I can tell you two things about my eating habits:

First, I eat balanced meals…some healthy, some not so healthy, but I would say balanced. Recently my friend Lynsey said to me “I don’t think I have ever seen you eat junk food..do you eat junk food?” I guess not. But I also don’t consider myself organic. I cook. I enjoy cooking actually. Baking..well, that is a whole other battle. Ill leave that to Cat.

Secondly, I don’t do frozen meals. There are very few things you find in my freezer. I have vegis to steam, I keep extra bread in there, powdered sugar (don’t ask), waffles, meats (Kim makes me do organic on chicken and beef), and of course pizza.

Pizza. Yum.

The all American (well, Italian? Who knows.) go to meal.

Pizza is one thing that I absolutely do NOT make from scratch. Actually, anything that involves dough is out for me. I burn sliced french bread and nothing I create rises. Like I said, I don’t bake. Ironically, while I dont love frozen foods, I LOVE frozen pizzas. If I am having a down night where I don’t want to cook, its my “go to” meal.

In fact, I keep at least one pizza in my freezer at all times for such a night.

That being said, just because its frozen and just because its packaged, doesn’t mean it has to be BAD for my family.

Which is why I am so excited to share Freschetta Brick Oven pizzas with my audience. While Freschetta has quite a few lines of pizza (and the ones I have tried are ultra tasty), their Brick Oven line is made with flash frozen vegis, sea salt and olive oil, and not only taste great, they are better for you than traditional pizzas!

At Freschetta®, we continue to be committed to making every pizza taste as if you made it at home – with minimal processing; special-recipe meats; crispy, yet tender crusts; and home-spun recipes like our new Brick Oven sauce featuring sea salt & olive oil.

Let me just show you…(please watch, Charlotte and I worked hard for this minute video..we hope you enjoy!)

Now the good stuff!

Wanna win pizza for a YEAR?

Of course you do~

CLICK TO ADD YOUR PHOTO!

Just add your photo to our BOYCOTT BLAH mosaic and you are entered!

Do you have a pizza night in your house?

~Trisha

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paid Rally For Real Pizza spokesblogger

Charlotte the Chef!

I am big on copycat recipes.

I love the salad dressings at restaurants, the special sauces, the breads, the dipping, and all the fresh spices! I am a decent cook (not so much in the baking department) but I can cook up a mean piece of chicken if I feel like it.

The other night I wanted a salad, but wanted it to taste like it came from Olive Garden – minus the drive over there. With gas prices the way they are, we have to figure out how to cut corners without cutting our tastebuds out of the equation. So I scoured the web for copy cat recipes regarding Olive Gardens Italian dressing and there were plenty to choose from! Most looked the same so it was a guess on which one would get the closest. We dove right in according to the ingredients we had on hand.

Here is the recipe we used, but with our own alterations:

Olive Garden Copy Cat Recipe Salad Dressing

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/3 cup white vinegar
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons Romano cheese
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1 tablespoon lemon juice

We actually found this recipe was super runny and tad too tart to be enjoyable long term, so in our house, I ended up adding a lot more Hellmans. It made the dressing creamier, probably a bit closer to a Carrabba’s House Dressing over Olive Gardens Italian. I ended up changing the 1/2 cup mayo to a full cup and then let chill in the fridge for atleast an hour. I also added some sugar to counteract the vinegar flavor, which really helped tone it down.

Make sure you seal off or cover the dressing. The smells have a way of overpowering the fridge.

Charlotte was the Chef for this occasion and did all the hard work:

(as you can see, Charlotte is um…dressing herself lately..they both have purple so apparently they match)