Costco Pizza

Cost: $11.99 + tax

Prep: none

I'm not going to lie or sugar coat it: glorified take out. There isn't much to say, but Costco makes yummy take and bake pizza.

We had a Meal Lovers and Margarita. The second smelled incredible!

I know it wasn't healthy and we should have supplemented. But we didn't. So there.

Piza

Cost: $6

Prep: 10 minutes

Did you notice? The spelling mistake in the title?

It is there to symbolize what happened to this dinner. Matt thought we had peppers; we didn't. I thought we had pineapple; we didn't.

Instead, we had pepperoni, cheese, olives, and onions. Hmmmm.

This left us scrambling a little, and we managed to find other toppings. We did pull out a jar of artichoke hearts and a small piece of feta cheese. Dinner felt much classier after that.

To class it up even further, we drank Moutain Dew. What is pizza without a soda to go with it?

Charlie, however, just had water.

Pizza!

Cost: $9

Prep: 20 minutes

We made pizza for dinner tonight. Well, Matt and I made pizza for dinner, and Charlie mostly stood starring at us while drinking watered down apple juice.

Matt and I had variations of the same pizza. Matt had barbeque sauce base with turkey pepperoni, onion, and peppers.

Mine had a tomato sauce base with turkey pepperoni, onion, peppers, and green olives.

One thing I like about this dinner is the leftovers. Charlie and my mom ate Matt's (oops!) leftovers the next day for lunch, and Matt ate mine the day after that (I am still buying a salad every day for lunch).

Another Later Pizza Dinner

Cost: $10

Prep: way too long, but really only about 15 minutes

We messed up dinner tonight. Not the food, but the timing. We went to run an errand at 5PM, and we weren't sitting down until dinner until almost 6:30, which is when we start the bath. The table was covered in folded laundry, but we just went with it.

So, anyway, dinner was simple, so I made up a bagged salad, and started eating that before the rest was ready.

We had got a clearanced pizza, Spicy Sicilian Flatbread, from Thrifty's. It was good, but REALLY spicy. Luckily though, we had left over pizza from a few nights ago and Charlie ate that.

Today, I am really not happy with Thrifty's. I don't have time to get into it now, but the last straw was that this pizza would have normally been $9.

LATE

Cost: $7

Prep: no idea

It is almost 8:30 and I am just sitting down to eat. Tonight we had parent/teacher interviews, so I am getting home MEGA late.

Matt made pizza though, for him and Chuck, and then he put one on late for me so it was still warm when I got home. How kind!

Now, I'm tired and hungry, so off I go to dine.

Pizza

Cost: $7

Prep: unsure

I'm so so so sorry. It has been days and I haven't posted. Things have been busy, and blogger finally changed my interface to the new one, and I hate it.

One night we had pizza. I don't even know what night it was. We bought the crust at Costco, and it is much cheaper than the ones that always mould from Thrifty's. These one are 4 for $7.50 and include a bag so we could freeze the extra two.

Matt's Pizza Dinner

Cost: $10 (for 5)

Prep: none  (for me)

Tonight, I got to sit with two of my girlfriends and chat while Matt made us a pizza dinner. It was fairly simple, but very tasty. We bought multigrain crust kits from Thrifty's (on sale for $5 for the two). For toppings, we had onion, peppers, olives, and pepperoni topped with mozzarella and parmesan.

For dessert, we had a blueberry coffee cake that was clearanced from Thrify's for $3. There is still one piece left, but we made pretty good work of it!

Boys' Night

I have a rule: if I am not here to eat dinner, I will not make you dinner.

Charlie and Matt were on their own! Charlie had a fudgesicle as an appie, and then I am pretty sure they had pizza. But for now, I am going to pretend I have no idea or that they ate chicken breast on spinach salad with yoghurt dressing.

Pilsbury Pizza Fail and Success

Cost: $10

Prep: over an hour

I am writing this very late tonight. I have a boy who stayed up long after his bedtime. I also feel a little sick.

Dinner sucked.

Dinner failed.

Dinner was started at 5:15.

Dinner was served at 6:35.

Dinner was raw.

Now, before I relay this saga, I will admit that I did redeem dinner, but I am never happy when I estentially need to make two dinners for one night.

We decided to try a product we have never tried before: Pilsbury Pizza Crust. It was 35% off of around $3.69 at the grocery store. We really like making our own pizza, as I am not a big fan of cheese and like a lot of toppings, which is the opposite of what you get when you order pizza. We used to get pre-made crust from Thrifty's, but 90% of the time when we went to use them, they would have fuzzy gray mould on them, so we had to stop. It was a downer, because those where a good price and yummy, but too many dinners were ruined.

So, we decide to try this product. The problems start right away. The directions say to stretch it to desired shape and thickness. This proves very difficult and the thing will not go to the size or shape we want it to. We try tossing, folding, pulling, nada.

Whatever. We keep going with our much smaller than expected crust. We get to the stage where we are baking it. The directions are 6-11 minutes baking at this point (already baked for 8). I take it out after 11 minutes, serve it up with the little salad I made, sit down, take a bite, and spit out a mouth full of raw dough. Gross.

So, collect it all up, put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes, take it out, still raw. Back in goes the pizza for another 10 minutes, take it out, raw. Matt eats some, Charlie eats a bit, but it is just too gross for me. I move on to an alternative. Some parts are cooked, like the outside of the crust, but the middle is a mess.

Before I move on, I must say that I am really disappointed that pizza didn't work out. We didn't have the crust very thick, but it was rubbery and chewy. Maybe it wasn't raw--how could it be after all that cooking--but it sure felt that way.

One of the many things I am making for the baby shower on Saturday is pigs in a blanket, so I also bought Pilsbury Wiener Wrap.

I used a package of this tonight, stuffing the wrap with a bit of the pizza veggies (onion, red and green peppers), a bit of pepperoni, and a pinch of cheese.

These were a lot more difficult to wrap than if I had simply been making Special Hot Dogs, but, in the end, these tasted good and were probably healthier.

I'm Done, so it's Pizza Night

Cost: $22 (with tip)

Prep: 3 minutes (on the phone)

I'm done. And I have been lying to you, my faithful three. Matt and I haven't just been on different schedules this week; we have been in different countries. I didn't want to say Matt was away in case one of you got it in your head to come kill me or steal my baby. But, now we are no longer defenseless, as Daddy is back protecting us, so I can come clean. Ah, that feels so much better.

So, I'm done with being a single mom. Dinners were difficult (often) and boring (always). I have to admit that since Charlie is such a slow eater, there were even a couple of times when I played on my phone while he finished. And, one day, I let Charlie watch a movie while he ate. It was Marley and Me: The Puppy Years, not a cinematic masterpiece.

Last night was the last dinner we were alone for, and I just could not cook another night for myself and a boy who doesn't eat. So I ordered a pizza.

I was going to get Villages, but we had an awful experience there the last time we ordered. Basically, they did not have our pizza ready when Matt went to pick it up, then waited 45 in the store, left for a couple minutes, came back and was told they couldn't make the pizza we had ordered AFTER he had been waiting in store an hour and 30 minutes at home. It took us 2 hours to get our stupid flatbread pizzas. With a hungry baby at home on a schedule, this isn't okay. We asked the be contacted by the manager and never were (despite what the manager wrote on Urbanspoon), so we don't get our pizza from there.



I didn't want to load Charlie into the car, then go get the pizza, then put him back in the car and drive home. Too much work when most places deliver for free. Or, at least I thought they delivered for free. I guess I should have asked. I ordered from Panago (the Esquimalt branch is where it came from, but it went through a call centre so I really had no say). There was a $2.50 charge for delivery. I ordered one medium pizza at $14.50. The cost was $19.04! I wasn't about to stiff the kid--who was literally a kid, maybe 19--on his tip, but I wasn't sure if the $2.50 was going to him. Anyway, I tipped him $3 still, just to be fair.

It seems stupid for me that they charge for delivery when there is so much competition. If I had known I would get this charge, I wouldn't have ordered from there (although, the charge is better than loading up the baby). I guess I need to find a different pizza place. I also woke up in the middle of the night feeling disgusting. Not sure if it was the pizza or not, but something didn't agree with me.

Anyway, the pizza was decent. My biggest complaint was that the ham was in huge pieces that would pull off whenever I bit into it. I do really enjoy the chipotle cilantro dip, and the black olives were generous (although the peppers and onions were not).

All in all, I will not be ordering from Panago again.

Cheap, Easy, Quick Lunch Pizza

Cost: $3

Prep: 10 minutes

Yesterday morning while shopping, Charlie was hungry. He loves bread, and there were focaccia marked down to $0.99. So, he ate a few hunks while we were shopping--and I ended up with a big hunk going stale in my coat pocket--but there was a fair sized loaf left when we got home.

Now, what to do with this?

There were many options for sandwiches, for dipping in soup, for toasting, but we went back to a twist on one of our favorite snacks from university. We would make toast, put tomato sauce on it, put any veggies or meats we had around on it, grate cheese on top, and broil. We refer to it as "Toast Pizza". It is a good sandwich alternative (similar in ingredients and calories). We are keeping toast pizza in mind for baby lunches, as things can get pretty boring for him.

Back to this lunch though....

So, we decided to use the bread as a base for pizza. We have some little packets of tomato sauce that came with pre-made pizza crusts (which we no longer buy as they were ALWAYS moldy). I had some trouble slicing the bread, but it worked out as there was a Daddy, Mommy, and Baby sized pizza in the end.

We gather topping from the fridge: leftover artichoke hearts, green olives, 1/2 an onion, 1/2 a tomato, mozzarella cheese, as well as defrosting two anchovies from the freezer for Charlie and I. Matt doesn't like anchovies, but I am pretty sure that people who don't think they like them have never actually tried them.

We then broiled the "pizza" until the cheese started to brown. I cut mine in quarters to make eating easier--it was a little floppy, and Charlie decided he needed to dip his in peach yoghurt.

Boys' Night

Boys' Night

Cost: $10

Prep time: none

Charlie and Dad had a big rectangular pizza from Thrify's. Matt was a little bitter that I went out without him, so I made sure to buy something that was sort of a treat for him--as well as quick for me to make--to soften the blow. Charlie had his with a side of mixed veggies for good measure.

Dinner: Take 2

Cost: $15 ($6 of that going to the disaster dinner)

Prep: 30 minutes

So, in that last post, what was supposed to be pork chops in mushroom gravy, well, wow! It was the best thing I ever tasted! Yum yum yum.

Not.

Who would even try that? The answer is the dog. But since we don't have a dog, the answer is no one. At one point, I lifted it up, turned my head to the side, and put it on the back deck for Matt to deal with later. He asked what I was doing, and I responded, "Seriously, if I look at that one more time, I am going to puke." And seriously, I was serious. I did gag a bit.

I'm not sure what happened. I had even "consulted" a recipe. I think the milk curdled. Uh. I need to stop talking about this. It was so so so so soooooo gross.

Okay, so we needed a new dinner plan. Instead of thinking on the spot, we made tomorrow's dinner instead. Luckily, last night I pulled out the chicken breasts to defrost, so those were mostly ready.

I toasted up some pita bread, grabbed some tomato sauce (and bbq sauce on Matt's), cut up the chicken breasts and peppers, torn up cilantro, grated mozzarella, sliced green olives and artichoke hearts, washed the spinach, and combined. The mini-pizzas were baked in the oven for 10 minutes, broiled for 2, and served.

We ended the meal full--well, Charlie needed an entire banana--but now we have no plan for tomorrow. Oh well!