Portobella Pizzas

I will be the first to admit that I am ONLY eating dinner these past few nights to justify rewarding myself with one of those birthday cake cookie sandwiches I made a few days ago.  Oh my, those things are DELICIOUS.  I might even be so inclined to admit that more than one might have been consumed in a single day at some point...

My bad :).

Anyway, I really wanted to order pizza tonight.  Pretty darn badly.  Pizza Hut keeps emailing me about these pizza sliders they have, and I do so love Pizza Hut Pizza.  The problem, though, will sound a little egotistical but...I really like my own homemade pizza....

Like a lot.

But since I had no dough made up nor any desire to make any dough, I debated on what the alternative could be.  I did my grocery shopping today which is weird I usually do it on Sundays, but there were a few things I needed and I was just in a mood to get out and enjoy the town.  Yes, as weird as it may seem, I LOVE to grocery shop.  The bad thing is, when I shop in a good mood, I buy random things, especially if under the $5 mark.  So I bought myself a cute green dish drying mat that is supposed to be super absorbent so I don't have to keep using my dish towels.

Which brings me to how this post happened.  I saw a sale sign on some mushrooms looking through my spiffy-fun glasses, and I had to peruse what was available.  I opted to get the large portobella mushrooms as I love bella burgers and had decided to use them as a pizza base as well.

 Now, why I made 5 of them for 1 of me I have no idea.  I guess I thought I was way more hungry than I really was.  No matter, I will save them and eat them again this weekend.

I took the gills and stem out from the mushrooms and topped them with chopped tomatoes, chopped spinach leaves, herbs de provence as it doesn't have oregano so I like it better than pizza seasoning, garlic cheese topper, salt and pepper, and a mix of block mozz cheese and the last remaining bits of a bag of shredded mozz.  Mozz is one of the only cheeses I still consider buying shredded when it is on sale. 

Two had just those ingredients, one added pineapple, one added ham, and the last one added pineapple and ham.  I popped them in a 350 oven for 20 minutes in a pan with a lip.

Now, after reviewing things online a lot of recipes call for broiling them for about 5 minutes before adding toppings. I can only imagine that this is to get all of the juices out of them.  I clearly did not bother with this step, but it was not an issue because my pan had a lip on it.

Be mindful of that.

Portobellas do make a fun pizza base though, and I enjoyed the fresher flavors of this over using pizza sauce.  Were these as good as getting pizza sliders from pizza hut that have a zillion calories in them? Probably not.  But they did allow me to eat a birthday cake cookie afterward without feeling like I had been completely awful for the evening haha!

There are benefits to healthy.

All in all, you could really put anything in portobella mushrooms and I think it is worth finding a flavor profile you like.  This pack came with 5 for $3.99, of which I was only able to eat two.  Had this been some sort of meal with something like salad or a side of pasta or similar, I may have only been able to eat one, so they really can be budget friendly.  Portobellas make delicious "burgers" as well.

Happy crafting!