BBQ Black Bean Pizza

Tonight I was inspired by Mama Pea to make BBQ Black Bean Pita Pizza’s. Peas and Thank You is probably one of my favorite bloggers at this moment. Her recipes look delicious, her children are gorgeous, and her story telling usually has me laughing out loud on the T every morning. You have got to check her out if you aren’t reading her yet!

Anyway, back to the pizza.

I used one of my beloved Trader Joe’s Wraps, spread about 1 TBS spoon of BBQ sauce, 1/2 cup black beans, chopped peppers, chopped broccoli and I made my version non vegan by adding some real cheese. Sorry Mama Pea I had some in the house that needs to be used up.

This was so good and I need to start making it a rotation in my meal plans. The month of February has been so BLAH for me eating wise which is why I haven’t been blogging much. I’ve been eating healthy but just nothing DELICIOUS likes this.

Do you have any go to vegetarian (or easily made vegetarian) meals that you make during the week (besides pasta)? Feel free to link!

What blogs are you currently LOVING right now? I am secretly obsessed with Peas and Thank You, Maura Me To Love and Rachel Wilkerson’s Blog (always!). I need to find more blogs like all of them.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!!

 

Nelly dressed up in her favorite “Go Team” outfit and I dressed up as a housewife.

 

My major goal in life is to be a housewife, so I figured, why not dress up as one? It was easy enough… I just wore a dress, an apron, and some fake pearls from forever 21 that broke!

It wasn’t just Halloween weekend, but time for Project Tasteless Challenge 2: Pizza Tricks for Treats! We got to make pizza based on our Halloween costumes!

I struggled for a while about what I would do and I definitely had a kitchen fail! I knew that I wanted to make my dough and sauce from scratch because what kind of housewife would I be if I didn’t do that? I used Eat Live Run’s Pizza Dough recipe which I have used before. It’s pretty easy when all goes right and delicious!

I don’t have a mixer, so I just kneaded by hand for about  8 minutes. It’s actually kind of soothing! I imagine it to be easier with a mixer, but without it still wasn’t hard at all. Once I formed a pretty dough ball, I set to the side to rise.

 

Then I did housewife things like clean my kitchen while the children waited to be fed.

 

I did the dishes, cleaned the counters and table, and swept my whole apartment while my dough “raised”. The recipe said the dough should rise to half it’s size in about an hour, but an hour later and my dough was still the same size. I Google searched if there was anything I could do and I tried to microwave it and let it sit again, but nothing. I am assuming my yeast was old. I bought it 2 years ago and although it doesn’t expire until January, I am sure that’s what the problem was. At this point I was hungry, so I decided just to roll with it and I took a small amount of dough, rolled it out by hand, and decided I would make a baby pizza.

It was super thin crust! For the homemade sauce, you only need 4 ingredients.

1 cup diced tomatoes, 1/4 of a small onion, 1 tbs of minced garlic, chopped basil all cooked together in a sauce pan. I cooked it on high for about 10 minutes or until most of the liquid was dissolved, then just blend it up in a blender.

So good! I love 365 brand diced tomatoes and have another recipe to share later in the week. I never buy jarred sauce now that I have fallen in love with these tomatoes! Once the sauce was done, I spread it on the crust, added some cheese, and added olive and mushrooms in the shape of a soccer ball – get it?! When I think of housewives I think of soccer mom’s driving their kids to practice.! Hey, I tried….

I served up half with some green beans and then went back for the second half shortly after!

Next time, I think I’ll stick to my $.99 Trader Joe’s dough!

 

Soccer Mom Pizza

1/6th (ish) of Eat Live Run’s Pizza Dough

For the sauce

3 or 4 basil leaves chopped

1/4 of a small onion chopped

1 TBS minced garlic

1 cup diced tomatoes

1/4 cup part skim cheese

4 TBS black olives

1 mushroom, chopped

 

 

What was your latest kitchen fail?

Life is for Living

The other day I came across an inspiring post on one of my favorite healthy living blog’s. Caitlin’s blog is the shit. She blogs vegetarian recipes and is constantly motivating and inspiring me. What inspired me on this particular day was a comment that she had written to someone that said “What are you waiting for? Life is for living!” Isn’t that the truth? I have been training for a 10k since August, but I was too nervous to sign up for the actual race. I have been following a training plan of running 3 times a week, and slowly building my mileage all the way up to 5 miles, but I was still too scared to sign up for the race. What if I don’t finish? What if I can’t run the whole time? What if it rains? What if my stomach bothers me? What if I can’t take the day off? WHAT IF?

Life is for living not what if’s? So I got the day off from work and signed up today.

The race is going to be awesome. It’s the Tuft’s 10k for women and it goes around the beautiful city of Boston and ends in the Boston common. What’s really cool is that I actually watched part of the race last year and never thought in a million years that I would be running it a year later. I am so incredibly excited!! I have been training for about 8 weeks and was hoping to get a 6 mile run in before I signed up, but I don’t even care now. Even if I have to walk I will have still run in a 10k race. Also I know I can run it all

Happy about my decision to live my life I came home tonight and made one of my favorites! Pizza!

I used 2 servings of TJ’s WW crust, pizza sauce, green peppers, jalapenos, 2 TBS of fresh parmesan cheese and some fresh basil. The I baked it for about 15 minutes at 400 degrees. I would skip the cheese next time because I couldn’t taste it, but other than that it was PERFECT!

Served with a spinach and tomato salad. I made a delicious dressing tonight. I combined a TBS of hummus, a TBS of nutritional yeast and some water to thin it out. Yummy!

As I was cooking my dinner I was also cooking my lunch for tomorrow. Call me crazy but I don’t really leftovers. Even though it’s time consuming I almost always make a different lunch while I am cooking dinner. Anyone else? Tomorrow it’s zucchini, peppers and beans mixed with taco seasoning. It’s going to be good!

Do you eat dinner at the table? If not, where? Do you ever eat at the table alone? I ask because I was curious about this! I never used to eat at the table because I didn’t have one! Now that I have mine I enjoy eating there even by myself. It’s so peaceful and I always have Lilo