Pizzaaaaaa

So I finally tried the newish vegan cheese called "Sheese", a European cheese substitute that has made its way onto our shores. I had the Mozzarella flavor hanging around my fridge, and I made a fabulous pizza with it. I used a recipe from Sarah Kramer's La Dolce Vegan, but needed to double the recipe to cover my nice large pizza pan. It also says to bake for 10 minutes before putting the toppings on, but it seemed crumbly, so I may not bake it before putting the toppings on and try it that way. I opened a can of tomato sauce, cut up some mushrooms and an onion, mashed a coupla cloves of garlic (needs more garlic), and grated the cheese under and over the toppings.

And maybe saute the onions before putting them on the pizza, I don't know.

As you can see, the cheese doesn't get very melty, but I kind of appreciate that, as I've had pizza with the Follow Your Heart cheese at a couple of local restaurants, and I don't know why, but the FYH comes out practially liquified--blech. I like it sort of chewy but melty.

It comes in rounds, sort of like a brie, and I have read that it's best to grate or melt it. At one point I just held the grater over the pizza and ran the piece of Sheese over it, which I should have done in the first place instead of using a prep bowl--save a dish to clean.

Sadly, the pizza totally fell apart while I was putting it away, but I'm sure it will still taste good. I also think the Sheese sort of an acquired taste, but many things worth eating are.

Anyway, we had a lovely taste of spring, and then it turned unpleasantly cold around the beginning of the month. We even had a dusting of snow last weekend--snow! in April!--that vanished by the end of the day. I have read that Washington in April is really weird weather-wise. It has gotten as low as 15 degrees and as warm as 95 degrees. I suppose one thing to be grateful for is it hasn't gotten to 95 (yet) because in my apartment building they don't turn off the heat until mid-April; if the temp climbs above 65, I'm almost too warm!

If you want to get some Sheese for yourself, both Vegan Essentials and Pangea carry eight or nine Sheese flavors, but they both say you don't want to get it too warm. I wonder if the hour-and-a-half Metro trip up to Rockville would be problematic...