The Book Pantry: Eat Your Veggies!

Cause it's time for Rabbit Pizza! Okay, so it's not really made from rabbits (promise). These actually started life as veggie bars, but my family renamed them. I picked up this recipe from my quasi-vegetarian best friend, Rachel (everyone say hi to Rachel and wave). You can top it with your choice of vegetables, so it's really flexible. Tonight I've chosen broccoli and carrots. It's also disgustingly easy to make, which is great since I just got off my weekend shift at work and am exhausted.

What You'll Need

Supplies

Cookie sheet Mixing spoon

Cutting Board Medium mixing bowl

Knife for chopping

Ingredients

2 packages of crescent roll dough 8 oz cream cheese

Broccoli 1 package dry ranch dressing mix

Carrots Mayonnaise

Now Let's Make Rabbit Pizza!

Start by preheating your oven to 375F. Open your crescent roll dough and lay it flat over your cookie sheet. The first package can pretty much be rolled out as is, but you'll have to break up the second one a bit. Press the dough together anywhere the edges meet, including the places where the dough would normally separate to make rolls. You may have about 2 crescent rolls worth of dough left over, depending on the size of your cookie sheet. Bake at 375F for 10 to 12 minutes, until the dough is golden brown. Set aside to cool.

So, don't eat this before an interview

While the dough is cooling, begin chopping up your vegetables. Chop only the crowns of the broccoli into bite size pieces; discard stems. I used pre-shredded carrots from the grocery. There are tons of other vegetables that go really well with this (but I was too lazy to chop): bell peppers, cucumber, red onions, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, celery, etc. Use whatever raw vegetable combination appeals most to you (and is tasty with ranch flavor. Olives = blegh!). Set all your chopped veggies aside.

Put 8 oz of cream cheese in your medium mixing bowl. Soften in the microwave if necessary to make the cream cheese easily workable, but be very careful not to melt it! Add half of the ranch dressing packet and mix thoroughly. Taste. If it's not ranchy enough for you add more of the ranch mix, but be careful; it's potent stuff. Once blended, mix in mayo 1 Tbsp at a time as needed to achieve a spreadable consistency. I find that this varies; sometimes I need up to 3 Tbsp mayo and others I don't need any.

Spread the ranch flavored cream cheese over the top of the cooled crescent roll crust. If the crust is not completely cool yet, wait! If you top it while it's still too warm, the spread will become a runny sauce very quickly (and runny is just not a word you want associated with your cooking). Spread the ranch cream cheese evenly so as to avoid any clumps. Top this with an even coating of your vegetables.