Pita Pizzas

Pizza Toppings.

 Pita Pizzas. My adult variation of my most beloved "pizza nights" growing up. My family was frugal. When I was young I thought it was stingy, but frugal and stingy are two very different things. My parents didn't take us out to eat much, and ordering pizza for delivery counted as eating out. Healthy eating was also instilled in us as kids so a greasy Domino's pizza was a rarity. Instead my mom would pick up some bagels, pizza sauce, cheese and toppings and we would have a family game night where we would each get to build our own personal pizzas. This was so creative of my mother and made it feel like a privilege, just like eating out would have been. 

Building our pizzas.

There were a lot of things, like these pizzas, that I didn't understand until later. My brother and I remember them as the coolest projects, a real splurge! I remember being in my teens and reminiscing about the past with my mother. For a time after my parents divorce, when my brother and I were still very young, we were raised by single parents. At my moms house we ate lots of spaghetti and sauce with Jell-O jigglers for dessert, and at my dad's we had a standard meal of sloppy joe's, cheddar Pringles and canned peas. My brother and I thought these things were such treat! It wasn't until we started reminiscing that we discovered that these treats were the cheapest of the cheap and our parents effort to make due with little to no cash.

Warm, melty, veggie pizza!

Pita Pizza is my variation and I've substituted the bagels for whole wheat pitas. Also our version is vegetarian and has a lot more veggie varieties than you or your kids may like. But I'll tell you and your kids the same thing your momma always said, "you need to eat your veggies!!!" 


Pita Pizzas

Ingredients:
Whole Wheat Pitas
1 jar of pizza sauce
Shredded mozzarella cheese
Baby Spinach
Thinly sliced tomatoes
Chopped veggies:
    Onion
    Mushroom
    Green and red bell pepper
    Squash
    Zucchini
    (any others you prefer)
Salt
Pepper
Oregano

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with a silpat or foil. If you use foil you may want to brush the undersides of the pita with olive oil as they tend to stick.

Build your pizza to your desires and place them in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until melted and bubbly and the pitas are crisp on the edges.



What are some fun, inexpensive projects your parents did to make food fun?