Pizza!

Tonight we had pizza for dinner.  We used to make pizza all the time using the Trader Joe's whole wheat dough.  I'm not sure if we got sick of eating pizza so much (is that even possible!?), if it was just too much work, or if we decided if it had too many calories, but we hadn't made pizza for a while.  Then I discovered you could use Flatout Bread as pizza crust.  There are many different types of Flatouts--original, Italian herb, honey-wheat.  Many of the Flatouts, specifically the "light" varieties, only have 90 calories each.  All you need for the pizza is a package of Flatouts, olive oil, pizza sauce, cheese (vegan or dairy), and whatever toppings you want!  You can make (and eat) a couple of personal pizzas for not a whole lot of calories...as long as you don't use a ton of toppings!

I modified a recipe I found on the Flatout Bread website.  Here's what I did:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Brush the tops of your Flatouts with a small amount of olive oil.
3. Place the Flatouts directly on the grate and cook for 5 minutes.
4. While the Flatouts are cooking, fry up any veggies you want to put on your pizza.  Tonight I used one organic red pepper and one sweet onion.
5. Remove the Flatouts from the oven.  Place on a baking sheet (or 2 depending on how many pizzas you are making) 
6. Top with a small amount of pizza sauce (I like Contadina pizza sauce in a squeeze bottle).
7. Top with a small amount of cheese.  Dairy cheese on my pizzas and vegan cheese on Larry's!
8. Add the veggies (or other toppings...the possibilities are endless!).
9. Place the cookie sheet in the oven for another 5 minutes (or until the cheese is melted).
10. Cut up the pizza and enjoy!

Larry's vegan pizza!

My dairy pizza!

Burritos!

Tonight's dinner was burritos.  Well, a mix between burritos and fajitas.  It is essentially a bunch of different things thrown into a wrap.  I used La Tortilla Factory's Smart & Delicious 100 Calorie Tortillas.  It is tough to find low-calorie wraps, so I was excited when I discovered these!

Basic Ingredients:
- tortillas
- 2 peppers
- onion
- rice
- black beans
- additional toppings for your burrito (salsa, cheese, avocado, anything else your taste buds desire!)

First, I heated a pan of water for my boil-in-a-bag rice.  My favorite way to cook rice!  As soon as the water was boiling, I cooked the rice.

While I waited for the water to boil, I sliced up some peppers and started frying them.  I sprayed the pan with a small amount of olive oil (I filled up a travel-sized spray bottle with olive oil - it works well enough).

I used yellow and orange peppers...they needed to be used before they ended up in the compost bin!

 Next, I sliced up an onion and fried it with the peppers.

Yum!

During the frying process, I also sliced and mashed a small avocado.  I love avocado or guacamole on my burritos!  When I don't have an avocado on hand or the avocado just isn't ripe yet, I split a Wholly Guacamole 100 calorie pack between my burrito and Larry's burrito.  We usually have this on hand.

I had some cilantro left over from last night's dinner, so I decided to add it to my rice along with some lime juice.  About a year ago I found a recipe for rice like Chipotle serves.  You can see the recipe here.  Mine is a modified version - just the rice, cilantro, and lime.  It just gives the rice a little flavor. 

Lastly, heat up the black beans!  I forgot to do this until the last minute tonight.  I had half a can of black beans left over from last night's dinner, so I threw the Pyrex dish and the microwave to heat up the beans.  

Time to make the burrito!  We usually start with salsa and then add cheese (vegan for Larry, dairy for me!), rice, veggies, avocado, and beans.

Add your ingredients...

wrap....

and enjoy!

Mango, Avocado, and Black Bean Salad

I am always on the hunt for new recipes that are relatively simple.  I also enjoy recipes that involve avocado and mango.  While on my search, I found this recipe on the Whole Foods website.  It seemed pretty easy, was healthy, and involved some tasty ingredients.  I decided to make it my own and serve it over rice in order to make it a complete meal.  Usually I use the boil in a bag brown rice (for this recipe I used one bag of Success boil in a bag brown rice).

The recipe on the website serves six.  I cut the recipe in half since I was only cooking for 2!  That was easy to do - instead of 2 avocados and 2 mangoes, I used 1 small avocado and 1 mango.  Although there was a lot of pealing and chopping, this recipe was very easy (and delicious!)

I was excited to use my mango slicer!

I got this mango slicer at a Papmered Chef party.  It is actually called a "mango wedger"

The mango "wedger" slices the mango nicely and makes it much easier to remove the skin.

Look at those pretty wedges!

The mango, avocado, and black beam salad tasted pretty yummy on its own.  It would make a great side at a summer bbq - vegans and non vegans would love it!

To make the mango, avocado, and black bean salad into a meal, I put it over rice.  I was a little worried about mixing the hot rice with the cool salad, but it was tasty!

The final product!

We had some organic romaine lettuce left over from dinner on Saturday night, so we also had a side salad with our main course.  A simple way to please vegans and omnivores - different salad dressings!  Larry had a 0 calorie balsamic vinaigrette dressing (which he said was good) and I tried a chunky blue cheese yogurt dressing with only 35 calories.

Salads that make everyone happy.

I was very pleased with the whole dinner and will definitely be making it again.