Pizza Pizzaz Part Nine: Cowabunga Pizza

If you are a child of the 80s like me,
into the wave of retro movies going on,
or have just seen a lot of the pop
culture churned out in 1987 you are
probably at least slightly familiar with
the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
movie. I started with the comics, but we're not here to talk
about what a geek I am...

Not many will remember this among all the pizza talk of the TMNT movies,
but somehow I did and decided to try it myself.

At some point in the movie the turtles are talking about organics
and gardening and then they throw out the idea of organic marshmallows
on their pizza. Well, organic maybe not. Vegan? Yes.

Hence the 'Cowabunga Pizza' in honor of one of my childhood faves.



Starting with some Dandies (which they now carry at our whole foods)...



I tore them in half since the actual pizza was not that large and I
didn't want too many. I used a mix of moz and cheddar daiya.





Other than that nothing special. A nice red sauce and a plain crust.



I don't know why I was surprised, but they completely exploded.
For some reason I was thinking they'd turn all golden and crispy
like on a camp fire, but no. This was a 450F oven and they completely
blew up and spread across the whole pizza.



Honestly, I think that Dandies needs to start looking into making
vegan cheese because this pizza looks like the perfect, classic
cheese pizza.

It was not as sweet as I as expecting either. Monkey-Man,
I have to say, was not down for this. I'm sure he was bracing himself
to vomit. But it was pretty good believe it or not.

It reminded me of one of those little kid packs of make your own cold
cheese pizzas... Although, I cannot imagine when I ever had one.
I think because processed food already has so much more sweetener in
every ingredient that with extra sugar on top, that is what it started
to taste similar to-- something more commercial.

I think we all need to have more fun with our food and not get so
caught up in our own expectations. Cowabunga, dudes.