A PIZZA "RECIPE" FOR THE NEW YEAR

I no longer make New Year's resolutions (or at least I resolved not to do so this year), but the one thing I know we'll be doing for the next 12 months is keeping a tight grip on the pocketbook. This means we'll be eating out less and preparing our meals at home more and more. Not so easy to do when we come home tired from work; harder still since we try to have dinner at 6 PM. But definitely quite more challenging with two people who can't seem to figure out what they feel like eating until their stomachs start rumbling in protest. My husband and I -- we may have long-term plans but we live daily on the fly.

For instance we had a late start this morning. OK -- I did, since I woke up at past noon. And when I opened my eyes, my husband wanted to know what we were doing for lunch. Still groggy, I thought about picking up something simple and cheap from somewhere nearby. (Truth is I thought about HIM picking up something since I could barely open my eyes at the time.) And just when we decided where he was going, I remembered the plan and said we were going to make something out of whatever we had in the kitchen instead.

Among the very few things we had in the fridge were: a box of four-cheese pizza from Trader Joe's, a bag of arugula (I always have this nutty green in stock because whenever I see it in the grocery, I think of all the wonderful salads I can make -- until I get home, store the package in the fridge and forget all about it), and some prosciutto di parma. I then remembered a recipe I saw in this month's issue of Real Simple for a pizza with -- well, arugula and prosciutto -- and promptly went to work. OK -- not really. I was still too sleepy that my getting anywhere near a hot oven was deemed too dangerous, and so I supervised and put my husband to work instead.

While the pizza was baking in the oven for about seven minutes, he mixed in a bowl the following ingredients: a generous handful of the arugula leaves, a few slices of the prosciutto (torn into small pieces), a tablespoon or so of peppery olive oil (that I'd bought sometime ago to make my imaginary salad), fresh lemon juice from the Pomona lemon tree I'd planted in the garden this past Spring, and some sea salt and freshly ground pepper. When the pizza was done, he pulled it out and arranged the mixture on top of it. Voila -- a delicious light lunch in less than 10 minutes.

I thought about making a salad using the remainder of the arugula with fresh tomatoes and bits of mozzarella cheese as an accompaniment to our main dish but, alas, my fingers refused to pay any heed to my brain. Baby steps, people...

Happy New Year everybody!