Greek Pizza

Today we’re making Kalamata Olive and Feta Greek Pizza! We just love feta cheese and it goes so well on top of a pizza. Combine it with some pizza sauce, mozzarella, red onions, kalamata olives, and fresh oregano and you’ve got a little bit of magic. At least, we think so! Read on and we’ll show you how to experience the magic yourself while not throwing your health completely to the curb.

Pizza for Picky Eaters!

Yes, we are a pizza loving family. And that’s a pretty big deal. I know, I know, you’re probably thinking, “Who doesn’t love pizza?”. But when you are a family of 5 with some young picky eaters, you’d be amazed at how many things get rejected. My husband and I often exchange that disgruntled parental expression of disbelief: Seriously, I can’t believe they won’t eat that!. I’m guessing if you’re a parent, you know the feeling and you know the look.

Pizza even got rejected by our kids in the beginning, but I’m happy to report that pizza night is now one of the few meals our kids get excited about. And that is one of the reasons why we regularly have family pizza night. Okay…we do LOVE pizza. But,  it’s SO great when we can fix ONE meal to feed the whole family rather than fixing separate meals for kids and grown-ups. I know you agree.  And don’t get me started about all the individual requests each kid usually has at meal time. I won’t eat this. I want this cold. I want this hot. Why did you cut this up? Why didn’t you cut this up?  I mean…I get it…they have young developing palettes. But it also gets pretty ridiculous and food prep as a parent can get pretty exhausting. Sometimes IT’S ENOUGH ALREADY! JUST EAT IT! 🙂 So pizza nights…yeah…they’re pretty popular in our house amongst kids and grown-ups.

 

 

Confession: When we are really tired and it’s been a long week, we do sometimes just order pizza from our favorite local pizza joint. They have a Spinach and Feta Pizza and a Buffalo Chicken pizza that are to die for! But…..for monetary and health reasons…..often times you have to go for homemade.

Healthier Pizza Tips

We know pizza isn’t always the healthiest meal choice, but when you make pizza at home you can at least do certain things to at least tip the nutritional scales in the right direction. We almost always make a whole wheat pizza crust. We usually make thin crust pizza. Try to not go crazy with the cheese (I struggle with this one). And we almost always sneak some vegetables onto our pizza.

Plus, one of the great things about having a food item that your kids love is that they become more willing to try other foods that fit in that category. It’s like their minds are churning, “Okay, they’ve fed me pizza before. I liked it. This pizza in front of me seems to have some suspicious stuff on it, but I guess I should at least try it”. Believe me, getting past the “At least try it” barrier is the half the battle. Luckily with pizza, that barrier has become greatly diminished. Sort of like asking them to try a new ice cream flavor. Desserts and pizza convert a lot higher than vegetables. So sneak some vegetables in your kids pizza and their desserts! (Shhh!) Dessert are more tricky, but not impossible.

Yup, there’s something to be said for taking control of your pizza eating experience. We love homemade pizza nights because we get to take total control of the ingredients, but it also gives you the chance to experiment and to have fun in the kitchen as a family. Our kids love pounding down the dough and it’s a great way to cultivate their joy of cooking.

 

 

If you’re looking for more healthy pizza tips, here are a few good links on making pizza healthier:

5 Ways to Make Pizza a Little Healthier – Huffington Post
10 Ways to Build a Healthier Pizza – Food Network
14 Ways to Make your Pizza Healthy – bt.com

 

Our Greek Pizza Inspiration

Anyone else a big fan of Greek salad? We think it’s amazing. Feta, kalamata olives, red onions, oregano, tomato, cucumber, good lettuce (hold the iceberg please–no thanks), etc. It’s delicious! We have been making a ton of them recently, taking advantage of all the fresh lettuce and produce slowly emerging at the farmer’s market. Cucumbers aren’t out yet, so we’ve bought some from the store, but not enough to keep up with the other ingredients.

So since we had lots of ingredients, because we love pizza, and because we have lots of fresh oregano growing in our garden we decided to test out some new pizza toppings and try out a greek pizza. We tried some others as well (stay tuned to the blog), but this greek pizza was one of our favorites and will likely stay in our regular pizza rotation.

 

 

Now, if you check out Wikipedia they say that Greek pizza is defined by preparation style — pizza that is baked in a shallow pan rather than on brick in a pizza oven — and not by the toppings on the pizza. Really? So you can have a greek pizza with pineapples and bacon? Even if technically that is correct (?) it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense with us so we’ve stuck to calling this a greek pizza because of the ingredients.

And it looks like we’re not alone in defining our Greek Pizza based on the toppings. This pizza from Cookie and Kate looks great . This greek and feta pizza from inquiring chef looks great and reminds us a lot of our spinach and feta pizza.

But in the end the name doesn’t really matter does it? It’s all about the taste! We love this greek pizza and we know you will as well. We will definitely be making it again in the near future. Maybe next time we’ll also add some sliced artichoke hearts on top. Yum!

Here’s the recipe:

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