The Rules of Srevotfel

Srevotfel Night: the night on which we make pizza using leftovers as toppings, the goal being to use only leftovers as toppings, which creates some wonderful pizza combinations in addition to clearing out the refrigerator and encouraging frugality.

Okay, so there are a few rules to srevotfel night:

1) Use ONLY leftovers for the toppings -- the entire point of srevotfel night is to use up leftovers. If you go out and buy a ton of ingredients to make specific pizzas, it defeats the purpose and it does not lend itself to the creativity and quality which makes srevotfel night great.

2) The weirder the combination sounds the more likely it is to taste awesome. Example -- even my stomach turned at the thought of a sauerkraut and kielbasa pizza, but we made it and it was amazing. Possibly the best pizza we've made so far.

3) If it tasted bad the first time you made it, then it probably won't taste good on a pizza. If something was too salty, too burned, etc., it probably won't taste good when you stick it on a pizza crust.

4) If it's past its expiration date, don't put it on a pizza. Cooking rotten food doesn't make it un-rotten. Just saying.

5) If you need to get crust ingredients and/or cheese, that's okay. It's great to try to use whatever odds and ends of cheese you have, but if you don't have any, well, pizza isn't quite the same without cheese (though I know people who love it without cheese, so do what you like cheese-wise).

Of course, you don't have to stick to the rules, but we've found that when eating some of these combinations if there were a "safe" pizza, it would be easy to stick to it rather than to branch out and find out what other possibilities are out there. Examples of pizzas we've made: pulled turkey pizza with sweet potatoes and jalapenos; turkey and stuffing pizza with cranberry sauce drizzle; mashed potato, roasted chicken, gravy and spinach pizza (nom, nom, nom); and chicken marsala pizza.

We've made 2-3 pizzas for srevotfel night a week since September 2009, and we have not had a bad one yet. So, dig in and go for it!