light and they do well. No bugs.
Greek Basil works well and the same plant lasts all year long. (I did lose a plant when it frosted last winter) The leaves are small but same great taste. You can get plants at Pearsons Nursery in Vista.
Hi Greg. I love your post. Your kids have the best school and teacher ever. Thank you for sharing.
Your garden pizzas seem like such a great idea I think I’ll have a few additional kids.
Kidding of course – Let me know how a pizza with just Avocado, figs, and Citrus works out – that’s all I have available.
That is a wonderful idea. My garden is still in the planning phase because it will be on two tiers that need irrigation installed. I have little ones too, and I use my air fryer and pita bread for quick pizzas. My oldest leaves the tomato sauce out because it gets a bit soggy. We usually have pepperoni slices on hand, but I’m eating more plant based food recently. It will be much easier once I get to go to the backyard and forage 🙂
Great pictures, great kids!
Good papa-ing Greg. Your kids are learning wonderful lessons and will bond in wonderful ways through these experiences. I do think we need to arrange a homemade pizza evening though…. easier than you think to make your own dough and I’ve got a tomato company whose sauce is fresh ground tomatoes without all the sugar, and it’s delicious. Great post!
Thanks, Jeff. I definitely need to take you up on that and do more from scratch over these cooler seasons. I have lots of tomatoes in the freezer that we can use, too.
Great idea! I’m going to do that tonight! Trader Joe’s has these butternut squash pizza crusts (they claim they are more than 50% squash) and I’ve got some basil and maybe even some early Napa cabbage leaves they can pick. And yes as you said, after a day with them, they win lol!
Hi Greg,
I love, love, love your website and posts! All of the documentation about your gardening trials and errors helps me so much! My husband and I live in North Tustin, in unincorporated Orange County. We are able to have chickens – which I would love but have never attempted in my life.
The primary reason I’m writing to you is that after a year of deliberation, we’ve decided to remove our swimming pool and create a food garden in it’s place. I feel excited about it but also totally overwhelmed! We would like to hire a landscape architect who specializes in this kind of backyard. Do you know anyone in our area who can help us create a plan for the space? Do you think we need a plan? Do you yourself do this? Thank you so much!
Chickens are astoundingly easy. Give them a safe place to sleep and poke around. Make sure they have enough food (they eat just about anything) and water, then collect the eggs. It really is that easy.
Hi Susie,
Thanks! You’ve given me a lot of ideas for new posts here.
I can totally understand how you might feel overwhelmed with such a big undertaking as creating a food garden from your swimming pool area. I would offer to come up to consult (I love helping with these kinds of projects!), but it would likely take me too long to arrange. If you’re in no rush though, we can try to make a plan. And unfortunately, I don’t know anyone in your area to refer you to. I’ll let you know if that changes.
North Tustin is a great place to do what you’re doing, anyway. I can say that for sure; a couple of my closest friends grew up in the area.
Maybe I can write a few posts in the near future that will help you plan and implement your dream and that will also help others in a similar situation. I’ll plan on that right now.
In the meantime, here are some posts that I’ve already written that I think will help (in case you haven’t found them yet):
“Starting a vegetable garden in Southern California”
“What kind of fruit tree should you plant?”
GREAT post!
Hi Greg, Love your posts. Your children are ridiculously cute. It’s awesome that you are teaching them to appreciate real food. My three are now 21, 19, and 16 and all know how to feed themselves well with real ingredients. We live in Ventura County and your gardening guidance is wonderful. I have had some success and failures but plan to keep going. I learn something from every failure. Thanks to your advice I’ve been on top of the transition this year. I have sprouted broccoli, cauliflower, scallions, onions, spinach, lettuce, turnips, brussel sprouts, dill, cilantro, and cabbage. Not sure where they will all go and also not sure when to put them in the ground.
Hi Laura,
We hope our kids turn out like yours. Yesterday evening after dinner, the kids went to pick apples. They know to pick the Fujis because the Pink Ladys are not ready yet. They sat on the driveway eating apples together, watching the moon rise over the mountains. My wife took a picture. It was a pat-ourselves-on-the-back moment for us. We just felt like we were giving the kids a good youth.
I think you are going to be very satisfied with yourself around December because you’ll have so much to eat from these early cool-season plantings.