“Reality Bites” is one of my favorite movies.

I chose the 4 different toppings for these mini polenta pizzas to represent the movie’s four main characters. A plain cheese one could represent the fifth character, a love interest for one of the leads.

But I’ll get more into that after the recipe, which makes 4 “servings.” The pictured pizzas are vegetarian and gluten-free, but you can easily adapt the toppings to make them lactose-free, dairy-free, vegan and/or low FODMAP.

Ingredients
1 roll of polenta, sliced
1 cup crushed tomatoes
2 chives, diced (or 1 tablespoon dried chives)
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 8-ounce container ciliegine mozzarella
4 tablespoons rosemary-infused olive oil
half a 14-ounce tube of vegan or vegetarian sausage, thawed and formed into little balls
4 ounces mushrooms, sliced
half a 3-ounce package of vegan pepperoni-flavored jerky
half a 4-ounce package of hot honey walnuts

Instructions
Make sure your sausage is thawed if it was frozen.

Grease a baking sheet and preheat the oven to 375°F.

Form your sausage into pizza-style balls and precook them in a skillet with the rosemary-infused olive oil for about 5 minutes. Remove them from the skillet and set them aside.

Keep any remaining liquid from the sausage in the skillet and add the sliced mushrooms.

Depending on how much liquid is left, you may need to add another tablespoon of oil. Sauté the sliced mushrooms for 5 minutes and then remove them from the heat.

Slice the polenta into approximately 20 flat pieces and place them on the baking sheet. As you can see, I went a little too thick with some of my early slices so I wound up with just 18 (or 17.5).

In a small bowl, mix together the crushed tomatoes, diced chives and red pepper flakes. Place a spoonful of the sauce on each polenta slice.

Open and drain the ciliegine mozzarella. Place one ball in the middle of each pizza.

Add the rest of the toppings (precooked sausage, pepperoni, sauteed mushrooms and hot honey walnuts) as you like around the cheese. As you can tell, we went for a variety here and kept a couple as plain cheese pizzas.

Bake the pizzas for about 10 minutes, or until the ciliegine mozzarella softens.

Serve and enjoy with “Reality Bites” and a Big Gulp drink!

The Easy Route
It may be difficult to find pre-made mini polenta pizzas, but you could do something different like pizza bagel bites or pizza rolls.

A couple things that could make this recipe a little easier: using pre-made pizza sauce or sausage that doesn’t need to be precooked. You can also buy sliced, canned mushrooms to eliminate the prep work for them.

The Pairing
I love a good coming-of-age movie, and “Reality Bites” hits all the right notes of mid-1990s nostalgia.

You’ve got Winona Ryder at peak 1990s icon level, Ethan Hawke being a gorgeous grunge musician, Janeane Garofalo at her alternative best (this is a compliment), early glimpses of Steve Zahn’s comedic chops and a newcomer named Ben Stiller both in a supporting role and the director’s chair.

Plus there’s the soundtrack, from a little bit of convenience store fun with “My Sharona” by The Kinks to a memorable dramatic sequence set to “All I Want Is You” by U2.

Lelaina (Ryder), Vickie (Garofalo) and Sammy (Zahn) graduate from college in the film’s opening scenes and celebrate with their pal Troy (Hawke), who dropped out.

We quickly learn that Lelaina and Vickie are roommates, and we get an establishing sequence showing them at work. Lelaina is a production assistant for a morning talk show and budding filmmaker, while Vickie works at the Gap and Troy is a newsstand clerk.

Lelaina gets into a car accident with Michael (Stiller), who is a junior executive at an MTV-esque television network, and a romance begins.

Around the same time, Troy is fired for taking a candy bar from the newsstand and winds up living on Lelaina and Vickie’s couch for a while. The mix of chemistry and tension between Lelaina and Troy make for quite the dynamic when Michael starts showing up more.

One of my favorite parts of the film is the camcorder footage used from the documentary Lelaina is making interspersed with the beautiful, professionally shot movie. It makes the movie seem more realistic and gives authenticity to the characters.

While I love both Ryder and Hawke, and they’re terrific in every scene they have, Garofalo is just fantastic in “Reality Bites.” She is given the space to do both dramatic and comedic scenes, and this movie is one glimpse of why she’s one of my favorite actresses.

I have literally seen this movie dozens of times and find myself quoting from it all too often.

Like I mentioned above, I carefully curated the topping choices for these polenta pizza bites based on these beloved characters.

I started with the typical Italian sausage for Lelaina because her character is the heart and soul of this movie, just like sausage is essential to a good classic pizza.

For Troy, I chose the pepperoni jerky because while pepperoni is delicious and another classic topping, his character can really be a jerk.

I went with hot honey walnuts for Vickie because the combination is unexpected and delicious, two words that I would also use to describe Garofalo’s performance.

I chose the mushrooms for Sammy because they are great supports for the other toppings but also have a few moments to really shine on their own.

If you decide to make a couple plain cheese ones like we did, they can represent Michael. They cheese bites are still tasty but don’t have the depth of flavor the other pizza bites do.

If you decide to make these polenta pizza bites and/or watch “Reality Bites,” let us know! Tag us in your Instagram posts & stories, tweets or TikTok videos: @veg_out_recipes