Pizza Time with Teresa of Embracing the Spectrum

Please welcome Teresa of Embracing the Spectrum today! She writes beautifully on her blog about her family's journey with autism, a cause dear to my heart. You can find more from Teresa on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Pinterest. Thank you so much for helping out while I'm in the midst of my move! 

When my three-year-old fervently suggested that I add pizza to the meal plan for the coming week, I couldn’t turn him down. We already had frozen pizza dough in the freezer, so his timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Besides, who doesn’t like pizza? I had the perfect easy pizza recipe in mind to feed my picky children and I guarantee you’ll love it, too.

Here’s what you need:

·         Frozen pizza dough (most boxes come with two, so you can either make two pizzas or save some for another day)

·         Oil oil

·         A jar of pizza sauce

·         Pepperoni

·         Italian sausage (I only used two links out of the package and froze the rest)

·         Half of a bell pepper

·         Half of a medium onion

·         2 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:

You will need to thaw out the frozen pizza dough according to package directions. Make sure to pay attention to the directions, or that will come back to bite you later! You do not want to be trying to make pizza and have some half-frozen dough sitting there. Mine said to either put it in the fridge overnight or then thaw on the counter for an hour or to thaw on the counter for three hours. I opted for the fridge option due to previous mishaps with pizza dough forgetfulness.

While the dough thawed the rest of the way (covered and with olive oil drizzled on top of it to keep it moist), I cut up my onion and my Italian sausage. I like my onion diced, so I diced it. The Italian sausage was kept in chunky pieces.  I heated up about a tablespoon of olive oil in 12-inch skillet and then cooked the onions until they where translucent before adding the sausage.

Now, here’s the thing. My kids don’t really like bell peppers. But, while the sausage cooked, I diced the bell pepper. I like to dice them as small as I can. Why? First, I strongly believe that kids should eat veggies. Second, I do my best to hide the veggies in their food as much as I can, but if I can’t, I make it as hard as I can for them to pick it out. I figure they will somehow get some of the nutrition in them accidentally. Most of the time, it actually works!

So, once the meat and onions were finished and I got the bell peppers chopped up, the dough was ready (I had already set it out about half an hour before I started cooking). Advice: set the covered bowl of dough on the stove top between the burners to aid in thawing. Grease a cooking sheet or pizza pan and spread the dough out evenly, then put pizza, then add your pizza sauce. Sprinkle your toppings evenly over the pizza, and then add your cheese.

My pizza dough called for a 450 degree oven and baked for 20 minutes and it turned out just right. The cheese was browned perfectly on the top and the crust was the perfect crispiness. Make sure you let the pizza cool for a while before digging in, but trust me, they will love it! My boys even accidentally ate some green peppers because they gobbled it down so quickly.

Pizza Casserole: Ashley from Forgetful Momma

Today's guest post is by Ashley at Forgetful Momma. She is a blogger and web designer from Cananda and has three adorable little ones! If you like this post, you can find more from Ashley at her at her blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or Pinterest. Thanks so much for being here Ashley! 

My family is crazy about pizza, me? I could take it or leave it at this point. Mainly leave the making it, but take the eating it. When we make pizzas we go all out, thick crust, a few inched of tops, lots of cheese. Everyone loves our pizzas. But what about when you want that pizza taste but not the work. You make Pizza Casserole, much less work, cheaper too.

Start by preheating your oven to 350.

Next cooking your ground beef with onion and garlic. So far so good?

Drain the fat off your ground beef, add a can of pizza sauce and let simmer for 5-10 minutes. While doing that cook your pasta, and shred some mozzarella cheese.

Spray a casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray, put your pasta in the bottom of the casserole dish. Mix egg and milk, and pour over the pasta. Top with beef, top with cheese and bake for 30 minutes.

Enjoy the deliciousness of pizza without rolling out the hard work of making it or the heavy feeling after eating it. This is a great spin on a classic.

Ashley Mullen can be found blogging at Forgetful Momma (http://forgetfulmomma.com) sharing more recipes like this, as well as fun activities and outings. As the mom of three aged five and under life is never boring and leads to a lot of sharing.

Pizza Casserole

Ingredients:

1lb ground beef

1 medium onion – chopped

1 can of pizza sauce

1 cup of pasta

1 cup of mozzarella cheese

½ milk

1 egg, beaten

Start by preheating your oven to 350.

Cook the ground beef with onion and garlic. 

Drain the fat off your ground beef, add a can of pizza sauce and let simmer for 5-10 minutes. While doing that cook your pasta, and shred some mozzarella cheese.

Spray a casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray, put your pasta in the bottom of the casserole dish. Mix egg and milk, and pour over the pasta. Top with beef, top with cheese and bake for 30 minutes.

Simple Pizza Sauce

I'm a worrier by nature. My mind inevitably races through all the different outcomes to an event and fixates on the potential issues. Because I'm also a planner, I next launch into figuring out plans A, B, and C. Given that the Air Force is often involved in the potential issues I have learned that it's best to make plans D, E and F as well. Rarely do we need anything beyond Plan A, but it gives me comfort to work out all the different possibilities just in case. 

Motherhood has exacerbated this habit in me. I spend a huge chunk of each day making sure the boys are taken care of. Did we remember everyone's winter hat? Are they eating enough lunch at school? Are they getting enough sleep? 

I had an epiphany while reading Ginger's blog a few weeks ago. She started a series called a "Happier Healthier Us" and in her first post on the subject equated the way we as mothers neglect to take of ourselves to how we take care of our children. I would never let the boys stay up too late every night or not exercise but I'm full of excuses for why I let myself do this. 

I also find myself more likely to make life easier for all of us if I can justify it as good for the kids too. We'll be moving sometime this year (who knows where or when), my youngest started some new therapies and life in general is changing faster than I can blink. I found myself talking to my husband this weekend about how much the kids like it when we do pizza on Fridays consistently and how it would be good to start more routines like this as we navigate all these changes. It hit me a few hours later that it would be really good for me too. That's one meal every week that I know the whole family will eat. I make the dough in big batches so it's always in the freezer. We always have cheese. Why is it so hard to pursue things that make my life easier but so easy to do it when it's on behalf of someone else? 

It might seem counterintuitive that I follow up a declaration to simplify my life with a recipe for homemade pizza sauce. After all, that's one of the few organic things I can find here regularly. Why make it? 

Well, just like pizza dough, it's a lot easier to make than it sounds. Start to finish it took about 20 minutes and the most complicated thing was chopping an onion. It also made a good amount of sauce, so now I have several pizza's worth of sauce in my freezer. 

And of course, it tastes better. This is one of those recipes that every family is going to make slightly differently. I took the basic flavors and played around until I had a combination that was just right for us. You might like it a little sweeter-add a 1/2 teaspoon of sugar. In summer, use fresh herbs and tomatoes. Add some pureed veggies to sneak in extra nutrients. Make it work for you. 

I feel better already :) 

What can you do this week to take care of yourself and add a little comfort to your life? 

Pizza Sauce

Ingredients: 

2 tbsp olive oil

28 oz can crushed tomatoes 

1 tbsp dried oregano

2 tsp dried basil

2 tbsp tomato paste

1/2 medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

salt and black pepper

Pour the olive oil into a saucepan and then add the diced onion and garlic. When the onion has softened, add the crushed tomatoes, oregano, basil, tomato paste. Stir until combined. Add salt and pepper to taste (I used 1 tsp salt and 1/2 tsp pepper). Simmer for 7-10 minutes until slightly reduced and remove from heat. Use immediately or store in fridge or freezer for use later. 

*If you prefer a totally smooth pizza sauce or have a picky eater who doesn't like to see onions you can use an immersion blender at the end. 

**You can also use fresh tomatoes, but then you'll need to puree with the immersion blender for sure.

Prosciutto and Caramelized Onion Pizza

My college town had the most fabulous pizza place called Antonio's. It was so good and well known that anyone driving from Amherst to my hometown (2 1/2 hours away, mind you) would end up with a list of orders to be brought back and warmed up. I even stumbled over a reference to it in The Penderwicks on Gardem Street! It wasn't just the quality of the pizza itself that was so good, but the unique combinations they had on their menu. Until I ate there it never occurred to me that pizza could be topped by anything other than cheese, pepperoni, maybe onions. And sauce was always red.

Always.

Then I tried pizza with a potato on it. And pizza with tortellini on it. White sauce even! All for a dollar per giant slice. To this day everyone I meet who went to school in Amherst will discuss Antonio's when they get together, no matter how long it has been since we left.

When I started making my own pizza dough I was cautious and started with really basic flavors. Then I stumbled on some more unusual toppings on different blogs: asparagus, zucchini, corn. I remember how much we loved Antonio's and then we would experiment. Whatever was in the fridge was fair game and combinations that I saw online would be filed away for future attempts.

This is one that ended up on regular rotation and while I'm sure I am not the first to put prosciutto and caramelized onion together it really was just me throwing some of our favorite things on a pizza. We ended up loving it. The sweet onions are a perfect contrast to the salty prosciutto. The proportions of the toppings can all be adjusted to your personal taste, particularly the cilantro since that seems to be one herb you either love or hate!

What's your favorite or most unusual pizza topping? 

Caramelized Onion and Prosciutto Pizza
Ingredients:

1 recipe of your favorite pizza crust

1/2 cup pizza sauce

1/2-3/4 mozzarella

3-4 slices of prosciutto 

3 tbsp caramelized onion
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro (optional)

Make the dough according to your recipe.  Once you've gotten the dough into the right shape, spread sauce over it and then cover it with almost all of the cheese. Rip the prosciutto into large chunks and evenly distribute over pizza. Spoon the onions evenly over the pizza then sprinkle the last little bit of cheese over the top and bake per dough instructions. I bake mine 12-15 minutes at 425 after preheating a pizza stone for about 30 minutes. 

Basic Pizza Dough

I remember almost every Wednesday night growing up we had pizza. Isn't it funny how sometimes as an adult you end up repeating patterns or routines you had as a child? Pizza was more of an occasional thing for us until we had kids. Then I started making my own dough and we had it a little more often.

Good friends of ours in California had a special pizza night every Friday. Many times they invited us to join them, and somehow we found ourselves recreating it when we moved to Oklahoma. At the time, it was something familiar and comforting in a new, lonely place. It was fun to try to think of a new flavor combination every week...I even looked up the menu from our favorite pizza place in college (if you ever find yourself in Amherst, MA go to Antonio's!!!) and used that as an inspiration. The routine has slacked off this summer, but I'm gearing up to be more consistent with it once school starts. Life is about to kick back into high gear so it will be nice to have some tradition back too.

I started making my own pizza by buying the pre-made dough in the refrigerated section of Trader Joe's or Fresh and Easy. Somehow the idea of making my own all the time seemed a little much. I played around with a few different recipes for dough, but once I found the one that consistently worked for me I haven't gone back to store bought (not to mention the fact that I no longer have a Trader Joe's or Fresh and Easy down the road!). This recipe will make enough for two pizzas, so we almost always have a batch in the freezer. It only takes a few hours to defrost, so even if I decide last minute that it's a pizza sort of night I can take one out by 2 pm and be good to go.

This recipe is also the reason I own a kitchen scale. I've found that bread recipes tend to be more consistent when I measure the flour by weight as opposed to number of cups. That is not to say you can't do this without a scale. It just works better for me. They are pretty cheap and easy to find, so keep it in mind if you start making things like this a lot.

Pizza Dough
barely adapted from Annie's Eats

Ingredients:
22 oz or 4 cups bread flour (King Arthur All Purpose Flour has a really high protein content like other companies bread flours, and that's what I use here)
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1 1/4 cup room temperature water
1 1/2 tsp salt
2-3 tbsp olive oil (plus a little more for oiling a bowl)
Handful of cornmeal for baking

Put flour and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with dough hook. Turn on briefly to mix together.

Put the 1/2 cup of warm water into a bowl or larger measuring cup and add yeast. Let sit for a minute or two and add the rest of the water.

Add water/yeast mix and olive oil to flour and mix at a medium speed until combined. Mix for a 3-4 minutes longer until the dough is really smooth. Then put dough in a lightly oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm place for several hours until it has doubled in size.

At this point, the dough can be punched down and rested for a few more minutes. You can now divide into two and either freeze it or use it.

To use, preheat the oven to 425 degrees (if you use a pizza stone, put that in the oven now). Let it all heat up for at least 30 min. If you are just using a baking sheet, lightly oil and sprinkle some cornmeal over it. If you use a pizza stone put some cornmeal on a sheet of parchment paper or pizza peel. Spread and pull dough until it forms a large circle or rectangle. Lightly brush some olive oil around the edges and then top as you like.

Bake for 15-17 minutes.

Note on the baking temperature-Many recipes cook the dough at 450 or even 500. My ovens have not consistently reached these temperatures so I adjusted it all to work for me. If you have a good quality oven that can hit those temps then cut the baking time to 8-10 minutes.