Cauliflower Pizza Dough

I've been meaning to try a recipe for cauliflower pizza dough and I just hadn't gotten around to it, with the move and all. Just a few days ago I made the one from The Lucky Penny's blog {recipe found here} It was good! I still have to work on the consistency .. and I didn't use parchment paper like she said (because I didn't have any) .. so maybe that will help with the baking too ? We will see. I'll definitely give it another go! Check it out:

She said to preheat the oven to 450 with the pizza stone in there ...

I used a giant head of cauliflower which she said not to do. This might be another one of my problems, but it all measured properly ... so maybe not? I'm unsure. Just use the florets.

Put the florets in the food processor (I used the smaller grater)

 Place in the oven for 4 minutes to cook.

While it was in the microwave, I added the other ingredients together.
1/4 c. mozzarella
1/4 c. parmesan
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning
1/4 tsp. salt

Looked like this ...

When the cauliflower was done in the microwave, I had the tea towel laid out on the cutting board and spread it evenly over the towel to cool. Once it was cool I strained (weird pic = left hand)
I got a ton of water out, and strained until my hands couldn't strain anymore.

Mixed with the dry ingredients ...

Added an egg and mixed ...

This is where I was bad and didn't use the parchment paper .. If I had, I would have been able to form the dough exactly how I wanted and then slide the paper onto the stone. Instead ... I had to work with what I had .. and ended up with this:

I baked it for about 12 minutes ... added the toppings and baked for another 5-7 minutes. I forgot to take a picture of the pizza dough cooked, but before toppings. Sorryyyyyyy....

It really did taste delicious ... but we had to eat it with forks rather than hold the pieces with our hands like a normal pizza. I'll absolutely be trying to perfect this!
(Toppings: turkey bacon, cheese, chicken, tomato, peppers, onions)

Homemade Potato Chips

Recently I told you guys I made some homemade potato chips ... Now, if I told you I completely took "Lays" out of my life .. it wouldn't be true. BUT, I wouldn't share a recipe here if I didn't love it.

Here ya go! 

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Use a mandolin to slice your potatoes thinly. I only used one potato this time. 

Dip each potato slice in olive oil. I let the oil drip off as much as I can.

Place on a sprayed / greased cookie sheet. Salt chips to your liking.

Bake at 400 for 12 minutes and flip. Bake another 10-12 minutes .. keep checking them. You'll want to make sure they are crisping up but not burning :)

You'll love these .. and they aren't fried, so they are "healthier"! 

They sort of taste like french fries, so sometimes we dip them in ketchup! :) 

Super easy! Give it a try and let me know what you think! 

For more Healthy Recipes ... {Click Here}

Loaded Cauliflower Casserole

I mentioned this recipe before.. it was so much better than I thought it would be :)

Look weird? Give it a chance (said the girl who never had cauliflower before she tried this)

I intended on taking way better pics for you this time ... turns out, not the case. I made it tooooooo easy and forgot to take good pictures along the way.

I cooked chicken for dinner last night, so I made double and had the chicken ready for tonight.

I cooked turkey bacon with breakfast this morning, so I made double and had that ready too.

I even had the cauliflower cooking this morning so it would be ready too. Everything else was!

Nice, right?

Okay, preheat the oven to 350:

This time, if I'm honest I only measured three things:

2 chicken breasts (chopped and cooked)

8 turkey bacon strips (cooked and cut into bite size pieces)

2 heads of cauliflower (steamed or boiled until cooked accordingly)

I didn't measure the cheese, green onions or garlic salt. But really - just make it look good ;) 

Here it is, all mixed together.

Then ... add more cheese on top ;) again .. I didn't measure that either.

Side note: Recently we changed over to grating our own cheese, instead of buying it done already. I doubt you care, but in an attempt to save some money on groceries ... I have been looking into doing things differently. Again, I doubt you care, but we are getting a 10 oz. block of cheese for the same price as an 8 oz. bag of already shredded cheese. We also think it tastes fresh and is better this way and we are getting more for our money. Anyways, onto the cooking...

Cover and bake at 350 

For 25 mins 

and you'll have this when you're done :) 

For the real (whole) recipe ... click HERE

For more of my collection on HEALTHY RECIPES ... CLICK [HERE]

September Goals

But first ... a quick update on my --August Goals--
If I'm honest, a few of these babies were completed over Labor Day weekend when I had my husband around!

1. Read at least one book. Just FINISHED reading Tatiana and Alexander .. The Bronze Horsemen #2 - by Paullina Simons on my Kindle Touch. Wow. I think it was 810 (or something close) pages ... It didn't have a happy ending, like most of the stuff I read but honestly I had already gotten "so far" that I had to push through and finish. 

You can see ... it was a lot of work ...

But I finally made it to ...

BOOK COMPLETE!! YAY!!

2. Get my photo wall up in our new living room. CHA CHING! I'm in love with this. Super thankful for a husband who can do things like this, no problem. (with his lovely assistant of course!) I'm really happy with how it turned out. What do you think?

3. Get EVERYTHING off of our kitchen table .. True story! I got that bad boy cleared off!

I put this mail organizer in the pantry, so it's hidden but it's a place for our mail, bills, lists and coupons to go.


4. Get 5+ boxes out of the guest room (more unpacking / donating / throwing away!) 

I ACTUALLY did this. 5 boxes at least. Are you serious? I didn't donate or throw anything away though. We still have so much junk up there in our poor guest room, but I made a dent! I truly don't know if this house will have a room for guests to stay ... the boys usually just sleep on the couches! I know you can't see a big difference, but I swear there is.

5. Try two new recipes. 
Can I please tell you how excited I am that I KILLED this goal? (13 in all, I think!)

Turkey Bacon Ranch Wraps (ok .. not a real recipe, just a new combo for us!)

Lemon Greek Chicken

Chicken Gnocchi Soup

Pronto Pasta Bake (no pic)


Zucchini Lasagna (twice!)

Stuffed Red Peppers (I'm making them again tonight!)

Snickerdoodles

Carrot, Apple, Zucchini Bread

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Popsicles

Chicken Stuffed Zucchini

{Crock-Pot} Apple, Turkey Bacon, BBQ Chicken

Loaded Cauliflower Casserole

I'm making this again this week .. this pic is terrible .. I'll make it again and write about it. YUM!

Home made potato chips (no pic) I'm making more of these this week, I'll post pics and recipes :)

6. Truly start lifting weights on a schedule.
Ehhh ... I decided on a schedule .. I did a solid week .. Friday killed me and now I never want to do legs or abs again .. but I'll start again today (Wed) Wahhhhhhh :( 
This one is going back on the goals list for next month.

Okay!! On to September Goals!!! 

1.  Get a puppy ... eeeeeekkkk!!!!!! Okay, that's not a goal .. it's an announcement! Jeff and I are getting a puppy! I'll totally be posting pics when we get him in a few weeks, so buckle up. I'll try not to be a crazy dog person .. but they're adorable .. so really, buckle up for puppy pics.
So I guess this goal will be a multi, multi, multi part goal, all to be completed before we GET the puppy:

• Read about puppy training / crate / house training
• Purchase baby gates for the kitchen
• Purchase crate for puppy
• Set some house rules
• Get / make a few rags for puppy clean up
• Purchase puppy accident cleaning up supplies
• Research a VET close to our home
• Research puppy immunizations
• Research boarding dog fees while traveling
• Research a dog tag / license?

 Holy crap. It's okay, I'll get it done. I actually have looked into a few of these already ;)

2. Come up with a YUMMY dessert (not healthy!) to take to Jamie's when we visit for the weekend... I can't WAIT to see Jamie and Brad in San Diego in a week!!

3. Purchase a plane ticket home for CHRISTMAS for me? This is up in the air..I would LIKE to purchase tickets, but there are a few reasons it might have to wait. We'll have to see.

4. Get to mass (church) THREE weeks in September.

5. Send two pieces of "just because" mail to anyone I see fit. I love mail.

6. GET ON A LIFTING SCHEDULE! (Yelling at myself .. not you..)

7. Watch the stars in Joshua Tree at least once in September. 

I feel like that's a lot .. but we will see what I can accomplish! 

Do you have any goals for September? What are they? 

{Crock-Pot} Apple, Turkey Bacon, BBQ Chicken

A new FAVORITE in our house!! And it's an easy crock-pot recipe = happy wife!

There is chicken under there! Yum, dude. Yum.

I found this recipe on Pinterest (follow me! It's fun!) from the Chef In Training website. (No, I didn't come up with it)

Just like her, I used:
1 cup BBQ Sauce (Sweet Baby Rays)
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tablespoons lemon juice

Mix all together. Then peel and chop apples (I used like 3 pink lady apples). Add to the BBQ mixture.

I used 3 chicken breasts ... I could have DEFINITELY put more of these in there ... probably more like 5 or 6. I had a lot of saucey apple stuff left over :)

Take your bacon (I used turkey bacon because we don't eat regular bacon to keep things healthy), wrap two around each chicken breast. I wrapped it around the top and met them at the bottom, then the chicken sits on the seam ... hopefully that makes sense. Let me know if it doesn't.

Once all your bacon wrapped chicken is placed in the crock-pot, pour your BBQ apple sauce on top. Turn your crock-pot on low for 6-8 hours or until the chicken is done (ours was done in 6)

People on the Chef's blog were commenting that their bacon didn't crisp up so I was even more worried about using turkey bacon (since it doesn't crip much anyways) and it did really well. I was really happy with how it turned out! They also said it was really watery .. ours wasn't. Don't ask me how I did it? :) I just did what she said to do :)

What do you think? Give it a try! Enjoy! :)
Comment to let me know you stopped by! I'd love to hear from ya!

For more healthy recipes .. {click here} 

Chicken-Stuffed Zucchini & Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Popsicles (WW Friendly)

Two recipes ... don't be scared that I'm mixing cookie dough and chicken ... although I think cookie dough is good with anything ...

What is a chicken-stuffed zucchini, you ask?

This, my friend. This.

At my wedding shower, I got this cook book from my best friends mom :)

I swear, guys. Its the greatest book. It has "the basics" some stuff I know and some helpful tips I didn't know. It has "cooking fresh vegetables" and "selecting fresh fruits and vegetables" that tells you what to look for. All sorts of great information as well as recipes. I'd highly recommend it for anyone starting off!

Onto the cooking ... The recipe says:

Bring water to a boil ... put in whole zucchini and boil for 5 mins. Then remove and cool slightly.

Mix veggies, cooked chicken, 4 Tb. Parmesan cheese and 1 tsp. (I used Italian) seasoning.
I cut up 1 large carrot ... some red pepper and 1.5 cooked and chopped chicken breast.

Cut down each side on the top of the zucchini. Scoop out the insides.

Cut up the zucchini you removed from the middle.

 Mix zucchini in the chicken mixture.

Stuff hollowed out zucchini with chicken mixture. Sprinkle top with 2 more Tb. with Parmesan and  bake at 400 for 15 minutes.

Enjoy!!!! (this was ALL veggies except the chicken and cheese so I didn't even figure out the WW points)


Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Popsicles - 

I just made these to freeze ...

1 1/4 c. unsweetened Almond Milk (vanilla)
1/3 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
Pinch of salt
2 Tbsp. chocolate chips

I didn't have popsicle molds or sticks so I made them into 16 ice cube molds.

1 Weight Watcher point each  I hope they're yummy once they're frozen! UPDATE!
YUM!!!

For other healthy recipes .. click [HERE]