The 365 Day Cooking Challenge and Your Shape Challenge I’m participating in have fallen by the wayside a bit these last few weeks. I have been pretty sick, and the kids were as well for awhile, so it was tough to cook. We ended up eating a lot of sandwiches, brinner, and odds and ends for dinner. I was also away twice in New York City, and my husband had the kids out once each day for a meal. Partly this was my lack of planning ahead, and partly it was due to everyone being stuck inside for 2 weeks straight.
My doctor told me not to exercise while I was having breathing issue, but now that I’m starting to feel better (thanks to a round of antibiotics), I will be slowly reintroducing exercise into my day. I’m starting today with some yoga.
My challenge this week along with the 10 other Your Shape challengers is to create healthy snacks for myself, and family. Since I’m all about whole foods, I found the challenge of going to Walmart to shop a little difficult. I tend to eat fresh foods for snacktime.
Snacks in our house are usually:
- fresh fruit, or frozen fruit-the kids love frozen blueberries
- carrots and celery with hummus, dressing or plain
- cheese- I love cheese, sometimes with whole grain crackers
- nuts-a handful of nuts is really filling, and healthy
- bars-more for the kids than me, they love a good cereal bar
- yogurt-another favorite whether plain with blueberries, or pink yogurt
- occasionally pretzels, or potato chips-while not super healthy, they aren’t terrible either
- stovetop popcorn-yum
- leftovers-if we’re really hungry we will eat leftovers for snacktime
- GUACAMOLE!-my favorite snack, avocado with sea salt and lime-perfection
I did find some good things, and you can see more about what I picked out in my whrrl below.
What are some of your favorite healthy snacks?
Kelly
Whalen family pizza dough
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups warm water
- 2 1/4 tsps yeast or one packet: buy it in bulk for awesome savings
- drip of honey or pinch of sugar
- spices: I like Frontier’s pizza spice, but you can also use fresh herbs, I ADORE ground rosemary in this though. It’s a wonderful spice without the pokey “leaves”.
- 1-2 tsps sea salt
- 1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
- 3- 3 1/2 cups flour: I use unbleached, unbromated white flour and mix in 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour. You can also add pureed veggies, or finely grated veggies (depending on how picky your kids are).
Combine water and yeast in the bowl of your mixer. (Don’t have a mixer? This is a great recipe for building upper body strength!)
Add pinch of sweetner, salt, spices,and oil.
Using your dough hook (or a wooden spoon) stir in one cup at a time of flour at a time.
Once you have 3 cups in mix you can turn your dough hook up to 2, or if you are doing it by hand, turn it out onto a floured surface and start kneading.
You may need to add up to 1/2 cup more flour, just make sure to do it gradually, you want it to pull away from the sides of the bowl, or the surface you are kneading on.
Knead for about 10 minutes until the dough can be pulled between your fingers without breaking.
Form a ball, and put in a lightly oiled or floured bowl and cover with a towel. Put in a warm, draft-free spot.
After about 45 minutes-1 hour it should have doubled.
Turn out onto floured surface, cut in half to form 2 pizzas, or several pieces if you have mini pizza pans. Roll into circles. If you are an ex pizza pro like my hubby, you can toss them in the air.
Cover with your favorite sauce, pesto and or cheese and toppings.
We usually make these with homemade pizza sauce, mozzarella or white colby cheese, and pepperoni. I like to top mine with sundried tomatoes, olives, and roasted red peppers. Yum.
You can use this dough recipe for breakfast pizza, dessert pizza, and of course more traditional pizzas.
Enjoy!
Kelly
