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Take your pizza quality up a notch while keeping money in your wallet by starting to make pizza at home. While pizza may seem complicated, with a little planning and thought, you can whip up gourmet-quality creations faster than that delivery car can pull into your driveway.

Here are some easy, cheesy starter tips:

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Oh, the joys and delights of that perfect food… pizza.  Just looking at this picture is making me drool, how about you?

Takeout pizza always seems to taste better than homemade, doesn’t it?  It’s partly because of their specialty pizza ovens, but it’s mostly the excessive amounts of grease and salt.  Frozen pizzas are often full of MSG and artificial flavours.  Not to mention the potential risk of PFC’s in the boxes!

For those of us trying to save a little money, and keep our families healthy, here are a few tips on making your homemade pizzas super-yummy.

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The iJET technique is so easy and cheap to carry out that it could revolutionize access to solar technology in the developing world.

In a recent radio interview (audio), Nicole Kuepper, a 23 year-old PhD student at the University of New South Wales, explained the process.

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While we cook almost everything on the grill during the summer months (and quite often the rest of the year), we have a few rainy-day summer meals we like to fall back on. It was an extremely stormy Sunday this past weekend, so we had a pizza night, which is why you are getting the pizza post.

You don’t have to have all the home pizza making bells and whistles, but they do help. We have a wonderful wooden pizza ‘peel’, which is the giant wooden spatula thing that helps get the pizza in and out of the oven. We also have a pizza stone, which is a great cooking element that you put in the oven rather than putting the pizza directly on the rack. Pizza peels and stones aren’t very expensive.

Easy Crust

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What are PFCs?

PFCs are man made chemicals used for decades to make products that resist heat, oil, stains, grease and water. They are commonly used in nonstick cookware, stain-resistant carpets and fabrics, and food packaging. PFCs are found in packaging for fast-food sandwiches, french fries, pizza, baked goods, beverages, and candy to prevent staining and grease spots. There is evidence that these dangerous chemicals migrate to food from the packaging, especially when heated. According to the Environmental Working Group, PFCs are found in over 98% of American’s blood!

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The uptown eatery, which was recently featured on CNNMoney.com, goes to exceptional lengths to be eco-friendly. When the Minnesota weather cooperates, for instance, Galactic Pizza employees (costumed as unique superheroes) will deliver your order by electric car. The restaurant also gets its power from wind energy, sends some of its food waste to local pig farms and prints its menus on hemp.

The pizzas, too, are created with a green philosophy: many of the ingredients come from farms in Minnesota or Wisconsin, other ingredients are organic and the mozzarella comes from non-rGBH cows. Even vegans can find a menu item to their tastes, with choices including vegan mozzarella, vegan chicken and mock duck.

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Well, okay, almost never. Giving up the meat was far easier than I ever expected. Eggs? Never liked those much anyway. Milk? Soymilk made de-dairying a breeze. Even ice cream, you ask? Let me introduce you to Turtle Mountain and Tofutti. All was well in our vegan world, except for one thing: cheese. Even vegans have a recommended daily intake of pizza!

At first, we decided we would cheat with cheese and pretend we were vegans anyway. This became harder and harder to do as we learned more and more about the environmental harm dairy farms can cause. We tried vegan soy cheese alternatives, but found that most brands (but not all) were mouth-numbingly bland, didn't melt, and/or tasted like wet cardboard marinated in that water you pour out of tofu packages. Mmmm.

Clearly, it was time for something new. I first read about cashew "cheese" when I read Eric Marcus' excellent book Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating (now available as a free e-book download!). I thought the idea of vegan cheese made from cashews sounded crazy… Crazy enough to try!

Fast forward a few years, and I've now refined my own version of a cashew cheese recipe to the point where I actually prefer it over cow cheese. It's also one of my favorite DIY projects because I get to use my favorite power tool: the food processor.

As with anything you put on your plate, cashew cheese can be made even greener by using ingredients that are grown locally and grown organically.

Vegan Cashew Cheese

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup cashews (raw is best, roasted is still great, and try flavored cashews too)

• 1/2 cup water (or slightly more)

• 1/4 cup red bell pepper (raw or roasted)

• 1/4 small red onion (if you're cooking for a date, or more otherwise!)

• 1/4 cup yeast flakes

• 2 garlic cloves (see "red onion")

• 3 tbsp lemon juice

• 2 tbsp Bragg's Liquid Aminos (on the health food isle everywhere, or use lite soy sauce)

• 1 tbsp sesame oil

• 1 tsp sea salt (optional) if the cashews are unsalted

Put everything in a food processor and blend it until it's creamy. If it's too thick, add more water. If it's too watery, add more cashews. It should have a Cream of Wheat-like consistency, or just a bit thicker. For a pizza, spread it thinly over pizza sauce (it's very rich, so a little bit goes a long way), top it off with your favorite vegetables, and pop it in the oven. If the cashew cheese becomes golden-brown more than a few minutes before the pizza crust is done, cover the top of the pizza with foil.

This recipe is plenty for a medium-sized pizza. I like making larger batches and keeping leftovers in the fridge.

Cashew cheese is also great in quesadillas, toasted sandwiches, or just about any other dish that calls for cheese. Lactose intolerant? You're welcome.

Enjoy! If you try the recipe, be sure to let us know how it turns out.