Pizza is arguably one of the greatest inventions of the culinary arts since the discovery of spices! Easy to prepare, versatile, fairly nutritious and absolutely delicious! What’s not to like about pizza?
Pizza is also possibly the PERFECT food for divorced dudes like us. Not only can you order one delivered and eat a couple days off of it for a reasonable price . . . you can also make one yourself without a lot of fuss; AND you can even be healthy in doing so!
OK, first of all, a confession. In my natural state I am a pizza-holic! And none of these wimpy veggie pizzas either! Nawwww gimme a pepperoni, mushroom and black olive pizza with extra cheese (and I MEAN EXTRA!!). I want a pizza that a grown man can barely manage to lift outta the oven! Kapeesh?
BUT . . . I am also capable of rationality and while it’s fine to satisfy my craving for an UBER-Pizza now and again . . . on a normal basis I need to dial it back a few notches.
SO – when I want a good – HEALTHY – and fairly inexpensive pizza I often make it at home! Here’s what I do –
First buy one of those pre-made pizza crusts at the store –
I either buy the Ragu or Chef Boy-R-Dee pizza sauce or I use spaghetti sauce for a change of pace. You can also forego the tomato sauce and just rub the crust down with some olive oil and crushed garlic – very good!
Toppings – whatever appeals to you although if you are trying to watch your weight you might steer clear of pepperoni or sausage. I actually kinda like some cut up chicken, fresh mushrooms, green peppers, onion, black olives and zucchini. I don’t pre-cook the veggies but just put them on the pizza raw as it gives you better flavor in the end.
Cover everything in shredded mozzarella or Italian mixed cheese and then bake on 375 until the cheese is all melted and starting to brown . . . mmmmm-mmmm good scoff!
Makes a great meal just for yourself or if your cooking for your kids as well – what kid doesn’t like pizza?! With the pre-made crusts you can also just prepare several ingredients and then let your kids make their own! VERY popular with my kids when they were young and pretty much guaranteed they’ll eat good ~:?). And what doesn’t get eaten makes great leftovers for lunch or even breakfast the next day (cold pizza and coffee is one of my favorite breakfasts!)
OK – I better stop writing here . . . all this talk about pizza is starting to really make me hungry for an uber-pizza-of-the-gods and there’s that darn ad for ordering pizzas they put up in our sidebar . . . if I don’t stop now I may give in to temptation!
Have a great weekend and Be Well!!
Bill
The first thing I had to have after I started my unaccompanied accompanied tour in Germany was to buy a Betty Crocker cookbook. If you really want an excellent pizza and have some time try Betty Crockers pizza dough recipe. It got my roommate and I through many a late night after hitting the discos.
Here’s the twist. we never split the dough to make two pizzas, but we wanted to be a little colon careful so we halved the recipe with whole wheat flour and regular flour. Then we followed the directions until it came to the topping and sauce. We spread the dough out and placed it on a cookie sheet usually 9″X13″. We always used olive oil for taste.
In the sauce we would put a little red hot sauce extra chopped oregano and garlic. Not too much if you want to keep the walls in your place painted.
We were meat lovers so we would brown some Italian sausage then put it on the sauce with pepperonis and if we had left over bacon that too. Then we were very generous with the cheese usually Mazarella or Provolone along with cheddar.
On top of the cheese we would sprinkle ground oregano and garlic powder. Then add any veggies we had i.e. bell pepper, Banana peppers, and/or olives, onions etc.
Bake til the cheese just starts to brown. My kids also love this pizza.
This recipe takes time so relax and enjoy!
Sounds great! Good thing I just ate or I’d be ordering delivery! ~:?)