Family Chow Hall

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BASIC PIZZA SAUCE

ROASTED RED PEPPER PIZZA SAUCE

DEEP DISH PIZZA

THIN AND CRISPY PIZZA

Last week my six-year-old fell victim to that great American institution - ADVERTISING. Throughout the week I got a couple of hints that he would like to try the Pizza Hut Cheesy Bites Pizza. After basically getting ignored by his mother, he finally came right out with it and said, “Mom, I want a Cheesy Bites Pizza.” To which I replied, “NO.”

We had a brief discussion about money and budgeting and making smart decisions about spending, which I’m sure very little if any soaked into his six-year-old brain. But, one good thing did happen. A little while later he asked, “Well, can we MAKE a cheesy bites pizza?”

Immediately I considered the time and effort it would take me to do that and although I like to please my children, I knew this would be going too far. So I, the eternal diplomat, said, “We can make a stuffed crust pizza, which would be almost the same.”

I really think he would have been satisfied with that, BUT my nine-year-old, (who loves to cook) joined in and said she wanted to try making a cheesy bites pizza. Okay, so how do I say no to THAT? Short answer - - I don’t. So we made plans to buy cheese sticks the next time I was at the grocery. Everything else we would need I already had on hand.

By Saturday, my daughter had it all figured out. She knew exactly how she was going to work the crust and put little cheese nuggets into each cheesy bite.

It was a blessing to me that, after an afternoon of snipping and arguing, these two kids ended up working together on the pizza and got along like peas and carrots. Some of you mothers may not believe this, but the only contributions to this pizza that I made were making and rolling out the crust, and mixing the sauce. Sarah chopped up the toppings, Jake and Sarah rolled the cheese into the crust, Rachel put the sauce and toppings on. I took them out of the oven.

How did she do it? We used a basic whole-wheat pizza crust recipe and increased it by half. Then I rolled it out large enough that it was hanging about half an inch or so off of the pizza pan. With a scissors, Sarah snipped it so that it looked like tabs, about 1 1/2 inch wide by 1 1/2 inch deep. Then Jake would place a little piece of a mozzarella cheese stick (the width of his little thumb) onto each tab. Sarah would fold the crust over the cheese and pinch it closed.

After that we topped and baked like any normal pizza. As you can see from the photo above, it turned out pretty well. We did order a cheesy bites pizza, once, a while back, and were rather disappointed with it. We were NOT disappointed with this one.

Besides being WAY less expensive, this pizza tasted better, was better for us, taught our kids to be do-it-yourselfers instead of buy-it-nowers, and actually brought about an hour of family harmony into our household.

All in all, we won the day we made the cheesy bites pizza.

Tina from Arlington, Ohio writes…

I wanted to recommend what I cooked for lunch today. It’s called Magic Beef Stew and it’s in the Beyond Macaroni and Cheese cookbook. I’ve made it a few times before and we love the stuff. Because it cooks for 4 hours, it’s a great Sunday lunch thing. I know you and I share the same dilemma of what to feed a starving family the minute you walk through the door after church on Sunday.

This is an all-too-common problem that most folks solve by going out to eat. Many of us, however, don’t have a regular Sunday after-church trip to the restaurant in the budget. And if it’s not in the budget, in this household, it is just not happenin’. Tina’s right - we have to plan good meals that can go in the crock-pot, the oven, or be cooked quickly after church. (Yesterday we had grilled bologna, which takes like 5 whole minutes on the grill and costs a fraction of a trip to McDonald’s.)

Now, I’m not sure if I’ve ever reviewed or recommended the Macaroni and Cheese cookbook, but it sure is a good one. Click here to see the book — “Beyond Macaroni and Cheese” by Mary Beth Lagerborg and Karen J. Parks. A must for every mom of children under 10. Full of fun ideas and things kids will be willing to try, “Beyond” can be a great help to an on-the-edge I-can’t-get-my-kids-to-eat-anything mother.

Another hint they give and I will back up is this: Get your kids involved in the cooking process. They are MUCH more willing to try foods that they helped prepare. I hope these ladies don’t mind my posting their recipe, with all due credit.

Here’s the recipe Tina mentions:

Magic Beef Stew
serves 6

1 lb. stew meat (you buy this in the beef case - it is already cut up and ready to use)
2 stalks celery
1 onion
3 carrots
3 potatoes
2 t. salt
1/2 t. pepper
1 T. sugar
2 T. minute tapioca
1 1/2 c. tomato juice (or 1 can of V-8)

Preheat the oven to 275.

Cover the bottom of a heavy pan with meat. Cut and arrange the vegetables on top. Combine the dry ingredients and sprinkle over the vegetables. Add the tomato juice.

Cover the pan tightly with foil or a lid.

Bake for 4 hours. Do not peek or stir.

Enjoy! — Later this week I will tell you how and why my kids made themselves a Cheesy Bites Pizza.

Red Lobster used to serve a delicious buttery, cheesy biscuit with every meal. It’s been - literally - many years since I have been in a Red Lobster so I have no idea if they still do or not. I’m not a big lover of seafood (if you read this blog much, you know I don’t cook it much) but I am a big fan of those biscuits that Red Lobster used to serve.

So a long time ago I decided to try making them myself, and by golly, they turned out pretty good. Now I make biscuits rather often, but don’t make these cheesy garlic ones much at all. I guess garlic bread is easier if you’ve got the right kind of bread on hand.

Last night we had BBQ chicken on the grill and a hodge-podge of leftover vegetables and I felt like serving something else with it, so I whipped up a batch of these biscuits.

To make them, start with a basic biscuit recipe: Baking Soda Biscuits, then add some shredded cheese, garlic, parsley, and extra milk. Here’s the recipe:

Cheesy Garlic Biscuits
makes 18

1/2 c. shortening (butter will make them even tastier)
2 c. flour
1 T. sugar
1 T. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 t. parsley
2 t. minced garlic (more or less to taste)
3/4 c. shredded cheddar cheese
1 to 1 1/4 c. milk

As with biscuits, put the shortening and all of the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt) in a large bowl. Use a pastry blender to cut the shortening or butter into the flour until you have small crumbs. Next add the garlic and cheese and toss them in with a spatula / rubber scraper.

Now add the milk until you have a big, messy-looking, lumpy blob of dough. It should be fairly wet, enough so that you definitely do not want to put your hands in it.

Get out your muffin pan and cupcake liners if you have them. Spray with a little cooking spray and drop big spoonfuls of biscuit dough into the muffin cups. They should be about 2/3 full.

Bake at 375 for about 15 minutes, until they turn golden brown on top. Serve immediately.