Fig, Prosciutto and Arugula - kind of home grown food

When we moved to Vegas, we had to landscape our back yard.  We thought it would be cool to have some heat resistant fruit trees (peach, pear, fig and apple) planted in the back yard along with a garden.  How successful was that venture?  Five years later, we put a pool in place of the garden and all the trees but the fig.  Short version - epic gardening fail.
On top of that, I had NO experience in figs beyond Fig Newtons.  In fact, when the fig tree would produce, I had no idea how to tell if they were ripe or not (except that when the birds would eat them, I figured they were ripe).

Recently, we actually had the fig (and other non-fruit trees) fertilized.  What happened?  The tree made a butt-load of figs. When they were on, it was making upwards of 15 figs per day.  For someone who hadn't eaten figs before, this result was a bit disconcerting.  I didn't know what to do with the fruit (though the birds did), but I didn't want to waste it.  Fortunately, my Epicurious app for my iPhone came to the rescue, again.

The Epicurious app gave me a recipe for a fig, prosciutto and arugula pizza.  This pizza looked good because of prosciutto and gorgonzola cheese, two of my favorites.  Amy actually bought a pizza dough, instead of making her own, but it was still good.

We sliced up some black figs, and laid them atop the base of gorgonzola and prosciutto.  I grilled the pizzas until the cheese was melted and then added arugula and balsamic vinegar.

The result?  Not bad.  Overall, it was too strong.  The gorgonzola was either too strong a cheese, or I used too much of it.  I would strongly consider a milder blue cheese next time I made this.  Otherwise, it was quite tasty.  It is a good mix of salty and sweet, and the arugula makes it seem healthy.

Big picture:  Having food growing in your yard is cool.  It lends a whole new level of enjoyment to eating, when you know it is as local as local gets.  In the next year, we are going to add a garden (again) to our back yard, to grow more good foods and give the kids the experience and understanding that food doesn't come from grocery stores.