How To Make The Most Delicious Homemade Pizza.

Get yourself a garden.

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OK, it’s not as simple as all that. You also need to have a partner who has somehow figured out the secret to making awesome pizza dough and crusts (as my wife has). OK…now I think we’ve covered everything.

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In all seriousness, I really do think (once you have an awesome dough upon which to layer ingredients) the secret to amazing pizza is the same secret held by all other food. Amazing ingredients.

In this case that includes extra sharp raw (of course!) cheddar, sweet onions, basil, tomatoes, eggplant and kale. That’s it.

Pre-oven

Pre-oven

Much of the awesomeness in what we in the U.S. most often classify as the ‘Mediterranean Diet’, or really any diet other than, as Michael Pollan and others have called ours, the ‘Western Diet’, is based on fresh, real ingredients. And not many of them.

Most good dishes require very little in the way of hydrogenation or diethyldothoxinating. All that is required is real food grown in real soil. If you are unfortunate enough to have gone into this summer without a garden you have two options and I suggest you act upon both.

First, visit your farmer’s market.

Second, get planning for next year’s garden.

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Everything with the exception of the cheese and the kielbasa on this pizza came from my garden only moments before being sliced and arranged upon the dough. The cheese is a raw milk sharp cheddar from a farm in Northern Maine. The latter came from a smokehouse selling at the Hampden Farmer’s Market. And it was very, very good. It really is as simple as that. Local, real ingredients, picked at the height of their freshness really make better dishes, and you don’t have to be in the Mediterranean to experience it. Local Food. Eat well – be well.

Ryan Parker

About Ryan Parker

Ryan Parker is a farmer, writer, artist and musician. He currently lives in Central Maine with his wife, two children, a golden retriever, some pigs and chickens. He raises pastured and forested animals and grows a diverse range of vegetables without synthetic chemicals, pesticides, herbicides or taxpayer subsidies.