Whole Wheat Veggie Chicken Sausage Pizza

I saw this pizza on the cover of Clean Eating and had to try it. It is delicious! They had no crust recipe, and instead basically just said to buy the frozen crust from Trader Joes. Well, I have no Trader Joes within about 400 miles. So we found a recipe online and followed that.

It turned out sooo good. I loved the toppings. Pizza is my favorite food by a long shot, but it makes me feel sick and puffy after I eat it. I wake up all swollen and it just isn't worth it most of the time. This one doesn't do that.

I think the key is that it has a healthier crust, and isn't so salty. The crust makes it very filling. One or two slices will fill you up, where many other kinds, I can really eat about four slices. I ground up my own flour in my Blendtec, but you can just use whole wheat flour if you don't have a grinder or wheat.



Here is what is in the crust:

1 T honey or sugar (any simple sugar that will feed the yeast will do)
1.5 C warm water (110 degrees F)
1 T active dry yeast
1 T Olive oil
3.5 C Whole Wheat flour

Toppings we used:

Fresh mushrooms
1 small can sliced black olives
1 Amy's Apple Gouda Chicken Sausage (refrigerated deli foods from Costco)
Sliced red onion
Bell Peppers
1.3 cups Mozzarella Cheese/pizza
3/4 C Marinara Sauce

In a large bowl, dissolve honey or sugar in warm water. Sprinkle yeast over the top and let stand for about 10 minutes until foamy.

Stir the olive oil and salt into yeast mixture, then mix in the whole wheat flour until dough starts to come together. Tip dough out onto a surface floured with the remaining flour, and knead until all flour has been absorbed and the ball of dough becomes smooth, about 10 minutes. Place dough in oiled bowl, then turn to coat surface. Cover loosely with a towel, and let stand in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.



When the dough is doubled, tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and divide into 2 pieces for a thin crust, or leave whole to make one thick crust. Form into a tight ball. Let rise for about 45 minutes until doubled.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Roll a ball of dough with a rolling pin until it will not stretch any further. place on a well oiled pizza pan or seasoned baking stone with a bit of cornmeal. Top pizza with your favorite toppings.


Bake for 16-20 minutes depending on thickness. When the crust is crisp and golden at the edges and cheese is melted on top, remove from the oven.

My pizzas were 12" in diameter, and sliced into 8 pieces were about 170 calories per slice.

My Butterbell bit the dust

This is really one of my favorite little gadgets ever. I love real butter. I don't like margarine. But I hate how the real butter gets so hard in the refrigerator, and so icky and messy when it stays out.

So the Butterbell solved those little problems. You pack a cube of butter into the bell shaped lid, and add a bit of water to the crock to create a seal to keep your butter fresh and cool, but not cold. It stays fresh--they say up to thirty days--and it is so easy to spread.

Sadly, Simone knocked

it off the counter last week and mine shattered. But if you are still looking for Christmas ideas, this is a great little item. I bought

ours for $20 at the local health food store. But I haven't seen them anywhere else. You can buy them online here.

No Sugar Lion House Wassail Recipe

I love wassail during the holidays! This one is very good, and has no sugar. The original Lion House recipe calls for 2 1/4 C sugar. I changed this to 1 cup agave nectar which made it plenty sweet and cut out about 775 calories to the batch. Another idea is to use Stevia. Stevia has no calories and is derived from the sweet Stevia leaf. It works well in drinks, but has an aftertaste. I prefer the taste of the agave nectar.

In a small pot combine:

1 cup water
1 slice fresh ginger root
2 cinnamon sticks
8 whole allspice berries
1 T cloves
1 slice fresh ginger root (I just used two drops ginger oil)

Or if you have mulling spices, use 3 T of those instead of cinnamon, allspice and cloves.

Boil spices in 1 cup water for 5 minutes. Remove from heat, cover and let stand in a warm place for 1 hour.

In a large pot combine:

1 cup agave nectar
3 cups water
2 cups lemon juice (I used the juice of four lemons which was only about a cup)
4 cups Orange juice
8 cups apple juice

Strain spice liquid into the larger pot.

**Tip: I just poured the water and spices into the blender and blended them up. Then added this through a cheesecloth into the large pot of juices. It was very tasty! not too spicy or grainy.

Bring to a boil. Remove from heat and serve.

Makes 36 half cup servings. Each serving has 64 calories.

Healthy Treat Ideas

We all need something that we can indulge in. Treats make our lives more fun and interesting. But we don’t want to compromise our health on a regular basis either. It is great when we can eat treats that are also giving our body good nutrition.

So here are some of my favorites that also offer nutritional benefits:

Frozen fruit:

So simple and easy! Miles has just been enjoying some frozen pineapple. He says it must be made out of ice cream. LOL. I have to admit that I had to recheck the package because it tasted like it was laced in sugar. It was sooo yummy.

Another new one that I've been enjoying this year is frozen dark red cherries. We keep the frozen strawberries, triple berries, and blueberries from Costco on hand as well.

I had a friend whose kids called frozen fruit "little popsicles." I thought that was so cute. And it inspired me. I started giving my kids bowls of frozen blueberries for a snack instead of otter pops and other stuff I'd succumbed to. They loved it. It was Miles and Simone's favorite when they were babies.

Smoothies:

Smoothies deserves its own post! There are so many good ones. It is a good way to get something sweet.

Chocolate:

We love chocolate around here. In fact it was one of Miles's first words. Jared has a friend that used to bring us some Xocai chocolate all the time. It is kinda pricey, but we've done trades and been able to get it for a bargain. Dagoba is also a good one. I love to break off a thin piece and dip it peanut butter.

Chocolate has lots of antioxidants, and is actually pretty good for you. It is the waxes, sugar and fillers that isn't good for you.

Healthy Hot Cocoa:

I don't have the recipe down really well for this one yet. But it is non-dairy and is really creamy and yummy!

Protein Shakes:

I've said before I love my Jay Robb's Protein. With only four ingredients, it is a good one. Jared has another brand that seriously tastes like a milkshake. It has far more ingredients that I don't know what they are--which is something I try to stay away from, but man is it good! This is it:

Nuts:

Okay, cooked nuts are not really good for you. But my sister Angela made the tastiest salad that had nuts glazed in maple syrup. It was so good. I had some handfuls of those nuts and really enjoyed it!

Apples dipped in Peanut Butter:

This is one of my favorite snacks. I love Adam's peanut butter. You can get it at the regular grocery store. I like the crunchy. The oil separates, so it has to be mixed when you buy it. I dump it all out into a mixing bowl, and mix it with the blender, then put it back in the jar. I've tried lots of peanut butter, even the ones you don't have to mix, and my favorite is still Adam's.

Popcorn with butter and spices:

I like popcorn, and with a bit of butter and salt, it is really good. Growing up, a good friend had fun movie nights with her family where they'd make popcorn on the stove (glad I can do it in the microwave now!) and have orange julius drinks. I loved it. We make orange julius's in the blender. We just put in OJ concentrate, add a ton of ice and less water, and put vanilla to taste. My blender really blends it all smooth. You can add pure cranberry juice for some extra tang.

Coconut Dates:

I went to a raw food class once and it was fun to see the treats they made. One was a date stuffed with an almond and rolled in cocoa powder and unsweetened coconut flakes. It was really good.

Coconut Macaroons:

This is another raw food treat. Take 1 cup of fine coconut flakes, mix in a couple teaspoons of cocoa powder, a few drops of vanilla and mix with 3 T agave nectar. Mix well. Form balls and let dry.

Cranberry Orange Cheesecake Pears

I was making a list of all my favorite healthy treats and realized that I had no replacement for cheesecake. I really love a little slice of cheesecake.

The same day, I was checking out the magazine aisle and saw the newest copy of my favorite food magazine Clean Eating. And right there on the cover it had this recipe. It is mostly healthy ingredients--low fat cream cheese is really the only one that would qualify as bad for you on my list, but for a treat, I'll take it. The cinnamon and cranberry makes your house smell sooo good and is fun to do with the kids. Miles said "Thanks mommy, this is the best cake ever." I had to agree, it is delicious and would be a beautiful Thanksgiving pie replacement.

So here it is, in all its 208 calorie per serving glory:

Serves 10
Ingredients:

Pears:

10 bosc pears (really only five total pears, then you half them and have 10 halves. Bosc pears are brown and have longer necks than the others)
2 cinnamon sticks
2 cups 100% cranberry juice
2 cups orange juice
1 vanilla bean split lengthwise (I omitted this since I don't have any, but I am sure it makes it extra delicious)

Cheesecake Stuffing:

1 cup light cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp dried ground ginger
1/8 tsp almond extract
1/3 c dried unsweetened cranberries
1/3 c unsalted, sliced almonds toasted

Instructions:

1. slice pears in half and peel. Trim bottoms so that they lay flat. Using a small spoon or melon baller, scoop out and discard cores. Place pears in a very large, wide, heavy bottomed saucepan. (I just used my big covered skillet). Add cinnamon sticks and juices. Scrape out seeds from vanilla bean and stir in; add scraped bean husks too.

2. Bring to a boil then reduce heat. Cover and simmer, occasionally turning pears over (I didn't do this and they were fine) to carefully ensure even cooking until almost tender but still a little firm, about 20-25 minutes.

3. In a bowl, stir cream cheese with vanilla extract, ginger and almond extract until mixed. If the mixture is too thick, asdd a few spoonfuls of hot pear cooking liquid. Stir in cranberries and almonds.

4. Carefully spoon pears onto a large platter. Cover and refrigerate to cool completely. Boil remaining pear liquid in pan, stirring often, until it reduces to 1/2 cup. The sauce will foam and bubble toward the end of the cooking, so be sure to stir often. Remove from heat and discard cinnamon sticks and vanilla husks.

5. To serve, fill pears with cream cheese mixture. Place on plates and spoon sauce over top.

Calories: 208
Total Fat: 6 g
Carbs: 38 g
Fiber: 5 g
Protein: 4 g

Healthy Strawberry Smoothie Popsicles

Last night we had some strawberries to use up, so I made a smoothie. The kids loved it! So I ended up making two batches, and another today. I made a variation for Simone.

Here is the recipe:

2 cups Strawberries
1 cup Plain yogurt
1 T vanilla
3 T agave nectar
2 T orange juice concentrate
1 tray ice (unecessary if you use frozen strawberries)
Just enough water to blend

You can use stevia to sweeten this instead of agave if you don't want the extra calories.

And in Simone's I added 1/3 cup cashews to make it thicker and creamier (trying to fatten up my skinny girl!). My Blendtec blends it perfectly smooth, but if you don't have a powerful blender, I would omit them.

We poured some of the smoothie into our popsicle molds. The kids loved having popsicles for breakfast this morning and after school.

Here is my happy girl with her popsicle. The push up was too difficult for her little hands, so we used our other molds.

Healthy Sack Lunch Ideas!

With my kids starting school tomorrow, I thought it would be great to get some ideas saved for future reference here. This year, Elise has informed me that she doesn’t want to eat sugar for the whole school year in exchange for money to buy clothes. (Score! I have to buy them clothes anyway, so this is somewhat of a freebie for me!) So all of these ideas will be sugar-free.

I have a little cooler that I bring with me in the car when my kids have gymnastics. I pack it with fruit, cheese, crackers, nuts, etc and take the kids that are waiting with me to the park for a picnic so we don’t have to do a fast food run.

Gear:

First things first, having the right storage is a big help. Last year, my friends were talking about food jars. Something I’d never heard of. I was so happy to fork out the $12 or whatever it cost (I remember it being somewhat pricey at Target by the coolers and thermos stuff). It has totally saved me from fixing sandwiches every single day. And with the Great Harvest bread that we like at $5 a loaf, I've definitely saved money with this little investment.

This is what the food jar looks like:

I pop in some leftovers in the microwave when I am fixing her lunch, then stick it in the food jar. At lunchtime, it is still nice and hot. I use the food jar for soup (which my kids absolutely love), and for cold items like frozen berries and yogurt.

The other items I love are the 1/3 cup sized gladware containers. Often they have them in the checkout aisle at Wal-mart on the side by the hand sanitizers, Kleenex and Carmex. It is just the perfect size for applesauce, cottage cheese, yogurt, salad dressing, dips, peanut butter for dipping apples, hummus, oil and vinegar, strawberries, kiwi, grapes, blueberries etc. I love that they don’t leak! Elise loves oil and vinegar to dip her bread into. So I can just pour a bit into these, and it fits great.

I also bought some partitioned containers for making our own lunchables. They look like this:

I use them with wasa crackers. My kids will eat those, some people think they taste like cardboard. I am a big fan though! I love them. And they are very low calorie and whole grain.

I use the shallow sandwich sized containers for salads. Elise just started liking salad. She loves Ceasar salad, so we’ll be making those a lot I think.

Here is Jared's lunchbox from Costco. The girls like their cute ones best, but this one is highly functional, and Elise will just have to use it until hers comes:

Some ideas of things to pack--Leftovers are definitely the quickest thing to pop into the food jar:

• Soups
• Enchiladas
• Pasta
• Chicken Ceasar salad (dressing separate so it doesn’t get wilted)
• Chili
• Rice, corn and Beans bowl—salsa, avocado, cheese
• Sweet Potatoes

Other main events:

• Turkey sandwich with cheese avocado and tomato
• Peanut butter and honey sandwich
• Chicken tacos—I put cabbage in my tacos to keep them more crunchy, and include a lime wedge and some pico de gallo or salsa.
• Turkey Wrap, cheese, salsa, avocado and wrap tightly!
• Homemade lunchables (with good meat and crackers in sectioned container)
• Pita pocket sandwich

We also have some school lunch staples for when we are crunched for time. These include things that can just be tossed into the bag and I buy them all from Costco:

• Applesauce cups--make sure they don't have corn syrup and sugar
• String Cheese
• Fruit Leathers--we like the 100% fruit Stretch Island brand
• Dried apples and other fruits
• 100% juice Capri suns—we freeze these and use them when we want to keep something cold
• Mini waters from Costco—half the size of the tall ones, great frozen also since they thaw by lunchtime
• Baby carrots individually wrapped
• Laughing cow cheese wedges

Fruits my kids love at school: (can dip with yogurt or peanut butter)

• Frozen berries with plain yogurt and agave nectar
• Kiwi
• Mango
• peaches
• Strawberries
• Grapes
• Oranges
• Apple slices (love to dip in Adam’s peanut butter)
• Fresh pineapple
• Thread on a caramel apple stick for fun

Veggies: (can dip with hummus or ranch)

• Cucumbers
• Carrots
• Celery
• Bell Peppers (Monet’s favorite!)
• Edamame (come in small individual packages from Costco in the frozen section)

Just a little tip about the hummus, I don't eat THAT much hummus. So I buy the one from Costco, put it in the smaller 1/3 cup sized containers and freeze it. Then I have just enough for when I am craving it, but don't waste the rest. We do the same thing with the Pesto from Costco.

Other Stuff:

• Popcorn using the microwave in a brown bag method and adding a little salt and butter
• Trailmix—I make my own mix from the bulk bins--shredded unsweetened coconut, raisins, dates, sunflower seeds, almonds, cashews
• Dark chocolate square to dip in peanut butter
• Hard cooked egg with salt
• Baked tortilla chips with cottage cheese—these baked chips are hard to find these days. It looks like Tostitos doesn’t carry theirs anymore, but you can always throw some corn tortillas into the oven and bake them for a few minutes to make your own.
• Pickles and “banana peppers” those little sandwich peppers, my kids love them!
• Box of Raisins

Fun Stuff:

• Notes for kids with a riddle or a joke—great tip from restaurants. Make it fun! My girls LOVE telling jokes right now. Especially Monet.
• Stickers, Mad Libs, Crossword Puzzles, Word Finds, and Mazes