Sometimes you just want to eat comfort food. But, eating outside is not really healthy all the time. So, on the days that everyone in the family has had a long day, or just really want something to boost our moods, we make homemade pizza. We tend to just make it a family affair, and the four of us have a lot of fun. It gives us a chance to wind down in a therapeutic way as well.

Now, we do not make the dough from scratch. On a weekday, there just isn’t enough time when everyone is really hungry.

The easiest way is to buy some dough from WholeFoods or Trader Joe’s and we normally pick up the wholewheat option unless we are really craving a full on download of carbs.

There is no hard and fast recipe. You can make your pizza any shape you want and get as creative as you would like. This is all about what you feel like eating that particular night.

So here goes:

1. Roll out your dough in a round shape on a pizza pan.
2. Mix marinara sauce and tomato paste to make your sauce. We usually buy all of this from Trader Joe’s. Usually, I add in a spoon of fresh pesto, but that can make the pizza soggy, so just be cautious.
3. Start with placing spinach pieces in a circle on top of the sauce, then add a light layer of mozzarella cheese. I add a light layer first so the veggies have something to stick to. We are trying to be cautious of our milk products, so we have been switching over to grass fed cheese.
4. Sprinkle all of your veggies on top in any which way you like. I added bellpepper, mushrooms, olives, broccoli, and zucchini, and jalepenos.
5. Then finish off with another layer of light cheese and this time to make it more flavorful, I usually add Cheddar or Parmesan.
6. Top it off with minced garlic if you’d like.
7. Then bake your pizza for 10-15 min and then voila, it’s ready to eat.

So why is this a better option?

Well, you know exactly where your ingredients are coming from, how fresh they are, whether they are canned/not canned, etc. It’s easier to keep track of what you are eating and source it back.

We do not use cheese with animal rennet, so we mostly use mozzarella, cheddar, and Parmesan. And, typically we don’t use a lot of cheese as none of us like it too much.

Just try to use the freshest ingredients as possible, and wherever/if you can, organic.

At the end of this meal, none of us ever feel like we ate really greasy food, and need to work out. We still feel light, and feel as though we ate clean food (which it is).

We have made our dough before, but this is how a weekday pizza normally looks like.

Enjoy!

-K