Including veggies is easy!

Why is it that we have such a hard time including vegetables in our daily diet when it is so easy to bulk our meals up with them!?

Some of my favorite ways lately are:

1) A large salad or pile of fresh or steamed veggies to fill at least half the plate. We were having spaghetti this particular evening and I knew i didn't want to use too many points on the pasta. It was very filling to crunch on some broccoli and cauliflower - and good for me, too!

2) Lettuce leaves in place of bread is a fantastic way to incorporate green leafy veggies and save some points. For lunch a few days ago I had some leftover turkey burger patties and I wanted an alternative to bread. I put a little spicy mustard and the turkey in green leaf lettuce and rolled it up. It was so tasty!

3) The easiest incorporating plan for veggies is also my favorite. I heat them through in the pan and then add an egg white. Essentially I have a little scrambled egg with my veggies. I love zucchini, spinach, mushrooms, peppers, onions, tomatoes... Just so many yummy choices! It is a super fast breakfast (or dinner) packed with easy, nutritious yumminess!  (Oh, and those aren't pancakes - it's deli thin sandwich slices with 1 tsp of syrup on top.  YUM!)

My challenge for you is to incorporate veggies in a meal this week intentionally that you wouldn't have before, and then tell me what you did!

Bzzzing about Dr. Oetker's Ristorante Pizza - easy dinner

I am a BzzAgent, and I get to try products from time to time to provide feedback from myself and my peers.  I recently joined the Dr. Oetker's Ristorante Pizza campaign.  Boy, am I glad I did!  We first tried the Pizza Mozzarella, which was bursting with flavor, and the cheese was delicious!  The boys have had the Pizza Speciale twice in the past week and a half.  It has pepperoni and ham, which makes them very happy.  Last night the hubby and I had the Pizza Spinaci, and oh.my.goodness!  It was SO yummy!

I am a spinach pizza fan anyway, so the amount of spinach piled on top of this pizza was fabulous.  It was very generous and tasted fresh.  A lot of times, inexpensive frozen pizzas taste like warmed up cardboard.  The crust has these layers - it's a thin crust, but is very flavorful.

The first thing I did when I joined the campaign was plug the nutrition information into the WW points calculator. For 1/3 of the pizza, it is about 7 or 8 points+ depending on the pizza.  The Spinaci is 7 points+.  I actually ate half the pizza for 11 points.

If you've tried these pizzas, I'd love to know what you think.  They may not be in your area, but if they are, they get my vote, and the votes of my kids and husband!  My older son is somewhat of a pizza expert in his own mind, and he is very opinionated in his pizza preferences.  He loves the Ristorante pizzas - and I love that they are affordable.

Check out that crust!