Tag Archives: DIY pizza

Two weeks of meals and a new recipe for you

12 Oct
One of my favorite fall meals ever: Cranberry Chicken

One of my favorite fall meals ever: Cranberry Chicken

Happy Wednesday everyone!

There is a crisp feeling in the air these days and just the other night, I did it: I turned on the heat in the house.

With the change in season comes some meals on our bi-weekly menu that we don’t make really any other time of the year. We all get excited when we see the reappearance of those menu items.

Without further ado, here is our list for the current two weeks of meals. I hope that you’ll find something on this list that inspires you too!

TWO WEEKS OF MEALS

Monday: Whole chicken (this was a carryover from last time, we never got to have it during that two week cycle.)

Tuesday: National Taco Day, so……tacos

Wednesday: Pasta de Peche (this is an old Italian egg drop soup kind of pasta recipe. It reminds me of my childhood but it’s actually a recipe my daughter brought home from her friend’s house and it is her grandmother’s recipe. It is so simple, so here it is as we make it for a family of four, and then we make smaller version for one gluten free:

PASTENA OR PECE de PEPE:
16 oz. box of pasta, 4 scrambled eggs, 4 cubes of chicken bouillon, drizzle of olive oil

Boil the pasta as usual. When it is done, drain the water but do not take the pasta out of the pan. Leave a small amount of water in the bottom. Shut the heat off and add in beaten egg with a little olive oil. Stir into pasta. Add in (Herbox) bouillon. Stir until egg has cooked. Add a butter, salt and pepper to taste.    (For the gluten free version the box of pasta is 8.8 oz, so we use 2 eggs and 2 bouillon cubes.)

Thursday: Steaks

Friday: out to dinner

1Saturday: DIY tortilla pizzas (corn tortillas for gluten free)

Sunday: Pork Chops

Monday: Cranberry Chicken

Tuesday: Grilled chicken with melted cheese and avocado

Wednesday: Pasta with zucchini rounds parmesan (This is a new recipe, I will let you know how it goes!)

Thursday: Chicken wings and legs

Friday: Hamburgers, chicken burgers and hot dogs

 

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What’s for Dinner Wednesday: Taco Pizza

19 Mar
This was a fabulous addition to our ever-growing list of gourmet pizzas!

This was a fabulous addition to our ever-growing list of gourmet pizzas!

A couple of weeks back, I had a typical Facebook messaging exchange with my friend Gina. It consisted of the usual commiserating about the fact that neither of us knew what to make for dinner that week. I happened to mention that I did have taco meat already cooked up and frozen, but that I didn’t necessarily want to have tacos again.

Her suggestion: Taco Pizza.

“Ohhhh…..I said, I like that idea!”

Lucky for us, there’s a bakery right down the street that sells fresh dough

If you love Tacos, you'll love trying out Gina's Taco Pizza!

If you love Tacos, you’ll love trying out Gina’s Taco Pizza!

by the pound, 24 hours a day for just a little over a dollar a bag.

That’s right, 24 hours a day. If I wanted to go at midnight to get a bag of dough, slice of pizza or a cookie, I could. I don’t, but it’s nice to know the option is there.

So last week I got my dough (during daylight hours) at the bakery and came home to get ready for our pizza dinner. We had a regular work day combined with a pre-dinner meeting and Dance for one of the girls. Pizza for dinner was the perfect answer to our need for quick, easy and delicious.

I’d actually gotten three bags of dough. We were having a ham and pineapple pizza, a meatball, cheese and sauce pizza, and our newest addition: Taco Pizza, thanks to Gina.

Coincidentally, we were also having furniture delivered the next morning between the hours of 6:30 am and 9:30 am in time for us to be out the door for work and school, but right smack-dab in the middle of lunch preparations. Having pizza for dinner the night before would allow me to bag up slices of whatever flavors anyone wanted for lunch the next day, after dinner.

Easy-peasy. It took a lot of advanced planning to make the night and next morning go off without a hitch, but it was healthier than ordering take-out that night or school lunch the next day, and much tastier too!

For this pizza, the only thing I’d do differently the next time, is crush up my tortilla chips and bake them right in there with the meat, underneath the cheese. This first time that we tried out the recipe, we crushed them up and added them on top. I found them hard to eat, but in our Taco Bake recipe we put them right inside, and I think I’d enjoy them more that way on the pizza than on top.

Otherwise, this is so easy!

Spread out your pizza dough, add your taco meat on top, and throw on some crushed tortilla chips if you’d like to, before adding your cheese. We used cheddar cheese on ours because of the nature of the pizza, rather than mozzarella.

Once your pizza is cooked, it’s up to you what toppings you’d like to add, anything you’d normally add to a taco.

Here are some suggestions:

Sour cream

Avocado

Olives

Tomatoes

Lettuce

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