Whole Wheat pizza.... and salad.

I was craving pizza today.  I don't know why.  I never crave pizza, but I was.  So I decided to try to find a semi-healthier way to do it. 

I'll be honest, I've always thought of pizza as a meat and cheese delivery system.  I've never put much stock in the crust.  I was wrong.  I decided to try tonight's pizza with a Boboli Whole Wheat crust.  It was OK, but kind of cardboardy.  I'll have to find another recipe for a whole wheat crust.  I do like the Pillsbury refrigerated pizza dough, it's delicious.  However, I try, when ever possible, to use things with whole wheat instead of regular bleached flour because it's healthier.  Anyway, so I'm posting this, but I would not recommend the boboli crust.  I'd get the refrigerated Pillsbury crust instead. 

Boboli Crust, pizza sauce, sun dried tomatoes, mushrooms, Italian sausage, and goat cheese.  

 Brown the sausage.  Breaking it up as you go.

 When it's all brown, remove from pan.

 And drain.  I like to put it on paper towel, then place paper towel on top and press down with a bowl to get as much grease out as possible.

 I then put it in the food processor.  I like to process the cooked sausage because then I use less sausage and it spreads over the pizza more evenly.

 I only pulsed it three times.

 The crust

 On a pizza stone because I like a crispy crust.

 I still haven't found a pizza sauce I really like.  This is OK.  They are all OK.  I think, sometime soon, I'm going to have to make it from scratch.  Since I started doing that with my marinara and meat sauce I find any tomato sauce from a jar bland and pointless.

 Spread it thinly over the pizza.  I don't like really saucy pizzas.

 See, just a thin layer.

Mushrooms.  I would recommend buying some mini-portabello and sauteing them with garlic and onion and adding them to your pizza.  These are yucky canned ones.  I was trying to be cheap.  They are OK. 

I spread them all over the pizza.  I love mushrooms.  LOVE LOVE LOVE them!!

I saw some morel mushrooms in the store the other day.  They were $60/lb.  I love them, but not THAT much.  Especially since the season is almost here and I can get some for free. :) 

Sun-Dried Tomatoes packed in olive oil.  I usually like the dry packed ones, but these were what they had at the store.  I'm noticing a theme here.. kind of just went with it.. again it all turned out OK.

I just sliced them.  They were all oily and hard to cut. 

Did I mention that I like the dry packed ones?

I only put them on half the pizza.  Just trying something. :) 

Sausage crumbles.  This time I used Italian sausage, but sage sausage is my favorite.  Again I wanted to try something.  This is good stuff, but I really LOVE the sage stuff.

I put it on the opposite half from the sun dried tomatoes. I only used about a cup of sausage.  I flash froze the rest of it. 

Flash freezing:  I spread it out on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer for about a half hour then put it in a baggie. It freezes it as individual crumbles instead of a huge clump.  So next time I have pizza I don't have to cook sausage, just pull it out of the freezer and use as much as I need. 

Goat cheese.  I love goat cheese.  I only discovered it two months ago when I decided to make stuffed chicken. I pounded out a chicken breast and rolled herb/garlic goat cheese and mushrooms in it then baked it.  It was AMAZING..

That's not this post.

This post is about pizza.

I used sun-dried tomato and basil goat cheese AND garlic - herb goat cheese.  Goat cheese is also known as Chevre (which is french for goat). 

I put the sun-dried tomato/basil on the sun dried tomato side of the pizza and put the herb/garlic all over. 

I couldn't resist adding mozzarella.  I love mozzarella so I added it.

 But only to the sausage/mushroom side of the pizza.  I then shoved it in the oven to bake for about 10 minutes.

This is what it looked like when I took it out.  YUM!! Sorry the lighting is bad -- this one I took with my cell phone.  For some reason in that 10 minutes I went stupid and forgot I had a camera sitting right there. 

So while the pizza was cooking, I realized that I needed some veggies.  So I decided on a salad. 

Yes, I said salad.  I realize that salad goes against everything I believed in my whole life.  I hate lettuce.  It tastes like dirt -- I've said that my whole life.  If you asked my family what foods I hate the most it would be raw onions and lettuce.  Then I realized that I don't hate all kind of lettuce.. just iceberg lettuce. 

I'm justified.  There is absolutely ZERO nutritional value in iceberg lettuce.  So I was validated by hating it.  So I choose instead a mix that includes NO iceberg. 

These here are the ingredients for the BEST SALAD EVER!!  I could eat THIS salad every day.  It's a 50/50 Baby Mix (Baby spinach, baby romaine, baby leaf), cherry tomatoes, red onion, blue cheese, and lite buttermilk ranch. 

If you are looking for a salad dressing and prefer ranch go for lite instead of fat-free.  The fat-free is disgusting and the taste is completely off.  The lite stuff tastes like the real stuff and is only 70 cals per serving. 

A little red onion for more color.  The baby leaf lettuce is purple, but I do like pretty salad.

I halve the cherry tomatoes and probably use more than I need, but I just love them so much.  Hey it could be potato chips or cookies  -- at least it's a veggie!!

To me, this is the BEST part.  I LOVE BLEU CHEESE!!  It pairs well with the sweetness of the tomato and the bite of the red onion.  It ads a tangy flavor to the salad.  It's yummy, try it sometime with this specific combo.

I promise it's AMAZING!

Add two tablespoons of the lite ranch and toss together.  (2 Tablespoons is 70 calories).  It's pretty, yummy and the PERFECT starter for pizza.

Then I had two slices:  One of each kind.  They were good. 

I'd still use a different crust next time-- and the sage sausage. 

Still pretty yummy!