The change: to take a daily vitamin.

Taking a daily vitamin has become a way of life for myself.  I have been pregnant and nursing babies for most of my marriage.  I have ALWAYS been on a prenatal vitamin and I know when I went off of it, I noticed that my hair and nails didn’t grow as well.  I have been sure to get back on the track of taking one daily even though I am not currently nursing or am not pregnant.  Prevention is a good thing.

My children, my first set of 4 I never really pushed giving them a vitamin each day.  My second set of 6, I am sure to give them one everyday and I can honestly say that I believe it helps in preventing colds and sickness.  We still get sickness but not as much as we usually do each year.  Plus the children’s overall health has been better.  I would definitely recommend making sure your child takes one. We take the one with “Plus extra C” .

 

Why make the change:

Vitamins should not be viewed as the “cure all” for our American life.  Most people instead of eating healthy and exercising will think that by taking a vitamin will ensure that they won’t get certain diseases or will assume that it will erase all of their bad eating.  But it does not.  A multi vitamin is a “fill in” per se for nutrients that you might not receive on a daily basis.

I know for myself when I was pregnant and nursing, being responsible to provide all of the proper nutrients to my child was important to me so I took a vitamin everyday in case I was not eating all of my vitamins in foods each day.

Now that I am losing weight, I know that my diet is not full of every vitamin that I need on a daily basis.  Taking a vitamin ensures that my body will not be devoid of those vitamins while I am temporarily cutting back on certain foods in order to lose a few pounds.

Even if my diet returns to the normal whole foods healthy choices, I will probably receive all of the vitamins and minerals that my body will need.  But as a Mom who could conceive at any time, I like to take the vitamin to ensure that my body is properly protected in case I would be carrying a life inside of me and not know it, while all of the important organs were forming:) better to be safe than sorry.

How to make the change:

Purchase a multi vitamin and take one each day.  I like to take mine in the evening as to avoid stomach upset.  Drink with water.

I know that our society is filled with the vitamin supplement craze right now and there are supplements for everything.  Instead of taking an “extra” vitamin, I would suggest looking into whole foods that are “rich” in that vitamin and be sure to eat more of that each day.

It is ALWAYS better to receive our nutrition from food than a pill.  Taking a multi vitamin is just a way to fill in the gaps if we are lapse during our days.  Is isn’t a cure all, but something that will aid us in taking care of our bodies properly.

In our family, pizza is a FAVORITE thing.  We usually like to goto our local pizza buffet because they have so many different varieties that the family likes.  Well this week, I decided to take on our local pizza place and copy some of their recipes.

I was glad that I did.

First things first, you need a good pizza crust recipe.  We made one for years and it is made with white whole wheat flour, which is good because it is healthy. For this attempt I was going for “copying” the restaurants, so I went with regular white flour.  Here is the recipe that I used:

• 2 pkg yeast
• 2 2/3 cups water
• 3 T sugar
• 3 T vegetable oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 6 1/2 cups to 7 cups of flour

Combine yeast, water, and sugar.  Let stand for 5 minutes.  Stir in the remainder ingredients.  Knead until smooth and let rise until double.  Punch down and roll out into pan.  Bake at 425 for 8 minutes before adding toppings.  This gives you 2 large pizzas.

Here is your dough all nice and spongy.  I like my white whole wheat flour, but using this white flour makes it taste just like the restaurant in time, I will transfer back to my other flour.

I made 2 jelly roll style pans that are very large with one batch.  For our family of 12 I did this recipe double.

Here is pizza #1 our supreme pizza. Includes the following toppings:

• pepperoni
• ham
• ground sausage
• green peppers
• onions
• mushrooms
• mild peppers
• mozzarella cheese

We used regular pizza sauce for the base of our toppings.

Bake it for about 20 minutes until your cheese is melted.  On to the next one…….

For our #2 pizza we went with the macaroni and cheese pizza that is ALL of our little ones favorite.
What I did was cook 1/3 a pkg of rotini pasta until done.  Then I added some nacho cheese that we had on hand for nachos the night before, but you can mix it with Velveeta cheese or make a quick sauce with some milk and shredded cheddar cheese.

For the base of the pizza we put Alfredo sauce, the macaroni and cheese noodles, and then topped it with cheddar cheese shredded.

Bake it at 350 for 20 minutes until your cheese is melted.  A favorite for sure!!!  Try it before you think it would taste weird.  I know I did:)

For our #3 pizza I went with an Italian sub style pizza.  This was one that I wouldn’t normally just make because I didn’t think it sounded very good, but this is the pizza that went the fastest.

For your base we used Alfredo sauce.  Then we topped it with the following:

• cooked ground sausage
• ham
• onions
• green peppers
• light sprinkle of mozzarella cheese

We then put it into the oven for about 15 minutes to cook the cheese.

Then when we took it out we added the following to the pizza:

• shredded lettuce
• chopped tomatoes
• mild pepper rings
• drizzle with Italian dressing
• drizzle with some miracle whip.  I put mine in a ziploc bag and then cut the corner off and squeezed it out like I would frosting.

So good, this was BY FAR my favorite pizza and I wouldn’t think it would be.

For the last part of our dough we split it into 2 pans and made cinnamon sticks and cheese sticks.

For the cinnamon sticks, I brushed some melted butter onto the dough and sprinkled it with cinnamon and sugar.  I baked it at 350 for 30 minutes.  **This dough was not precooked.  Immediately after coming out of the oven I mixed up about 1 cup of powdered sugar with enough water to make a drizzle frosting.  I drizzled that over the bread and then sliced it up.

For the cheese bread, I brushed the dough with some melted butter.  Sprinkled some garlic powder and Parmesan cheese on it.  Topped it with shredded cheddar cheese and then baked at 350 for 30 minutes.  **This dough was not precooked.

There you have it, pizza for a large family.  I can honestly say that we did not have many leftovers with this batch.  I look forward to making this again in a few weeks.

y p