Will you marry me, Joe?

I've written before about my obsession with Trader Joe's, but last night's dinner really cemented my love affair.

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up the required fixings for pizza such as whole wheat pizza dough, shredded Italian cheeses, pizza sauce, and these spicy chicken Italian sausages. Yesterday was the expiration date on the dough so I placed pizza squarely on the menu for dinner last night.

This was so easy, yet so good and satisfying. All I had to do was spread the pizza dough out on a pan. (I used a sheet pan, but it would have been even better with a pizza stone.)

Then, I spread out the pizza sauce I bought from Trader Joe's. This pizza sauce was so much better than canned and way better than anything I could have made myself. It had a long-cooked tomato flavor, nicely spiced, with a hint of sweetness.

On my last trip to Trader Joe's, I had picked up a package of grilled zucchini and eggplant from the frozen vegetable section. I defrosted several slices of each and then cut them up with scissors for the top of the pizza. Originally, I was just going to lay them whole across the top, but once they were defrosted I realized that they were much more liquidity than I anticipated. I thought whole slices would have made the pizza soggy, so I cut them up into small bits.

Then, on one half of the pizza, I laid slices of the chicken Italian sausage, and on the other, julienned strips of salami. (This is the stage at which the photograph was taken.)

A sprinkling of cheese over the whole thing, baked for 10-15 minutes at 450 degrees and Voila! (Okay, that's French, but I don't know the equivalent expression in Italian.) Fresh pizza for dinner in less time than it would have taken for delivery and at far less expense.

It smelled so good when it came out of the oven, I forgot to take another photo! Marlo thought it was really good and preferred both sides of the pizza equally. I preferred the side with the Italian sausage as the salami didn't end up having as much flavor as I would have liked.

I actually wish I had bought two pizza dough packages because I have some leftover pizza sauce and cheese, and this seems to have triggered some sort of wild pizza craving. Maybe they put some addictive pizza chemical in the sauce?