Having Lauren around has really made us focus on what we eat as we are also looking at what we feed her and altered our garden to include more of the organic vegetables and tasty food we love.  Why eat healthy food that tastes like cardboard!  Food should taste good, and be good for you at the same time.  We rarely buy pre-packaged or pre-processed foods.  Soda is usually only in the house for our guests, and our snacks are also more home made healthy foods in disguise, like hummus, tzaziki, or the like and we love rice crackers, low fat is just a bonus!

Eating healthy doesn’t mean it has to be without flavor or the things you love to eat, it just means you have to look at it differently.  If you just ban yourself from eating the foods you love you will never achieve any goals because you will be craving those forbidden foods!

So here is what I have learned about Pizza..it too can be fairly healthy if you watch what you put in and on it!

Casey’s Pizza (serves two without any sides, or four with a salad)

Crust (aka base)
1 teaspoon instant or rapid-rise yeast
3 cups flour (I use all purpose, you could use whole wheat)
2 teaspoons coarse kosher or sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling
1 to 1 1/4 cups warm to hot water
2 1/2 Tablespoons Olive Oil, plus extra for sprinkling
Handful of assorted herbs.  I use, oregano, parsley, rosemary, and sage.

Combine dry ingredients, including herbs in food processor.  Herbs should be removed from woody stems but otherwise they can go in whole.  Turn the machine on and add the olive oil and then begin adding the water slowly through the feeding tube.  Once the mixture forms into a ball stop adding water and process for about 10 seconds.  Cover with a kitchen towel and let rise for about an hour.

Preheat oven to 500 (or the maximum on your oven), with your pizza stone in the oven.  Mine takes 15 minutes to preheat.  Turn the pizza dough out onto a floured surface and using your hand and rolling pin roll the dough out to be roughly the size of the stone, mine is 14".  I leave a little ridge around the outside as the "crust".  Add more flour to the dough as you are working it to prevent it from sticking.  The crust is very pliable and you should be able to pick it up to place it on the hot stone.  Drizzle with extra olive oil and sparinly sprinkle with sea salt.  Put back in the oven, I usually get it back in the oven with about 7 – 10 minutes left on the preheat cycle.  If it has already preheated bake for about 4 – 6 minutes or until halfway cooked.

Pizza Sauce
1 can Tomato Paste (the small ones, I use organic)
Olive Oil
Basil
Garlic
Cream (you can use milk or water if you wanted, just not as much)

Mince the garlic (I use two cloves, use as much or as little as you want), and chop basil.  Put about a tablespoon of oilve oil in a small saute pan and over medium high heat add the garlic and basil.  Before garlic gets brown add about 1 – 2 tablespoons of tomato paste dependin gon how saucey you like your pizza.  I am not a big sauce fan.  Saute with the herbs until the tomato paste has cooked a little and darkened and loosened up.  You can add a bit more olive oil if desired.  Slowly add cream, a tablespoon or so at a time, mixing it into the tomato paste until it becomes a very thick sauce.  Conversely I have also used whole tomatoes and put them in the food processor and then cooked them or strained them to remove the moisture and make the sauce but it takes longer.

Pizza Toppings
Whatever you have!  This is the fun part.  I use whatever we have on hand, usually more focused on the veggies and extras instead of the meat and heavy fat items.  I usually always start off with about 1 cup of low moisture mozzarella.  Strangely enough the preshredded kind in the big bulk bag melts the best.  If you are using real fresh authentic mozzarella instead of trying to grate it, or shred it, cut into rounds.

Some of our favorite toppings
Low Fat Canadian Bacon
Pineapple
Onion

Or the what we have in the fridge pizza:
Sausage (two breakfast sausage links removed from their casings, cooked and crumbled)
Portabello Mushrooms
Red Peppers (not the spicy ones, bell peppers or capsicum)
Spinach
Pine Nuts
Green Spring Onions
1/8 cup of goat cheese

Or other suggestions:
Ham
Sunflower Seeds
Bacon (two slices does well)
Gorgonzola Cheese
Parmesan Cheese
Ground Bison (instead of hamburger, lower in fat than chicken)
Chicken (ground, grilled strips)
Balsamic Vinegar
Pears
Mandarin Oranges
Tomatoes
Shredded Potatoes (I know sounds kind of gross, but it is SO yummy)
Cashews
Hummus (instead of sauce)
Refried or pureed black beans (instead of sauce)
Truffle oil

Be adventurous!  What can you come up with!?

Assemble the pizza, base/crust, then sauce, then cheese, unless you are using spinach, if using spinach put it directly on the sauce as any excess moisure will go into the crust and sauce and not on top of the pizza, then toppings scattered evenly, and then a little bit more cheese sprinkled on top.  Put back into the 500 degree oven for 10 – 12 minutes, or until cheese is melted and crust is golden brown.  Cut into 8 slices and serve hot!

A salad with bread disguised as a pizza!?  It could be, think about it. Spinach salad with onions, peppers, mushrooms, pine nuts, sausage (instead of bacon) and cheese with dressing and a roll.  Same ingredients, probably close to the same amounts, it might actually be healthier as the fats in dressings are usually mayo instead of olive oil and you wouldn’t butter a pizza but you probably would a roll.  Think about how much healthier it sounds to say you are having a salad, why can’t the same be true for pizza?  If it is a deep dish meat lovers from pizza hut, not so healthy (you could wring the artery clogging grease off of it), but a tasty pizza with meat and plenty of cheese, and the bonus of all the veggies, and full of wonderful flavors.  Oh another bonus.  Older kids love to help.  Have them slice the veggies, or help roll out the dough, or measure ingredients.   It doesn’t really take that long.  The longest part is waiting for the dough to rise, it just takes a little bit of planning.  Oh and cheap!  Making a pizza base is incredibly cheap and if you buy in bulk even the cheese is affordable.  Usually the most expensive thing we put on the pizza is the pine nuts!