You don't win friends with salad

I work in a Marketing department. For anyone who doesn't, that basically means that I work with a whole bunch of other crazy, mostly unorganized slackers.

Being crazy and slackers, we are very good at coming up with "team-building" activities that keep us from doing actual work.

One of these activities is a periodic "cook-off" that take place over a long lunch hour. There are several of us who are fantastic cooks, some of us who are only okay cooks but just really enjoy it, and then there are the ones who just like to make a mess in the kitchen and the results are a total crap shoot. (I fall into that last category).

Anyway, our first cook-off challenge was lasagna. And the team that one that challenge got to pick and organize the next challenge. We had traditional lasanga, we had lasagna hors d'ouevres, Jamaican lasagna, ice cream lasagna... but the lasagna that won... was really just a salad. It was layered vegetables held together with some sort of carrot/tomato sauce. It won mostly because of the creativity points. (Because really...vegetables??? We were all about the meat and cheese!!!)

Anyway, the group that won set the next challenge as... yup... salad.Thinking I'd be able to turn their own tricks against them, I immediately started plotting a meat salad. (Hey, if they can make lasagna with plants, I can make salad with MEAT!)

What I came up with.... Hawaiian pizza salad in an edible bowl!

K... here's what I did.

To make the edible  bowls, I took pizza dough and rolled out little circles that I could lay over the underside of my muffin tray (You may have seen this done with cookie dough on Pinterest and Facebook)

At first, I tried using a cookie cutter to cut the dough, but pizza dough isn't like cookie dough - too elastic. In the end, it was easier to just take a ball of dough and roll it roughly into the size and shape I wanted. These are fairly thin, but I suppose you could make thicker ones if you like thick crust. (The muffin tin was lightly floured first.)

I baked them at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes until they became nice and golden. Some puffed right up, but no worries there, when they cooled a little bit, I just squished the air pockets and they went right back into shape.

While the dough was baking, I fried up a pack of bacon, drain the grease and let it cool. (You could use leftover ham instead)

Then the pepperonis were broiled until they got nice and crispy. Once they were cool, I chopped them and the bacon up, and mixed it all together in a large bowl.

A drained can of pineapple tibits, and a butt-load of shredded mozzarella cheese was added and all mixed together into a nice "pizza salad".

Come contest time, the salad was served in the pizza dough bowls, and finished off with a dollop of thick tomato dressing (pizza sauce)!

Sadly.... my meatzza salad didn't win (beat out by quinoa... seriously!) but it was a lot of fun to make - and the men in my department love me now. Though honestly, it really is easier to just make a darn pizza.

And you don't win friends with salad anyway!