Chicken/Spinach/Alfredo/Feta Pizza

Before the oven.

I hardly ever cook anything without a recipe. This is for a few different reasons: 1. I'm really not all that imaginative when it comes to food, and 2. If I make something that is a bust, I can just blame it on the recipe!

But tonight, I did create this out of my head. Not that it was all that hard, mind you, but no recipe was used. My mother-in-law never cooks with recipes...she said cooking for a family of five on a limited budget that she just had to use what she had. I admire her for that. I stress myself out sometimes and make extra trips to he store for an ingredient for something specific I want to make, not to mention the way I cook is likely more expensive than the way she did for her family. Maybe by the time I reach five kids, I'll be cooking with no recipes either!

Anyway, here is my creation for tonight's dinner. I didn't measure anything, so I'll be guessing on amounts:

Chicken/Spinach/Alfredo/Feta Pizza
1 pizza crust*
1/2 jar prepared alfredo sauce, or get really industrious and make your own
about 1/2 bag of bagged fresh spinach
1-2 cups of cooked, chopped chicken
3 pressed fresh cloves of garlic
a handful or two of feta cheese
a few drizzels of olive oil over the whole thing

Spread pizza crust out on your baking stone. To keep crust from sticking to the stone, sprinkle a little cornmeal on the stone prior to putting the crust down. Spread the alfredo on top of the unbaked pizza crust. Spread spinach leaves over the top of the alfredo. Sprinkle the chopped chicken on top of the spinach, then using a garlic press, press about three fresh garlic cloves over the chicken. Then throw a couple handfuls of feta over the whole thing and drizzle with olive oil (or EVOO as Rachael Ray calls it, and I can't stand it when she does!)

Bake at 425 for about 20 minutes or until your crust turns light brown.

Next time I'm adding artichokes to this, just didn't have any tonight. It was gooo-ooood. Ethan told me he wanted me to make it again tomorrow night!

*You can use lots of different kinds of pizza crusts. The Boboli prepared ones, the Jiffy Mix Pizza Crust mix, the Pilsbury ones in the tube, or use my friend Sara's pizza dough recipe. It's my favorite. For this crust tonight, I had a box of Pampered Chef pizza crust/roll mix. The dry ingredients come premeasured, you just add in the yeast packet that comes with it in the box and some olive oil and hot water, knead a few times and then spread out over your pan. So easy and so yummy. I'm looking for a good whole wheat pizza crust recipe, so if you have one, send it my way.

Sara's Pizza Dough Recipe (I use this for pizza and calzones).
1 pkg yeast
1 1/4 c warm water
2 T veg oil
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 cups plain flour

Mix ingredients, stirring to form a ball of dough. Knead 8-10 times using extra flour as necessary to create a good consistency. Let rest five minutes before rolling out for the crust. Poke a few holes in the crust with a fork so it doesn't bubble up on you when baking. After the oven.