Pizza, Home-made and Frozen

I like pizza.  Most people do.

But like any food, people can screw it up. 

First, anyone who tells you all pizza is the same is an idiot.  It varies greatly.   Some will tell you they like all brands of pizza, these people too are idiots. The world is full of idiots, you just get use to it.

Anyone who thinks a Totinos frozen pizzas are even close to real pizza goodness  must have lost his/her tastebuds in a tragic accident.  I feel sorry for them. Totinos are foul.  Edible under extreme duress only.  The good news about them is that they are a dollar.  Yep,  a dollar.  No one dollar pizza is wonderful.  The crust is flaky, almost like a flattened biscuit, the sauce is a bit sour, but the cheese is so-so.  If you cover it in your  own pepperoni and your own sauce, it gets a bit better but still not great.

DiGiorno’s frozen pizza is pretty good.  They have real honest to goodness cheese.  Now, I’m lactose intolerant so if I’m going to spend an hour bent over with cramps, I want it to be worth it.  They are worth it. The toppings are real meat and not plastic fakes.  The crust crisps up pretty well.  Its a nice frozen pizza.  As nice as a frozen pizza gets anyway.  Its like saying a girl is a real nice hooker.  You don’t know if its a compliment or not but it sounds pleasant.

Tony’s, Red Baron’s etc…fall some where between the two.  Not as gag inducing as Totinos but not as good as DiGiorno’s. 

One note of caution…never, ever eat a diet frozen microwave pizza (gagging).  These suck.  They really do.  I don’t care how much you lie to yourself, that is not good pizza.  It is not close to good pizza.  Pizza doesn’t microwave well.  People who eat everything out of the microwave might as well eat the cardboard box, it’d taste almost as good.

If you want low-fat pizza, make your own.  Lord knows there are a dozen ways to make it with less calories and more taste.

I told myself I wouldn’t do this.  I actually wrote myself a note.  No recipes in the blog.  No freakin’ recipes in the blog…but do I listen?  No, I never do.

The two easiest homemade low-fat pizzas to make are the BOBOLI LAZY PIZZA and the Tortilla pizza.

If you are like me, if you have to spend more than ten minutes cooking it then you’d rather eat potato chips out of the bag, this is the home-made pizza recipe for you.

Get a BOBOLI Pizza Crust, THIN VERSION.  These are pre-baked. Yes, a pre-baked pizza crust.  Genius.  They are usually in most groceries stores, hidden away.  If you have a Kroger’s, they are usually in the pizza sauce aisle next to the Tortilla/Salsa display.  I don’t know why; I don’t work in Kroger’s marketing department.  The exception is the Kroger on Mall Road in Florence, Ky.  They hide there crusts and don’t carry the thin version.  Silly bunnies.

Cut crust into 8 pieces.  Whole crust is 17 Weight Watcher’s Points.  And no, you shouldn’t eat the whole thing.

Buy the Kroger Pepperoni Pizza Sauce.  It’s cheap, it tastes good.  Its a bit on the sweet side as sauces go.  There are two main thoughts on pizza sauces, classic sour or new sweet.  I like sweet.  If you want sour, may I suggest a jaunt through Italy?  Tomato sauces need sugar to cut the acidity. A little sauce goes a long way.  For one WW point, you should more than enough to cover your pizza.

I buy the Hormel Turkey Pepperoni.  Okay, it isn’t as good as regular pepperoni.  I could blow smoke up your butt and tell you that it is but it isn’t.  But it is about 85% the same and hidden in the pizza toppings, I can live with that.  But for some reason, it smells a bit like  licorice when you open the bag.  I have no idea why.  The smell goes away when you cook it.  I use 18 pieces.  Two WW Points.

For the love of GOD, use real cheese.  Fat-free cheese sucks donkey toes.  Admit it, you’d rather have real cheese.  Some things aren’t worth skimping on such as a good divorce attorney.   All dairy products make me sick, but with pills I can tolerate small doses.  So, I use real cheese, about 1/4 cup.  I know it doesn’t sound like a lot but how much cheese do you need?   2 Points

Bake the whole think at 450 degrees.  It’s done in about 8 minutes so don’t dawdle.  Serves 8 slices at about 3 points per slice.  You can add veggies.  I don’t recommend it but you can.  People always try to sneak in the veggies.  It’s a sickness.

You can add two more points of extras if you want, more cheese, more pepperoni, even god-forsaken mushrooms.  The total pizza averages between 22 and 24 points on Weight Watchers.  You shouldn’t eat the whole thing.  I do but you shouldn’t.  Show some self-restraint (giggles at the thought).

The good things about this pizza is that the crust is pre-done so if you only want one piece of pizza, get out your scizzors, cut out a triangle of crust, make one slice, and eat.  The rest of the pizza dough circle can be taped shut and eaten later.  Don’t you love duct tape?

This pizza from start to finish takes like 8 minutes and that is if you take your time and make it pretty.  Use paper plates and you won’t have any dishes besides a spoon for the sauce and the pizza pan.  The pan isn’t even damp because you don’t need to spray it.  The crust is pre-done…no oil required.  I’m giddy at the thought.

Oh, I forgot the tortilla pizzas. First of all use flour tortillas.  Corn tortillas are not for pizza.  And if you even whisper wheat, I will hunt you down and force feed you cod liver oil.  Wheat pizza crust…oh my…all that fiber.  Makes me want to take a crap to think about it. 

Take your tortilla pizza crust, spritz it with 0 calorie oil spray.  Don’t have any, rub it with some butter, adds calories but you should have bought some 0 calorie spray.  The stuff never goes bad.  Its like sour candy, good forever.

Pop it in the oven, on 400 degrees.  Get it a litte brown.  Take out of the oven.  Use an oven glove, balled up t-shirt, old boxer shorts to protect your fingers.  I forgot to tell you earlier, the pan gets hot in the oven.  Be careful. Now, you’ll sue me for blistered fingers.  Save me from America.

Okay, now add sauce, turkey pepperoni, and cheese, pop back into the oven.  Don’t worry about the tortilla bubbling up or getting stiff, this is perfectly normal.  That sounded dirty. I didn’t mean for it to sound dirty.  Just ignore that.  But it is normal.  The crust browns and bakes super fast.  You are done in less that  7 minutes from start to finish.

Eat it. Its reasonable tasting, the calories are good.  Does it taste like Pizza Hut?  No, but it does the job.

Okay now I’ve got to make dinner.  Anything but pizza, I’m sick of talking about it.

Sometime in the future, we’ll talk about delivery pizza and how Pizza Hut ruined a sure thing.

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The Pickiest Eater In The World

Okay, perhaps pickiest eater in the world is pushing it but I’m definitely in the top ten.  I’m a chubby girl who doesn’t like food but who does love to eat.  After hearing my daily rants on why something tastes bad over the years, my good friend, Heather, suggested I write a blog on what does and doesn’t work for me food-wise.

Plus, she thought it hilarious when I started Weight Watchers, when I detested salads.  I will never eat salad.  I don’t like salad.  Salad is not a friggin’ meal.  I don’t feel fulfilled when someone sends me a cheesy bowl of lettuce covered in drippy sauce and stale bread.  Ugh, no thanks.

The first time I did Weight Watchers, I lost 90 pounds.  Yes, 90 pounds and I didn’t eat one salad, not one.  I did fall off the wagon for a bit, went back to eating my favorite, potato chips, and gained a large portion of my weight back.  Not all of it, thank God, but a chunk of it.  So now I’m back in WW and the new leader is salad this, salad that.  Carrots for a snack.  What normal, non-anorexic person eats carrots for a snack? 

My last leader told us to only make changes you can live with.  That’s my goal this time, changes I can live with.  So, screw salads for lunch.   Just the thought makes me want to start purging so I can get a chunk of nice, well-cooked meat.

Yes, meat.

I know the vegetarians are cringing.  I have a few vegan friends, I  understand the idea behind the thought.  But have you ever met a chicken?  A live chicken?  There is nothing noble about an animal that walks on its own crap, poops in its own food, and will try to peck out your eyes with very little provocation.  Geez, I only walked through the yard.

Not only are the mean and dirty, they are ever so slightly stupid. So while I don’t relish the idea of killing one, I don’t mind eating one as long as it was killed humanely, and massively disinfected.

I guess that’s what the cannibals would say about the missionaries but its all I can give you.  I like meat, so I eat meat.

Now, back to eating chicken.  Grilled or baked chicken in restaurants is always a nightmare for me.  Like pork, chicken asorbs the flavors of what you cook with it.  So restaurants cover it in lemon, powder it with pepper, rub it in non-disclosed seasonings, or kill it with garlic.

I like chicken.  I don’t want to taste the seasonings.  I didn’t order a plate of garlic and pepper. I ordered chicken and that is what I want.  Restaurants also want their chicken to be ‘tender’ and ‘juicy’.  I’m shuddering now.  If I don’t need a knife to cut it, then it isn’t cooked long enough.  Anyone who has had food poisoning and vomited from both ends, knows that tender meat is scary.    If you cut into the chicken breast, and juice pops out like you stabbed a juice box, put the damn thing back on the grill.

So to get around this, I don’t ordered grilled or baked chicken in resturants.  I save that for when I’m cooking at home and I can cut the meat into tiny pieces to inspect it for pinkness.  I order my chicken in fingers.  Tacky, I know.  Classless even, but the great thing about chicken fingers is that a person can cut it up with  their fork and see each piece of perfectly white meat. 

Although, I will warn you, never, ever order chicken fingers off the kid’s menu unless you’ve seen them first.  Compressed meat is a favorite of kid’s menus.  Compressed meat is when the regular meat packing plant has scraped all the meat it can from the chicken bones.  The bits it can’t use are then scooped up, packed into patties or fingers, dipped in batter, and sold to kids everywhere.  These are one of the foulest things you will ever eat.  Some of them are GRAY inside.   The meat is GRAY.   This is not the chicken finger you want.

You want a finger that when you pull it apart, you see long strips of real chicken breast, beautifully white.  The meat should tear in strips.  This is real chicken breast.  If it looks uniform inside, push your plate away or push out a couple of kids to eat it for you.

Another consideration of the chicken finger, over-breading.  Some places feel that they have to make the chicken seem larger by dipping it in 4 pounds of beer batter.  Ugh.  I shouldn’t need a chisel to get to the good stuff.   Second, the batter shouldn’t never stain the meat.  If it turns your meat funny colors, just say no.  Sorry Popeye’s, the yellow is hard for me to look past.

Others get carried away with the pepper.  Some pepper is good, just a dash of that and salt in the crunchy batter makes you go MMMM.  To much and that’s all you taste. 

Others have the opposite problem.  Blandness.  The batter has no flavor at all, the chicken is tasteless, almost rubbery.

Longhorn Steakhouse has good chicken fingers most of the time.  Just enough seasoning for flavor, the chicken is from the breast, and they have a hearty portion that will fill you up.  Those of you on WW, they are about 3pts a finger so eat carefully, okay?

Another bonus is that Longhorns has a decent baked potato.  I hate a shitty potato.  But I will talk about that next week.

So the pickiest eater in the world is signing out.

Good luck and good eating and remember…don’t take a finger from just anyone.