I make pizza from scratch pretty often, because it’s dirt cheap, healthier and my husband and I both prefer my pizza to delivery. However, sometimes you want to just throw something from the freezer into the oven, and we always have a few frozen pizzas in our basement freezer.  I have discovered that no matter what kind you get, they always need a little “dressing up” to taste their best. I think everyone puts some extra mozzarella cheese on frozen pizzas, but I have also found that sprinkling a few chopped onions and green peppers on top, and adding quality pepperoni instead of the frozen lumps of meat product they put on them, makes a huge difference in the taste.  I actually go so far as to remove the pepperoni that comes on it and throw it away, although that is not terribly frugal of me to admit. My husband made fun of me at first for doing it (he is a huge meat fan, but not terribly picky about it, either) but even he admitted that it vastly improved the whole pizza.

(Wait. Isn’t this post supposed to be about green peppers?)

The thing is, I don’t usually have green peppers in my crisper. I buy them for specific recipes, and honestly, I try to avoid buying them most of the time because they cost too much.  That means, I rarely have any sitting around that I don’t have earmarked for something else.  Last summer, I started chopping up the leftover bits–you know, that wonky piece around the stem, or any of the pepper that would just go to waste, and some of the ones given to me from my mom’s garden and throwing them in a baggie in the freezer. Ta da! Now I pull the baggie directly out of the freezer, sprinkle a few frozen pieces on top of the pizza, and put the bag back.  Instant fresh pepper goodness, directly from your freezer.

In the winter, green peppers are pretty expensive, so when my last batch of diced peppers ran out, I bought a bag of pre-chopped frozen peppers on sale. Luxury convenience food, cheaper than the alternatives of dicing it myself.  They work just as well and you don’t have to clean up pepper seeds.

This trick also works in many other green pepper applications, but I mainly use it for pizza, both frozen and homemade.  You can also do it for onions, but I always have an onion in the fridge, so I don’t use frozen onions as much. (If chopping onions really hurts your eyes, though, it may be a wise investment for you. I am the designated onion chopper in this household, and although it does make me cry, it doesn’t usually bother me too much. My husband would enjoy having some in the freezer, though, so perhaps I should make him a batch for his special meals.. but his cooking projects really deserve their own post. Let’s just say that there’s a reason I do most of the cooking!)