The perfect end to an unperfect day

What a week it has been! If you are a teacher, you know what the last week of school can be like... 44 report cards to finish, cumulative files to complete, oh... and you still have to keep those kids safe (notice I didn't say "teach"). So at the end of a long day (usually 10 hour days the last week of school), what could be better than some homemade pizza and a big glass of wine?

Laura, I'm sorry for your "fail" with the ww pizza crust. My pizza crust is NOT homemade--it's the pre-made stuff from Trader Joe's. You get points for making your own.

BBQ chicken pizza & with caramelized onions and smoked Gouda:

A few tips for this pizza:
Roll out the pizza dough fairly thin. Place it on your pizza stone (I have one from Pampered Chef). Brush it with olive oil, and let the crust par bake for about 7-9 minutes before putting any toppings on.

Toppings: BBQ chicken (my hubby did a good job of grilling the chicken), caramelized onions (took me 2 hours--the night before--to get them good and caramelized**see note below), mini herloom tomatoes, & smoked Gouda. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Add a sprinkle of cilantro on at the end.

To top it off, Matt & I enjoyed a nice big glass of:

Rideau Estate Syrah. YUM!

** I have been trying my hand at caramelizing onions for quite some time now. It seems that to caramelize onions properly you need to have lots of time on your hands. I have read many cookbooks on how to do this properly and most say it takes around an hour. After cooking the onions on low for close to an hour, I usually get impatient and turn up the heat a little. Come back 10 minutes later, and whadda ya know? They're burned already. The key to caramelizing the onions is time. You have to wait until the onions are good and translucent. Cookbooks can be deceiving--this can take longer than 1 hour!!! After about 90 minutes of cooking on low, I finally turned the heat up to "2" on my burner. 30 minutes later, I had beautiful caramelized onions :) Totally worth the time!