How-To Homemade Pizza

The favorite homemade meal in this household, and  the meal that has gotten the most attention on the blog, is our pizza.

I’ve posted about our pizzas a couple times, but I thought I would make a post tonight dedicated to our pizza.

First, I want to say that we change up the ingredients often.  Whatever we’re feeling or whatever we have fresh normally goes on.  A few things that are standards  though:

• ready to bake or frozen dough
• peppers
• steamed beats (golden or candy)
• bacon (Zach’s favorite)
• mozzarella cheese
• garlic
• fresh basil

These are the items that are on ALL of our favorite pizzas, and ones that we rarely leave out.

For tonights pizza, we included all of those ingredients and more 🙂

Ingredients:

• 1 frozen whole wheat pizza dough
• 1 large golden beat
• 2 pieces of bacon
• 1 large anaheim pepper and 2 small anaheim peppers from our garden
• 2 heirloom tomatoes from the market
• a cup of fresh basil
• 4 cloves of garlic.
• 1.5 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees
• Lay the bacon out flat on cookie sheets and cook for 15 minutes
• While bacon cooks, chop and steam the large beat
• Pull the bacon out.  Drain and dice bacon.
• Prepare the dough by laying out flour and rolling it out to desired thickness.
• Spray dough with oil and cook for 5 minutes at 375
• While dough pre-cooks, prep the rest of the veggies by dicing them to similar sizes
• Once the dough is precooked, begin by laying on the bacon and tomatoes as wet ingredients
• Evenly spread out the remaining veggies on top of the bacon and tomatoes
• Cheese the entire pizza
• Drop the oven temp to 350 and cook for 20-25 minutes depending on your preference for crunchiness in crust.
• Enjoy!

Now, since the pizza is so beautiful and popular, Zach and I also wanted to show the directions in pictures.

These directions are possibly less informative than the written ones, but much more fun 🙂

Prep and cook the bacon

Chop and steam the golden beats

Roll out and pre cook the dough

Chop up the remaining veggies

Dice up the tomatoes and leave them wet to act as a bit of a sauce

Pull out the dough as it begins to bubble

Add the veggies

Lots of cheese!

Hot and Ready!

Yum!

If you’re like me, you add a ton of fresh basil, sriracha hot sauce, and parmesan cheese!

Enjoy!

 

Question:  What is the staple meal in your household?

Curiosity:  Do you all like the picture version of the recipe?

Happy Birthday Gus!

Happy Birthday Gusman

Mom and Dad love you so much!

Even when you’re a butt and getting into trouble

!

Our lives wouldn’t be the same without you!

We’re so thankful to have a healthy and happy Pup on your birthday!

To celebrate, we took Gus on a birthday hike this afternoon on Lookout Mountain in Golden, CO.

Gus was excited for the trip!

Thanks so much guys I just love hikes!

Our hike today was a mix of two different trails for, ironically enough, 7.11 miles per Garmin.  Fueled with some yummy granola eaten on the way up, we hit the trails around 900

One bag = one serving.

We started on Chimney Gulch Trail

The views the entire hike were incredible, as always.

The second trail lead us up Lookout Mountain, and actually ends at Boettcher Mansion, our wedding venue!

It was over 90 degree’s by the time we were summating, and needless to say we felt the 7 + miles.

But overall, any morning spent outside on the mountains is a good one, and I think our boy enjoyed it!

And of course…what I find when I load up pictures…

Flattering family butt shots…Thanks Babe! 🙂

Happy Birthday Furball! We love you!

Back tonight with a post dedicated to this household’s favorite dinner, HOMEMADE PIZZA!

Healthy Raspberry Crumble Bars

So funny story:

I stumbled upon a Whole Foods Raspberry crumble bar earlier this week.

Not the exact Whole Foods bar, but you get the idea 🙂

Zach and I LOVE these bars.  We’ve gotten them many times and the fact that I got one for free at work made me VERY excited for dessert that night.

One problem:  Zach would want to share.  I did NOT want to share.

I felt VERY guilty (really I did…) but the second I got home I admitted to Zach that I, in fact, had gotten a raspberry crumble bar, but that I wasn’t going to share.

Zach knows me….I think he was just impressed that I didn’t just eat it at work and never say a word about it!

Well. . . I’ve felt guilty ever since and decided that to pay back my wonderful fiance.  I would bake him us an entire batch of Raspberry Crumble Bars…double win because I can healthify them! 🙂  And healthify them I did!  I cut down half the butter I was seeing in every recipe by using applesauce made my own raspberry filling with half sugar, and substituted whole wheat flour.  Just a few changes can really boost up the health value of bake goods.  Sure, you can tell my baked goods are healthy, but I actually LIKE the healthier versions more.  More satisfying.  Anyway…

Were you guys guessing this might have been on my mind by the couple of hints I dropped this week?

Healthy Raspberry Crumble Bars

Ingredients

• 1 stick (or 1/2 a cup) of room temperature butter
• 1 cup of applesauce
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1 + cup of all purpose flour
• 1 + cup of whole wheat flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1 cup of good granola ( I used Whole Foods Cinnamon Pecan Granola)
• 10-12 oz of good raspberry jam

Directions:

• Preheat your oven to 350 and butter/spray an 8 X 8 pan.
• Mix together the butter,  applesauce and sugar in a large bowl until it becomes completely mixed together
• Sift together the flour and salt in a separate bowl until distributed together evenly
• Begin adding the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients slowly until everything comes together as a ball of dough.
• Take about 2/3 of the dough and roll it out into the 8 by 8 pan.  It should create about a 1/4 inch layer of dough.
• Spread 10-12 ounces of good raspberry jam on top of the dough
• Add about 3/4 of the granola to the remaining dough and mix together with your hands.
• Spread and/or crumble the remaining dough on top of the raspberry jam.
• Sprinkle the remaining granola on top of the dough
• Bake for about 50 minutes or until evenly browned.
• Let cool and enjoy! 🙂

These are going to be PERFECT on Gus’s birthday hike this morning with some fresh squeezed juice!

Disclaimer:  I made my own jam for this recipe, but didn’t share because honestly it was done very haphazerdly and with whatever we had around the house.  It included a small container of raspberries from the farmers market, about 2/3 cup of water and 1/2 cup of sugar boiled on the stove top.  If you want a great recipe, I loosely followed this recipe http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/anne-thornton/raspberry-crumble-bars-recipe/index.html and just tweeked it for what I had.  I have about 2/3 cup left over after using it for the bars).  

Enjoy!