I previously told you about DiGiorno’s Pizza and Breadsticks all in one combo and am even more excited to share their other two versions; Pizza & Chocolate Chip Cookies (Nestle toll House Cookies so you know they’re good!)and Pizza & Boneless Wyngz!  For the big game day, I’ll definitely be getting the Pizza and Wyngz!! I think these are such fantastic ideas and it just thrills me to see DiGiorno getting creative with their combos.

I think the pizza & cookies will be great for when we have pizza as a family.  It saves me time from having to whip up something sweet for the boys!  I just love love love this idea!

Don’t you think this is a great idea?  Which all in one combo do you think is gonna be your favorite?

Over the past few months, I’ve shared with you some of my favorite heat-n-serve meals.  With all the holiday cooking, sometimes you just want something easy, something already made so that you don’t have to do any work.  Here are a few items I’ve mentioned:

1) DiGiorno Pizza - Pizza is like the go-to meal around here when, especially when you have teenagers.  While I greatly enjoy their pizza, I am loving their new one that comes with breadsticks, and so do my boys! This is ideal for those busy nights during the holiday season when you want a fresh baked pizza from the oven. With DiGiorno, there’s no tipping required.  It’s not delivery. It’s DiGiorno.  hehehehe

Whether you are looking for a delicious rising crust or a thin, crispy crust, there is a DIGIORNO pizza for you.  All of them come with mouth-watering toppings – crisp vegetables and delicious meats and cheeses!”

Varieties:

• Pizza & Breadsticks – A delicious full size pizza with a hand-tossed style crust, and a full order of eight soft and cheesy breadsticks.
• Rising Crust Pizzas
• Classic Thin Crust Pizzas
• Cheese Stuffed Crust Pizzas

2) Stouffer’s Lasagna – My absolute favorite!!  For reals, it would be my last meal I love it so much.  I love to cook the edges until they are overdone and slightly crispy. YUM!!!  Some things to know about the large family sized dinners that we buy:

• Inexpensive dinner solution for those busy nights when you want to get the family together around the table during the holiday season.
• Pair your Stouffer’s meal with a salad or French bread for an additional twist to your family dinner.

Tastey varieties for when your whole family is tired of turkey:

• Lasagna with Meat & Sauce – A traditional tomato sauce with ground beef layered between freshly made pasta and real cottage cheese and mozzarella cheese.
• Chicken Alfredo
• Chicken Parmigiana
• Five Cheese Lasagna

And remember when my kids made Stouffer’s Express for Mother’s Day?? Sooo dang nice of them to remember how much I love it.  This particular version cooks in the microwave and much faster than the oven one. Some notes about it:

• Ready in 20 minutes or less for those busy nights during the holiday season!
• Serves 2 people

Varieties:

• Chicken Alfredo
• Seasoned grilled white meat chicken in an Alfredo sauce with garlic and black pepper. Served with penne pasta, broccoli, carrots, and peas.
• Broccoli & Beef
• Garlic Chicken
• Grilled Chicken & Vegetables

All this is making me hungry!!

My older boys are obsessed with pizza, and football so it’s no surprise that we combine the two around here just about every weekend during the season. We actually learned this ritual from the Calandro Family.  They made weekly pizza night sound so awesome that we decided to do it ourselves at least once every week.

Delivery is not possible when you live out in the country so of course we buy frozen.  We have always bought DiGiorno Pizza and when I saw the new version, I was pretty excited for a couple of reasons.  You now have the option to buy DiGiorno Pizza with Breadsticks.  I don’t know why this wasn’t thought of earlier because it’s only natural to order breadsticks when you go out to eat Pizza so why not have it at home as well right?  And it comes with a FULL order of 8 breadsticks.

We’ve had all three kinds; supreme, pepperoni, and cheese.  The hand tossed crust is our favorite!  You simply put both the pizza and breadsticks in the oven together but you pull the breadsticks out a few minutes early to enjoy as an appetizer.   While your breadsticks are baking, you can be warming the marinara up.  We place it hot water and it ends up being just warm enough that my toddler can dive right in to eat some with his breadstick.  These make for a GREAT filler.  Once they’ve eaten them, their bellies have time to settle before pizza time. What I’ve noticed is that they don’t eat as much pizza after having the appetizer.  If you don’t have teens, let me just tell you, they can inhale a pizza in like 5.9 seconds.  No lie. So getting a little fuller before it’s done is a major thing. It means that we can actually enjoy the pizza for a few more hours.

So every Sunday, as a family, we gather around and watch football (GO COWBOYS!) and enjoy our weekly ritual of eating pizza, only now that ritual includes breadsticks. SCORE!  If you head over to coupons.com, you’ll find a coupon for a $1 off any DiGiorno Pizza Product and of course, I highly recommend you giving their new Pizza and Breadsticks version a try!

Is gametime the same for you guys?  And which team do you root for?

Find DiGiorno on Twitter and Facebook!

Maybe it’s because I’m lazy but we try to have pizza once a week, usually during family movie night.  Because we are headed to graduation tomorrow and I didn’t want to make a mess in the kitchen, we had pizza today.  Now I’ve tried a lot of pizza from the freezer section but have never tried Freschetta Pizza.  They offer flatbread pizza and regular natural rising pizza.  We chose Freschetta FlatBread Pizzas in pepperoni & cheese today.  It’s kind of funny actually because while I was in the checkout, a man behind me said, “Are those pizzas good?”  I immediately said that I had no clue, I hadn’t tried them.  Then he said, “I’ve heard they are really good.  Maybe I should just buy one and find out for myself.”  I told him I thought that was a good idea but that if wanted to know what I thought, to check out mywoodenspoon.com *giggle*

Anyways, upon opening the package, I saw this label.  Can I just say that I truly love personality in a person and in a product.  I LOVE this label and it made me smile.  That’s bonus points already for Freschetta!  If you can’t read it, it says:

WARNING: MAY CAUSE A CROWDED KITCHEN

When you bake a Freschetta pizza, don’t be surprised if your family gravitates to the kitchen thanks to the delicious aromas pouring from your oven.

Companies that take a little time to add that extra bit of personality really make my day but was the taste as good as its label?  Oh my goodness, yes it was!  I was sooo pleased with the flavor of the flatbread pizza and my boys? Well Toby gave it an 8 1/2 and Tyler said, “Dang, that’s good pizza Mom”.  He even folded like a calzone or something. So yes, it was a hit and the flatbread style was easy on Truett’s mouth.

I’m normally not a fan of flatbread to be honest because I like the bread part but there was plenty of bread and the taste just really made you not even think about the style at all.  I was just tickled with it I tell ya.  It reminded me of an authentic pizzeria in fact.  Like homemade….absolutely delicious.  I am so glad I was introduced to it because I think that it’s our new pizza.  And I think the Freschetta Flatbread will be what I serve when some of girls get together for a fun evening in the house.  Flatbread Pizza, side salad and wine..YUM!

I give it 10 stars and highly recommend. Man it was good!!  If you haven’t tried it and want to, use this coupon to save you a $1 buck!

Freschetta on the web:

Freschetta Facebook | Freschetta Twitter

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Freschetta. All opinions are 100% mine. Always have been, always will be…duh!

When I started my weight loss journey, I had no idea how hard it would be but I am finding things that make it easier.  I load up on fresh produce every week, drink tons of water, and always keep a few convenience items on hand.  When my man wants those super fattening jalapeno stuffed sausages for lunch, I can easily grab a Lean Cuisine dinner and not have regrets later.  Of course I don’t JUST have a Lean Cuisine dinner.  I also incorporate a small salad with it, whether that consists of Romain lettuce & tomatoes or an apple & orange salad just depends on my mood but I always add another dose of healthiness to the plate.  I noticed they have another pizza version, BBQ Recipe Chicken Pizza-Wood Fire Style! YUM!! I have got to find that one for sure!

One of pet peeves about packaged food is not being able to easily find the nutrition value.  When I head to the grocery store, I’m shopping for a family of five, usually with a three year old in tote, and a husband that text or calls every few minutes adding to the shopping list.  I don’t have time to search a package for the amount of calories-fat grams per serving and that’s just one thing I love about Lean Cuisine.  Their new makeover makes it simple to read and understand.  Check it out:

By the way, I have NOT tried this one so if you have, I’d love to hear your thoughts on it. You can see how easy it is to see the fat grams, calorie count, and fiber grams.  The whole design is fresh and clean and I can see the name and what’s in it easily. Maybe I’m partial to the colors too….some of which remind me of my own blog colors;)

Do you find that packaging makes a difference?  And since I’m still trying some of the varieties of Lean Cuisine, I’d love to hear your favorites.  As you can see, I had the pizza here (because I’ve had it for a while now and didn’t see it fall behind our beef) but I have a few others to try out like the Roasted Honey Chicken and the Thai-Style Noodles with Chicken.

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for afternoon walk.

P.S.  Just like the fresh design on the Lean Cuisine packages, I find that presentation matters so placing my meal on a decorative plate makes it that much more enjoyable.  Like I’m fine dining….

Disclosure: This post is part of a 12mth campaign partnership with Lean Cuisine, which is compensated for my time and efforts. As always, opinions are my own, always have been and always will be. See my full disclosure for my blogging ethics.

Pizza is like the best ever food invention. You can eat it cold, hot, with meats, vegetables, and even as a dessert.  When I was asked if I wanted to try the new Fleischmann’s Pizza Crust Yeast,  I was like heck yeah! Any excuse to make pizza!  We were supposed to have family night but there were ranch duties that needed tended too. Luckily, I was able to spend pizza time with my 13 year old which was exciting because he’s at the age where he doesn’t want to be around his mom so much you know?

Anyways, he agreed and not only did we make some great pizza, we had a lot of fun.  I was cracking up at the “do I just pour?” and “is this how to do it?”.  We decided to make Pepperoni pizza first, then a dessert pizza.  This post will focus on the pizza dough and the dessert pizza but if you need a simple quick pepperoni pizza, all you need is the pizza dough recipe I’ll be posting, some pizza or spagetti sauce and your choice of toppings. It can be made to eat in 30 minutes.

Also, because I took A LOT of photos, I made a slide show for you so that the page doesn’t take FOREVER to load! Just scroll down towards the bottom for that.

30-MINUTE PIZZA CRUST DOUGH (can be found on the back of the Fleischmann’s Yeast package)

INGREDIENTS

• 1 3/4 – 2 1/4 cups of flour
• 1 envelope Fleischmann’s Pizza Yeast
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 cup of very warm water (120° to 130° F)
• 3 tablespoons oil

PIZZA CRUST DIRECTIONS

Combine 1 cup flour, undissolved yeast, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Add water and oil.  Mix together until well blended; about 1 minute.  Add ½ cup flour gradually until dough forms a ball. Add additional flour, if needed, to handle.  Spoon dough out of bowl onto floured surface. Dough will be slightly sticky.  Knead on floured surface.  Knead until dough is smooth and elastic; about 4 minutes.  You can either press dough out to fill greased pizza pan or roll dough to a 12-inch circle and transfer to greased pizza pan.  Top as desired with pizza sauce, cheese and toppings.
Bake on bottom oven rack at 425° for 12 to 15 minutes until cheese is bubbly and crust is brown.

The Pizza Yeast from Fleschmann’s is new and I could definitely tell a difference in it. I think anyone who uses yeast a lot will be able to see the fabulous difference!  I thought I’d give you a close up of the ingredient that makes the whole recipe work!

APPLE CRUMB DESSERT PIZZA PIE

INGREDIENTS

• # 1 cups brown sugar, packed
• # 1 cups all-purpose flour
• # 2 ounces butter, cold, cut in pieces (1/2 stick of butter)
• # 1/4 cup of sugar
• # 2 cans of Apple Pie Filling

ICING INGREDIENTS

• Powdered Sugar
• Milk

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 400′.  Combine brown sugar, flour, and sugar in a mixing bowl; cut in butter until the mixture is like coarse crumbs.  Pour and spread Apple Pie filling all over Pizza Dough Crust; top with crumb mixture.  Bake for about 12-15 minutes. While pizza is baking, combine 1-2 cups of powdered sugar with a few tablespoons of milk to desired consistency.  You don’t want it too thick but not too runny either.  When dessert pizza is done, drizzle icing all over pizza pie!

To see my son doing all the work, check out the slide show made via whrrl!

One lucky winner will receive a $100 gift card!  WOOHOO!

HOW TO ENTER

Leave a comment answering this question–What is your favorite pizza topping? Maybe like us, you love pepperoni or mushrooms. Maybe you love dessert pizza and have your own favorite fruity topping! Share your ideal pizza with us!

Additional methods of entry, leaving each one in a separate comment, are:

• Share on a social networking site like Twitter or Facebook.
• If you’ve got some of Fleischmann’s Pizza Yeast at home, create a pizza and share it via whrrl! (this gives you 10 extra entries)

Giveaway ends on Nov. 1st.  Good luck and enjoy!

Disclosure: Post is sponsored by ACH Foods, maker of Fleischmann’s Pizza Yeast , however, my opinion of the product remains authentic as always.

I normally have guest posts on Friday but I owe Toni-Lynn (who saves TONS of money on groceries! Seriously, you’ve got to check her grocery blog out!) since I told her two+ weeks ago that I’d publish it. Sorry about that girl! These look great and like something the kiddos could help make! And if you’re feeling really energetic and like the “from scratch” method, try making the english muffins from scratch!

If your going to make these babies I suggest that you make a lot of them! My family of 4 can polish off 2 bags of English Muffins when I make them. These are Super Simple and a great way to get your kids in the kitchen with you!

Preheat your oven to 360 Degrees.  Split your english muffins in half and place them on a baking sheet. Spread your favorite pasta sauce on each half. That is the hand of my 7 year old. helping out.

Next, I sprinkle on a LITTLE Salt, Pepper, Onion Powder, Oregano and Parmesan Cheese. I stress a LITTLE because these are obviously small and the spices can over power them very quickly if you put on to much.

The most important part is next! Top with your favorite shredded cheese. I like to use a mix of cheeses for this. Kraft makes a 6 Cheese Italian blend which is what i usually use. I like a lot of cheese on mine.
Bake them for about 10 minutes. Just watch for your cheese to be nice and melted. This was the best finished picture I could get because my family always attacks them! I almost didn’t get one.

About the Author:

Toni-Lynn is the owner and author of Grocery Price Blog. She is a stay/work at home mom of 2 boys ages 7 and 2.

Menu planning is essential for keeping your pantry stocked and budget in check. I don’t know about you guys but with the kids out for Summer, they are eating EVERYTHING in sight which means I’m spending more on food. I’m terrible at menu planning and prefer to fly by the seat of my pants when grocery shopping or have a menu plan made for me.

This is where Kraft & Sam’s Club come into play. Both companies have partnered together to bring you a 2-Week Meal Planner. Their goal is to get you to the store  once and have meals to last 2 whole weeks, saving you money on frivolous grocery spending and gas to go back and forth! As an added bonus for Sam’s Club members, you can create a personalized cookbook!  If you’re not a member, you should be.  You can find a location near you with your zip code.  We love shopping at ours and it’s very handy for us to buy in bulk since we live out in the boonies so to speak.

Back to the meal planner.  I have downloaded it and already begun to make the recipes included in it.  They are very easy and have been very good!  I love that I have the meals all planned out for me but most of all, I love that they are easy to make.

Our first night of cooking with the meal planner was actually quite surprising. We chose to make the Di Giorno Pizza with BLT Topping.  We never buy just a cheese pizza, we always buy one with tons of toppings but this recipe called for the Rising Crust-Four Cheese.  It never occurred to us to add fresh toppings like the recipe called for which was a great way to add a little coolness during the hot day, not to mention the addition of veges.  My husband insisted that we start making our pizzas this way instead of buying one that’s loaded with other toppings. WHOA!  I think he must have fell in love with the bacon and ranch, don’t you?

Di Giorno Pizza with BLT Topping

INGREDIENTS

• 1 Di Giorno Rising Crust Pizza-Four Cheese
• 1⁄2 cup shredded lettuce
• 1⁄4 cup chopped tomatoes
• 4 slices Oscar May er Bacon, cooked, crumbled
• 2 Tbsp. ranch dressing

DIRECTIONS

Heat oven to 400°F.  Bake pizza as directed on package.  Serve topped with remaining ingredients.

I’ll be sharing more of the recipes over the next couple of weeks but I hope that you’ll go and download the 2-week meal planner yourself so we can try them together!!  How fun would that be. Then when I talk about one of the recipes, you can tell me if you’ve tried it and how you liked it!

OVER TO YOU

Are you a meal planner?  If not, do you think having a meal plan at your fingertips would make a difference, cooking & budgeting wise?  I love that it gives me new creative meal ideas for the future because I’m always running out of ideas on what to cook.  I’d love to hear your thoughts!

This republished easy to make recipe came from Lisa over at Lisa Cooking.  She says it’s one of her many recipes that is very popular and I assume it’s ease of preparation has something to do with it.  Thanks Lisa for submitting it!

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1/2 cup diced pepperoni
• 5 Tbs of diced onions
• 1 jar chunky tomato pasta sauce
• 1 box (10.6 oz) Pillsbury refrigerated Parmesan breadsticks with garlic
• 2 cups shredded Colby-Monterrey Jack cheese blend

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a 12×8 (2 qt) glass baking dish with cooking spray.

Brown ground beef and drain. Stir in pepperoni, onions, and pasta sauce. Cook until boiling.

Unroll dough into 1 large rectangle. Spread garlic mixture from the box evenly over the dough. Separate dough into 10 breadsticks. Cut each breadstick into 3 crosswise pieces.

Pour ground beef mixture into baking dish. Spread dough pieces evenly over hot ground beef mixture.

Bake 15 – 18 minutes or until topping is golden brown and no longer doughy. Sprinkle with cheese and bake 10 minutes longer or until cheese is melted.

This is fun to make with the kiddos, not to mention, super fun to eat:)

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 roll frozen sugar cookie dough (buy it or from scratch)
• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
• 1 c. sugar
• 4 Tbsp. juice
• Fresh fruit of your choice (can be canned but drained) You could also use the juice from this for your 4Tbsp. of juice.
• Nuts, coconut, or marshmallows (optional)

Soften and spread dough to fit 9×13 cake pan or pizza pan.  Combine cream cheese, sugar, and juice.  Spread over cooled cookie dough.  Sprinkle with fruit of your coice.  (Opional:  Add nuts, coconut, or marshmallows on the top)  Refrigerate and serve cold!