One of my favorite things to do when I was growing up was cooking with my Mom. She taught me a lot of things and I still harbor a love of cooking. I mostly love to do baking (you know, sweets, desserts, all those things I can’t have while I’m pregnant because Gestational Diabetes). I love to experiment with different things and I frequently just throw things together with no recipe and I don’t write down what I’m doing and, of course, those are the meals my family seems to like the most and want me to reproduce…and of course I can’t because it was just something thrown together. Luckily pizza is one that can be easily recreated and can have any flair and flavor you want!
Saturday is our usual “Pizza Night” in our household. The kids (but mostly the hubby) look forward to Saturday Pizza Night. Most of the time I just buy a store bought pizza and throw it in the oven. While you can find some of the store pizzas for pretty cheap, they are not always the tastiest pizzas (at least according to my kids and husband). Saturday we were planning to go get a pizza for the kids from a pizza store that offers ready made pizzas that you just pick up and go for $5. The kids do like their pizza, but when I was at our discount grocery store I found a great deal on pizza crusts! I used the pizza crusts the week before as a trial to see how they would cook up so I knew the kids would eat this pizza crust! On a side note, my kids will also happily eat my homemade cauliflower crust pizza as well! That’s awesome because I’m sneaking in veggies and they are eating a little healthier!
So…I found the pizza crust for $0.99! One pizza crust will feed all 3 of my kids. I knew I had little marinara cups at home from the lunch program our school district was doing when the schools closed down. We initially didn’t take advantage of the meals because we have plenty of food and I wanted to make sure kids that needed the meals were able to get the meals. I didn’t want to be taking anything from them. One week we were very low on groceries and I couldn’t get a slot for a grocery pick up in a reasonable amount of time and I was at a loss for what to do. So we went to the lunch pick up. The ladies there begged us to come back and said if they didn’t get more traffic they were going to cancel the lunch program. Not good for our friends who are dependent on the program. We started going and it was the thing that our kids looked forward to. They finally got to get out of the house! We were not going ANYWHERE at this time. I digress though. My kids don’t really like to eat the marinara sauce by itself. They were given cheesy breadsticks to dip in the marinara but they just wanted the cheesy breadsticks and not the marinara.
I saved the marinara (and the mustard, mayo, ketchup, ranch, and syrup packets) they got and didn’t use. I mentioned we are budgeting, right? Instead of having to buy these in the future, I can just pull these out and use them. They are also great to take along for a picnic so I don’t have to worry about if the food gets too hot. So when I saw the $0.99 pizza crusts, I knew I had marinara sauce at home, we ALWAYS have cheese (except 1 time during this pandemic and it was a DEVASTATING day-we didn’t know what to eat without cheese), and that’s about all my kids eat on their pizza. They are not huge fans of pepperoni yet. My oldest son is NOT a fan of veggies, so veggies were out. I didn’t need to buy any other “things” for the kids’ pizza! I only needed to spend $0.99! Of course it would mean I would have to use the oven, which if you’ve read my post on saving money you know I try to avoid this during the hot Texas summer, but I just couldn’t pass the deal up. Plus it would mean I could let the kids help me if they wanted.
I took my pizza crust (and several other great deals) home and got ready to start on my pizza! I pulled out all my supplies, the pizza crust, aluminum foil, sheet pan (my pizza stone broke years ago and I have never replaced it but would highly recommend one), cheese, and marinara sauce. I set the oven temperature to 450 degrees to preheat per the crust instructions. Then I asked the kiddos if they wanted to help. My boys declined but my daughter said she wanted to help! I was so excited she wanted to help with cooking like I did with my Mom. Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn’t. While I was getting the aluminum foil on the sheet pan, she decided she didn’t want to help. She is still young so I don’t let it hurt my feelings when she changes her mind. There will be plenty of more times to cook with my daughter. She has her Shimmer and Shine cookbook that she likes to pick recipes from and cook with me!
I had my pizza pan ready. As a side note, I always cover my pans and I never put them directly on the oven rack because I have Celiac’s Disease. I don’t force my kids to eat everything gluten free so pizza is usually something I let them enjoy chock full of gluten. I don’t want it to contaminate my oven racks or my pans so I use the pan and aluminum foil as a barrier. I put a little bit of some cooking spray on the aluminum foil to keep the pizza from sticking to the foil. I then opened my marinara sauce cups. I thought it would take several of those little cups, but it only took 2 to get good coverage.
I then opened my cheese. I used mozzarella and sharp cheddar cheese. I sprinkled that over the pizza crust and, boom! It was ready to go in the oven! The pizza crust I use says to preheat the oven to 450 degrees and then turn it down to 425 degrees when you put the pizza in so that’s what I did. In went the pizza and I set my timer to 10 minutes. Now I could relax for a bit. Oh wait, I had other budget friendly finds to put away, so no resting! I was able to get everything put away while the pizza cooked!
Yes my husband and I had pizza too. I found a gluten free spicy jalapeno cauliflower crust for a great price at the discount grocery store and found a high protein (aka pizza full of ALL the meats) for the hubby. We were doing a semi date night though so ours went in a little later. Also as a side note, the while the spicy jalapeno cauliflower crust I purchased was good, it did NOT hold together and fell apart when I tried to put it on my plate.
The pizza for the kids finished and I took it out to cool down. I packed it up and the kids had the pizza and grapes (also from the discount grocery store) for dinner! They loved it and we had 4 pieces leftover for lunch the next day! I was so excited to make my kids a pizza (that lasted 2 days) for $0.99! I felt like I was rockin’ the budget friendly Mama! Next time I hope my daughter will stick around to at least spread the marinara sauce!
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