Homemade Pizza

Earlier I did a post on making a burger at home to avoid going to a fast food place. It dawned on me that it is even more common to order a pizza. Ordering a pizza is really just something American's do without much thought. We're busy, don't want to cook, maybe low on money so we don't want to go out to eat at a nice place. The problem is you spend more on ordering a pizza than if you made it at home, and when it's made somewhere else you have little to no control over the type of ingredients they are using on it. It's easy to get stuck in a rut where you just pick up the phone and order pizza instead of spending a few minutes to prepare something, but putting in that little effort will really benefit the health of yourself and your family.  Another issue that I've noticed is people ordering so many sides to go with the pizza simply because they are offered. "Wings? Sure I'll have those. Cinna bread! Sure throw that in there. Oh yes we have to have cheesy bread! Don't forget the liter of soda!" So what you end up doing is consuming enough calories for a whole day in one sitting, and it's also food that has little to no good nutritional value. It will have lots of carbohydrates, lots of sugars and starches which will end up making you not feel good and ultimately gain weight.

Pizza made at home

I really believe that you can still eat things that are considered "bad" foods as long as they are made right and you are aware of portion control. And portion control really means eating only enough so that you aren't hungry which is usually 1 piece of pizza. People will tend to eat 3-4 slices because it tastes good, but they would have been full after one and more full if they ate slowly.

So what I will show you to do is make a pizza at home in literally minutes. It's important to choose things that you like but also to make a smart choice. For instance, I enjoy pepperoni pizza, but I know pepperoni is full of fat and grease. What I did is substitute turkey pepperoni which has 60% less fat than regular pepperoni! Can you believe that? I also got a low fat cheese and kept the sauce and cheese light. I added sliced black olives. Now, if I had ordered this pizza it would  have cost about $15-$25 after delivery. This pizza cost $5.02 for everything. That is really a savings! Of course there are healthier ways to make a pizza, this is just the way I made this one. Feel free to add vegetables to yours, pineapple, fresh tomatoes, artichoke hearts, etc.

Ingredients:

Tomato paste spread on the pizza

1 can Pillsbury pizza dough
1 can tomato paste
1 cup shredded low fat cheese
1 can sliced olives
about 15-20 turkey pepperoni slices

Step 1:
Grease a cookie sheet (sorry about how stained mine is!)

Preheat oven as directed on the dough packaging.

Step 2:
Lay out the dough on the cookie sheet. I folded up the ends on each side to form a thicker crust at the end. Spread the tomato paste.

Pizza with toppings before baking

Step 3:
Add toppings! I put on the cheese, sliced olives and topped it with turkey slices.

Step 4:
Bake 13-17 minutes or as directed on the dough package.

Step 5:
Cut with pizza cutter and enjoy! It will be very hot so of course use caution when picking up the pizza. Serves about 4-5 people.