Greek Pizza Bites and Asking for Advice

I can’t say enough about the Trader Joe’s garlic herb pizza dough.

Pizza is one of those foods that I could eat several times a week – I was sick of it for a while after dorm life, but now I like a really flavorful, veggie packed pizza as opposed to the cheap, greasy, cardboard chain-store pizzas.  I used to think nothing could beat homemade dough, but paying only 99 cents and getting a flavor packed crust in minutes is pretty much perfect.

I used half of the dough to make a pesto shrimp pizza (similar to this socca) earlier this week, and wanted to try something different with the dough I had left.

Enter: healthy pizza rolls -> pizza bites!

Ingredients:

• pizza dough of choice (I used half a package)
• 4 artichoke hearts, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces (about 1/3 cup)
• 1/2 roasted red pepper, chopped into 1/2 inch pieces (about 1/3 cup)
• 1/3 cup crumbled feta
• 1/3 cup reduced fat shredded mozzerella
• olive oil or pesto, for brushing (about 1-2 Tbsp)
• flour for rolling

1. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. 
2. Roll dough as thin as possible and cut in to 2 inch pieces. 
3. Combined artichokes, peppers, and cheeses, mixing well. 
4. Scoop 1 tsp of mixture on to each piece of dough, pinch the sides and top closed, and place on baking sheet.  Repeat with all pieces of dough. 
5. Brush tops of dough pockets with olive oil (I used oil from the top of pesto for more flavor). 
6. Bake 18-22 minutes, until tops are lightly browned. 
7. Serve with tomato sauce for dipping (I used garlic flavored jarred pasta sauce).

 

Makes approximately 30 pizza bites.

These were supposed to be an appetizer but just might have been my dinner last night. 

You might want to wait a minute before biting in to one straight off the baking sheet – no matter how amazing they smell. 

Trust me on that one.

Way healthier than deep fried frozen pizza rolls! 

Dessert was also amazing thanks to Janetha’s genius protein cheesecakes. 

I’ve been trying to cut down on the added sugar in my diet, and it’s tough when my mother makes her homemade cheesecake.  These did the trick for my craving!  I didn’t have graham crackers, so I made the based with dates and Kashi cereal – amazing!

On to business… I need some help!

Self Hosting for Dummies

Foodie Blog Roll, who I’ve been working with almost since I started my blog, decided that WordPress blogs won’t get credit for their impressions even when they show the non-script adds correctly (as my site has been for months).  It’s been extremely frustrating and their customer service has been terrible.

Secondly, not being self hosted really limits the things I can change and widgets I can add to my blog.

I tried switching to self hosting once before but found it incredibly overwhelming.  My domain is currently with iPage, so I plan to upgrade to their hosting package, but tried again last night and got frustrated (and frantically emailed Matt, sorry!) with a bunch of errors when trying to export/import my old posts into their WordPress plug in.

If anyone has a comprehensive, “switching to self hosting for dummies” resource, I’d really appreciate you sharing it! 

Pain in the Knee

Secondly, my knee has been killing me since my surprisingly easy long run last week.  From my research I think it’s “runners knee”, but the soreness that I get from sitting all day long is almost unbearable.  I’ve been trying to rest it (and only doing upper body exercises this week), but now that the rest doesn’t seem to be helping (for more than a week), I’m thinking maybe I need to just use it and get past it?

It’s so frustrating because I want to start training for the half marathon next week.

I’m trying to avoid seeing a specialist since they never fixed my ankle injury.  I’m wearing a brace today but it doesn’t seem to be helping too much – and the other muscles in my leg (above and below the knee cap) are becoming affected.  Any runners have advice for me?

On a happy note…

I’m so thrilled to have won Laura’s vegetable cookie giveaway!  Cookie Underground is such a great concept (and their website has drool worthy photos).  Can’t wait to try them and share my opinion with you all!

Stay tuned for another giveaway from my FAVORITE yogurt company… the life changing new flavors might just be involved. 😉