Okay, I thought I would try something a little different.  I don’t know why I never thought of this before, since I love to cook, but here goes.  So, I was thinking that I would post about one recipe a month.  Arne and I love trying new things and old favorites.  All the recipes are health conscious of course, but most importantly feature all the food groups.  I am all for a healthy balance, that is why I wanted to start with our favorite pizza recipe.  Everyone loves pizza, but getting it delivery is expensive and you never really know how many calories they are throwing in.  I am always shocked at how high the calorie count is for one slice!  Anyways, this way you can enjoy pizza, but make it the way that works for you diet.  Funny story, the dough recipe is from one of my skating friend’s Mom!  Thanks Mrs. Morrison!

Dough:

1 C warm water (from the tap is hot enough)

I tbsp quick rising yeast or one of the pre-measured packages

1 tsp sugar

1/4 C oil (perferably canola and especially if you can get your hands on some Omega 9!)

1 tsp salt

2.5 C flour

Mix the warm water, sugar and yeast together.  Let stand for 10 minutes.  Next, add the salt and oil and stir.  For the flour, you can use whole wheat or basic white or a combo of the two.  Add 1 and 1/4 cups at a time and only add as much as you need to make a firm dough.  Cover and let stand in a warm place until it doubles in size usually 20 minutes.  Sometimes I just put it straight to the pan and it works fine.  Depends how hungry you are! Spread it on a large baking sheet, a pizza pan or a pizza stone.  Top it uncooked.

For the toppings, we try all sorts of different things.  One thing that I think makes the pizza is using tomato paste as the sauce.  My favorite is the Hunts Herbs and Spices flavour.  Our favorite combos are:

Hawaiian and more - ham, pineapple chunks, green peppers and a cut up pepperoni stick (picture)

BBQ Chicken and Broccoli - This one sounds weird but tastes amazing!  Cook up some chicken breast, cut it up and toss with BBQ sauce, spread over the pizza and used uncooked broccoli.

All pizzas are toped with as much or as little cheese as you want.  Bake for 15-20 minutes at 425F.  That’s it!  Happy cooking!

Well, I am off again!  I arrived in Richmond, BC, home of the new Olympic Oval for the 2010 Games, last week.  For the past year, everytime I came out here I stayed in a hotel.  For anyone who travels a lot, you might relate to how it feels to spend several weeks living in a hotel room.  There are definitely perks: cable tv, maids to clean the room, maybe a pool, etc.  But after a while, all of this gets old when you can’t decide where you want to eat, you wish you could just cook and how you wish you could just sit on a couch instead of your bed.  Well, this trip is my first time staying in my own room!  I am pretty excited about it because now when I come, which will be once a month until the Olympics, I have my own room, with my own bed and I can cook my own meals.  The room is in a house that is kind of like a residence.  I guess you could say, it could be like a frat house.  There are 7 other skaters here, with 2 floors, 2 kitchens and 2 living rooms.  I am on the same floor as one of my teammates and one of my best friends, so it couldn’t be better.  It is a 10 minute bike ride to the oval, so the convenience factor is high as well.  The pic above is a shot of my room!