Whole Wheat Pizza with Pesto Sauce

Directions:

Dough:

The dough is prepared in much the same way as you would normally prepare pizza dough. We used the more active yeast to cut down on the rising time, so that we could prepare the dough at around noon and eat by 7 or 8pm. The original dough recipe calls for 1 cup of whole wheat flour and ¾ cup of white flour, we simply used 2 cups of whole wheat flour. If I were to make this again, I would probably add the white flour back in. In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt and sugar. Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, and then slowly mix the water into the flour. Add the olive oil and knead the dough for about 10 minutes. The dough should become a smooth ball. Coat the dough in a small amount of olive oil, cover and let stand in a warm place for an hour. Once the ball has doubled in size, place the dough onto a lightly floured surface and let rise until ready to use.

About 25 minutes before you are ready to get things all put together, you should pre-heat the oven to 450°F. If you have a pizza stone, pop that in the oven while it pre-heats. After you have taken care of that, move on to making the pesto. When you are ready, work the dough out into the desired shape.

Pesto:

Fresh pesto is fairly easy to make, and you can play around with the ingredients a bit to figure out what you like. The listed ingredients is what I typically use, though we don’t always have sundried tomato. All you really need to do for this is to clean off the basil, pull the leaves off and place them in a food processor with all of the other ingredients. It might actually be a good idea to make two or three times what you want to use for the pizza, and use the pesto in other meals throughout the week, like a pasta, or as a sandwich dressing or something. Combine the ingredients in a food processor and turn it on until they are all blended as shown below.

Putting it all together:

At this point, your dough should be ready, your oven pre-heated and pesto ready to go. Start with getting all of the toppings prepared and ready to place on your pizza. Start with the veggies, clean out the inside of the bell pepper, leaving the outside in-tact, but hollow. Lay the pepper on its side and thinly slice it until you have enough. Remove the skin from the onion, and slice it such that you are left with some thin rings. Grate the parmesan, and set it aside. Depending on what type of mozzarella you picked up, there are different ways to handle it. I really like the small balls of mozzarella, and with those, I like to just crush them onto the pizza individually, which takes no preparation to do. If you have one large ball, I like to slice it into about 8 or so slices to lay out evenly on the pizza.

Now that everything is ready to go, pull the pizza stone out of the oven and sprinkle some flour or cornmeal onto it. Next, spread the dough out onto the stone, trying to cover as much of the stone as you can without tearing apart the dough. Once you have the dough spread out, evenly cover the dough with pesto. If you are using the prosciutto, this should be the next thing to get placed on the pizza. If you put the prosciutto on top, it will get very hard and crispy, I think it’s better on the bottom. Next goes the mozzarella, again, laying it out evenly. Then your veggies, and top it all off with the parmesan. I also added some red pepper flakes to mine. Pop it in the oven for 10-15 minutes until the cheese is melted and you can see it starting to brown a bit. Keep a close eye on this, because you don’t want it to burn.

Discussion:

This pizza is delicious and healthy. We love making fresh pesto as a sauce for something different. It tends to be high in calories but provides plenty of healthy fats. This recipe for whole wheat crust came out really good. We used all whole wheat flour, and it still has enough flavor without tasting too dry. It would be perfect if you added a little honey to it. If you’ve never had prosciutto on pizza, you should try this. Fresh mozzarella also makes a big difference. Our recipe makes one round pizza (about 8 slices). Each slice is a great source of protein and whole grains. Enjoy!

Black Bean and Cabbage Wraps

Directions:

This dish is easily split into two parts, the hot part and the cold part. This is a bit of a deviation from the referenced recipe, as that recipe doesn’t actually suggest cooking the beans. We think it is an improvement, as we are not really crazy about eating cold beans. Feel free to skip cooking the beans if you want. The other diversion from the referenced recipe is that we use black beans instead of white beans.

What I do when preparing this dish is to put everything together for the hot portion, stick it in a frying pan on the stove and leave it there until I’m ready for it. This really doesn’t need to do much more than heat up for a few minutes. Then, once I have set aside the hot ingredients, I start on the cold. For the hot ingredients, dice up the chili(s) and place them in the pan with 1 tbsp of Olive Oil. Then, dice the red onion, placing about a quarter of the onion into the frying pan and the rest into your mixing bowl for the cold ingredients. Empty a can of black beans (don’t bother draining it first) into the pan. Stick a lid on the pan and don’t forget it’s there.

Moving on, you can get started with the cold ingredients. Shred the carrot and add it to the mixing bowl. Halve the avocado, remove the pit, then scoop it out of its skin. Add the avocado to the bowl and mash it up as you stir. Dice the cilantro and add half to the mixing bowl and half to the pan on the stove. Next, shred the cheese and add it to the mixing bowl. For the cabbage, feel free to use more or less depending on how large a head of cabbage you have. I ended up using a bit less than half a head. Chop up the cabbage, add it to the bowl and mix the ingredients together.

Go to the stove and heat up the beans and other ingredients. Once you see that the beans are getting hot enough, mash them down as much as possible and stir. Let the beans cook for a couple of minutes on the stove. Once they are done, simply spoon some of the bean mixture onto a wrap, add some of the cold ingredients onto the wrap, roll it up and enjoy. We each had two smallish wraps and that filled us up.

Discussion:

I recently discovered my love for Avocado. It was one of those things like brussels sprouts I never thought I would like, but I’m so glad I do. Another healthy and tasty food. About half of the fat in this dish is unsaturated (good!) and the other half is saturated from the cheese. Keep in mind that our version of the recipe makes double the amount that is listed in the original, mainly because we normally just have one main dish and no sides. This is a good recipe if you are cooking for 4 or 5, and want leftovers for lunch, or if you want to use large wraps instead of tortilla shells like we did. If you wanted to do a side dish, it may be helpful to look at a food group not fully covered with this meal. You do get your vegetables, dairy, and whole grains in the wraps. Obviously this lacks in the meat department, but you still get a good amount of protein. Maybe a nice fruit salad or a small baked potato would make this a well balanced meal. Enjoy!

Chicken Tikka Masala

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Directions:

Combine the sauce ingredients in a food processor. Begin with the tomatoes, and add the other whole ingredients, blending them as you go. Once all of the sauce ingredients have been mixed together, set aside. Chop the onion, bell pepper and chili peppers, place into a frying pan. Add the cashews to the frying pan, along with the oil. Chop the cilantro and set it aside. Cube the boneless, skinless chicken breast, add it to the frying pan and fry until the chicken is cooked. Once the chicken is cooked, pour in the sauce, and stir it in. Once the sauce is hot, addthe chopped cilantro. Finally, add in the ½ cup of half and half and stir until it is evenly distributed. Serve over ½ cup steamed rice.

Discussion:

This is a great dish if you have a taste for ethnic foods. We don’t do many “traditional” meals. Spice it up! John loves to put his own spin on a recipe and it always turns out delicious. The focus here is great tasting and healthy. You would be surprised how healthy this is after tasting it. This dish is a great source of protein and healthy fats. The Mayo Clinic recommends you get 10 - 35% of your total daily calories from protein, 20 - 35% from fat, and 45 - 65% from carbs. Of course this all depends on your lifestyle, whether you are trying to lose fat or gain muscle. We have been trying to pay close attention to the amounts of these important nutrients we are getting, and as you can see, you don’t need to deprive yourself. We complement this with white rice, but if you want to get your whole grains, brown rice is a better choice. Another great complement is Naan (Indian flatbread). Make it whole wheat and you’ve got yourself a delicious and healthy dinner!