the last piece of pizza

has taken refuge in my stomach. i eyed it, all lonely on the glass saucer, and put it out of its misery. i don't think i can properly express how much i love cooking from the random mix of stuff in the fridge. we had defrosted the pizza dough the day before, but didn't actually have any pizza cheese or sauce. however, the trip to star, despite its proximity, seemed somewhat useless if we only needed one thing, so we decided to make do. for the sauce, we cooked down a tomato and added some jarred vodka sauce. our mix of cheese was cheddar, gruyere, and herbed goat cheese. and for toppings, we piled on leftover chicken from the roast chicken earlier in the week, caramelized onions, sliced tomatoes, broccoli, slivered sundried tomatoes, and some raw onions.

it turned out surprisingly well. i expected it to be fine, but somewhat odd given the motley assortment of ingredients we put on it, without any real thought towards whether or not it would actually go together. incidentally, i finished the soup from the roast chicken - the broth was a bit weak, so i got some carrots and onions and caramelized them, then added the broth. i have no idea if it made a difference, but i used honey to sweeten the soup a bit this time instead of regular sugar. i also sliced the carrots thinly, partly as an experiment to see if it was a more pleasing shape to eat than thicker slices of carrot, but more out of a desire to play with my knife. other than the carrots, though, the soup was largely the same as it was last time. it was much darker than the last soup from the color of the caramelized onions and carrots (which i then strained out) - i caramelized about three or four cups of vegetables. i also added less pastina, which worked out great this time.