Homemade Food that Makes Me Happy: Pizza!

Sorry I've been away from the blogging circuit, y'all. It's been a little hectic over here in Bulls land with me landing my first interview for graduate school (fingers crossed, cause I loved the school!) and other various things. Needless to say, when you're running around for work like crazy or you're stressing about what to say to a professor you reallyreally want to impress, food isn't always on the forefront of your priorities! However, falling into the trap of eating out for convenience has been really bad on our wallet or our health - because if it's healthy, it's probably not sold for 99 cents at McDonalds. And anyway, we pride ourselves on liking our own food at least as much as any food we can get eating out, so there's not a whole lot of reason to eat out often. So what's one of our favorite go-to foods?

Homemade pizza!

I've always been of the opinion that anything you make at your own house is likely to be healthier than what you get eating out because you control all aspects of what you're eating - how much butter to use, whether to fry or bake those chips, whether you upend the salt shaker or just put a little on your meal. So when I suggest pizza for dinner on those harried weekday nights, I try to think of ways to make it better for us - or at least not as bad as my favorite Pizza Hut special.

Ways to health it up a little?
- Use wheat crusts - they're better for you and they taste delicious.
- Low-fat cheese - Mozzerella tastes the same to me no matter how much fat it's packing. Cheddar is harder, but still good.
- Use actual tomatoes instead of tomato sauce - I'm a little partial to my own sundried tomatoes, but any kind of tomatoes are great and it takes so much bad nutrition out to not use sauce (unless you make your sauce yourself... can't say I've gotten around to that yet). I can't say I always follow this cause I do love pizza sauce, but it's an option that can make your pizza better and healthier every once and a while.
- Sub out turkey pepperoni or turkey bacon for regular bacon. As you can see in the picture above, there's no shortage of bacon on my personal pan, but it's just a liiiiittle better if it's turkey. Still tastes great.
- Add veggies. Cut back a little on the fun stuff and throw in veggies - mushrooms, onions, broccoli, whatever you like. Pizzas have such an opportunity to be original and delicious and cater to exactly your tastes, so mix it up!

The pizza above uses turkey bacon, BBQ sauce, seasoned chicken breast, cheddar cheese, and shallots. I'm also a big fan of white pizza, made with low-fat alfredo, chicken breast, low-fat mozzerella, mushrooms, and onions.

Next up: Pizza Dip (takes all my favorite elements of pizza and makes them Superbowl-compatible ;))