Squash Pizza

Mr. Gaunt and I made pizza tonight. I skipped my weigh in because I don’t think I lost more than maybe a half pound. It’s fine, I maintained nicely all through Christmas, what more could I ask for? Anyways back to the Pizza, I posted earlier that I planned to make this squash pizza, but laughed out loud when I read they wanted me to cook the Butternut squash for an hour and also spend an hour caramelizing onions…ha! I wish I had that kind of time and motivation. So I adjusted things a bit to make them fit my time frame.

INGREDIENTS:
-Pre Made Whole Wheat Pizza Crust
-Minced Garlic
-Olive Oil
-1 small diced onion
-5-6 large Thyme Leaves
-1 Cup sliced Mushrooms
-2 Chicken Apple Sausages diced (optional, skip for Vegetarian)
-1/2 Cup 2% Mozzarella Cheese
-1/2 an Acorn Squash
-3-4 small red potatoes sliced
-2-3 Tablespoons Light Alfredo (or Olive Oil)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 400

-Cut Acorn in half and scrape seeds and pulp out. Spray with Pam and sprinkle with garlic salt. Put in deep microwavable dish, add 2 or 3 tsp. water (just enough to make steam). Cover well with plastic wrap. Cook on high for 10 minutes.

-Saute Diced onions and Garlic in a large pan. Add Mushrooms. When mushrooms are soft add sausage. Saute it all until nice and brown and cooked. Turn burner off and sprinkle torn up Thyme Leaves on top, let sit.

– Slice Red Potatoes thin (best if you have a mandolin – Which I got for Christmas!)

-Spread Alfredo (or olive oil) onto Pizza Crust. Sprinkle lightly with cheese

-Dump The Onion Garlic Sausage mix evenly onto Pizza Crust

-Spread out raw Potato Slices evenly on top

-Scoop Out small clumps of the Acorn Squash and place evenly on top of the potatoes

-Sprinkle with Cheese.

Place in oven and cook for 15-20 minutes until cheese is golden. Let cool and serve. This is ABSOLUTELY the best pizza we have ever made! Everything was perfect! Oh and we Netflixed Mad Men and watched the first episode. The Feminist in me want to scream! Im going to give a few more episodes, people seem to love it.

Low Fat Turkey Meatloaf Muffins

I’ve been wanting to make these for so long, but APPARENTLY The Biggest Losers promotion of Jennie O Extra Lean ground turkey has wiped it all off the shelves. Im not even joking I have probably checked 5 different grocery stores in the past two weeks and all of them were out! I mean they even had the empty spot for it but no actual product…lame. You have to be careful too because you might see the LEAN and think thats what you want, but the LEAN has 8 grams of fat and they EXTRA LEAN only has 1.5, thats a big difference my friend so read the label!

Anyways portion control is HUGE when losing weight so these Meatloaf Muffins are a great way to limit the amount on your plate, plus who doesnt like a muffin, meat or otherwise? So the recipe I used is based on this one, only I nixed the cheese cube and added onions, so ignore the nutrition info unless you follow that one exactly. I also made both Garlic butter Acorn Squash and Brown Sugar Acorn squash and salad of course! It was nice warm comfort food.

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HEALTHY HOLIDAY RECIPE:

Vegan Pumpkin Bites

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Stuffed Acorn Squash

Umm this might be A. the best thing I have ever made, and B. The best thing I have eaten in a long time. Yum! I got the idea when I searched “acorn squash” over on Food Gawker (yes the best website EVER!) The recipe is roughly based off of this recipe, edited a bit to what I had in the house.

The best thing I discovered was microwaving the acorn (YAY for microwaves!) you basically cut it in half, scrape out the seeds, spray with pam, splash with a little garlic salt. Then you put the halves in a microwave safe dish and cover with plastic wrap, nuke for 8 minutes. Done!

In the mean time you wanna make your rice. This can be any kind you like, Quinoa, brown rice, microwaved or regular. mine was a Wild Rice and Brown Rice mix that unfortunately took about 60 minutes to cook, oh well.

While rice is cooking I sauted the following: Onion, Garlic, Olive Oil, Turkey Sausage, and peppers.

When the rice is done you mix it in with your sauted mixture. Then pack the rice mixture into your Acorn squash, fill it overflowing! Then put a few slices of mozzarella on top and broil at 500 for 6 minutes (or until crispy on top).

Tada!