Don’t Be ‘Chicken!’

Karina’s Father’s Day Chicken Pizza’s!

These pizza’s are the ultimate time-saver, are super-easy and reduces food waste!

Today was Father’s day in Australia. My family stuck with tradition and had a nice Father’s Day Lunch: BBQ style! We had BBQ chicken breast, BBQ chicken kebabs, low-fat chicken sausages, low-fat beef sausages and a massive greek salad.

Ingredients:

• Whole wheat pita bread, as many or as little as you like
• Leftover BBQ Chicken (either lean chicken kebabs or lean chicken breast)
• Leftover greek salad (use spanish onion, olives, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and capsicum – don’t use cucumber)
• Pizza topper herbs, to sprinkle per pizza
• Cracked black pepper, to sprinkle per pizza
• Grated low-fat pizza cheeses, half a handful per pizza
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste, per pizza

N.B. you can use other types of leftover meat, to create your own unique pizzas….this is the fun part!

Method:

Pre-heat your pizza stone and your oven at 180°C. If you don’t have a pizza stone, pre-heat your oven tray. While these are preheating, prep your leftover BBQ meat and salad ingredients, by chopping the BBQ meat and straining the salad dressing from your greek salad.

Once your oven is pre-heated, using oven mittens, place your pizza stones (or oven trays) onto a heat-safe surface. Pace as many of your pita breads onto these pizza stones as you prefer, then spoon tomato paste onto each one of these, as a pizza sauce base. Once this is completed, pile your leftover BBQ chicken onto your pizzas, then pile your leftover greek salad on top of this. Sprinkle with cracked black pepper and pizza topper herbs. Once this is done, complete your pizza with a sprinkle of your low-fat pizza cheeses, then place all your pizzas into the oven at 180°C for 15 minutes. Once 15 minutes are over, or once your cheese has melted and the base is crispy, turn the oven to ‘off.’

Compiling the Beauty:

Arrange on a plate and enjoy, served with your favourite healthy drink.

Serves as much as you make!

Enjoy!

Karina x

Copyright © 2015 by Karina Teuma

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What a ‘Cover Up!’

Karina’s Environmental Cooking Tip!

My Mum taught me from a young age: save electricity! As far back as I remember, she has taught me how to conserve electricity in the kitchen. Being brought up with a combustion oven, for about 10 years of my teenage years, I instinctively acknowledge the significant environmental, financial and wellbeing advantages of cooking from a combustion oven. The environmental advantage is that you are saving electricity. The financial advantage is that you are saving money from not needing to utilise as much electricity. The wellbeing advantages is that during the winter time, this combustion oven acts as a heater. You also get to chop fire wood, which will help burn those calories! Win-win!

Without telling you my life story, I will get to the point. Actually, I will get to a few points, as listed below:

– Always cook with the lids on all your pots and pans, unless you really want to make your food crispy, or if the method in the recipe requires the lid to remain off. Keeping the lids on will save you money and save the environment by creating shorter cooking periods and using less electricity.

– Turn the oven off about 5 minutes prior to your food being completely cooked. This way, the residual heat from the oven will continue to cook your food, hence helping the environment and saving money by reducing the time the oven is on and by using less electricity.

– If you have a combustion oven, do all your cooking in this oven and on the combustion stove top, which will save you money and will really help the environment in a huge way!

– Use your combustion oven to heat your house, instead of using the heater. This will save you money and will also help the environment.

– If you have a combustion stove, use the top of the stove to heat your stove-approved kettle (should be all made out of a material which would not melt when exposed to high temperatures). Since we no longer have a combustion oven, we still have a combustion stove, which we use all the time during the winter months to heat the house, boil the kettle and occasionally cook food.

I have many other environmental saving tips, however, I will keep this post brief.

Have fun in the kitchen!

Take care!

Karina x

Freeze, Busta!

Breakfast, Busy family, Convenient, Cooking Tip, Dinner, Emergency Food, Frozen Foods, Lunch, TIME-SAVER, zerotohero

via Freeze, Busta!

Freeze, Busta!

Karina’s ‘Cool’ Cooking Tip!

There are many ways you can save time in the kitchen. Although I always like to cook fresh from the garden and the butcher, there are times when one may need an emergency supply. Emergency supplies can be a real blessing and you may like to use your emergency supplies more often than originally planned!

The following is my abbreviated list of food categories, which are all freezable:

– Most fruits, provided you will only use defrosted fruits for baking, cooking, or making fruit drinks such as milkshakes. If you eat frozen fruit defrosted, without cooking it, it will stay soggy and not taste very palatable.

– Stock, frozen in small portions (freezer-proof containers or freezer-proof bags). Freezing in small portions allows you to readily take a portion out every time you need it, which saves you a tonne of time! From this, you can make stews, sauces, curries and more!

– Some vegetables are better than others at maintaining some food-integrity after freezing. Examples of vegetables that freeze well are: Carrots, Broccoli, Corn and Green Beans.

– Meat of all kinds: raw or cooked. I prefer to only freeze raw meat, however, if you’re a busy parent, freezing cooked food will save you a bucket-load of time!

– Baked goods of many kinds.

N.B. with all the above mentioned food and food products, it is recommended to ensure the frozen particles do not enter your food. One way to ensure this does not happen, is to firstly place your food into a freezer-proof bag, then into a freezer-proof container, followed by popping it straight into the freezer!

Personally, I prefer to not freeze my cooked food, unless I am in a hurry. These tips will save you loads of time!

Enjoy!

Karina x

CHOP, CHOP: Karina’s Cooking Tip!

CHOP, CHOP: Karina’s Cooking Tip!.

CHOP, CHOP: Karina’s Cooking Tip!

CHOP, CHOP: LET’S GET TO IT!

If you are planning to host a Lunch or Dinner Party, or you simply want to save time, you can prep all the Food the night before. All you need to do is Chop, Dice, Slice or Grate all your Vegetables and Meat the night before, then keep refrigerated!

If you are cooking with Potatoes, after you have peeled and prepped your Potatoes, you should place in a bowl of water in the refrigerator, in order to prevent it from turning brown! Air causes a chemical reaction to occur with the peeled potatoes, which turns them brown! This tip also applies to Sweet Potatoes and other Vegetables, which may turn brown once exposed to air after peeling!

Ensure you cover all the prepped Vegetables and Meat with Cling Wrap, then keep refrigerated! This tip will also save you a Tone of Time if you would like to make a Healthy Stir Fry or other great meal, on a week night for dinner!

So, what are you waiting for? Get Chopping! CHOP, CHOP!

Karina x