By Meg Hodson
This post is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group and Tony's Pizza, but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia #tonyspizzeria http://my-disclosur.es/OBsstV
If you are a parent like me, you want meal planning for your family to be relatively easy. You want meals they will love that will also be healthy and satisfying. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you know that I pride myself on home-cooked meals and providing my children ample choices when it comes to fruits and vegetables.
That being said, our family also enjoys pizza night EVERY Friday night. I grew up with regular pizza night's as a kid and it's no different for my children. And honestly, I look forward to that one day a week where the meal is planned, I am NOT cooking. In a way, pizza night is "family date night" in our house!
There is still that little part of me, even on pizza night, that wants to make the meal healthy nevertheless. Is this even possible? Can pizza night with your family be a healthy experience? I am here to show you not only can it be healthy, it can also be convenient and great for families on a budget with Tony's Pizza.
Let me preface this by saying I rarely buy frozen pizza or frozen food. I generally shy away from frozen items because of their preservatives and high sodium content. But I recently received some valuable advice from a fellow blogging friend: "If your family is eating healthy 80% of the time and splurging 20% of the time, you're doing a good job." It was great advice to receive and has certainly eased my perspective a bit on the food habits for my family (which I think is a good thing!)
I picked up a variety of the Tony's Pizza varieties at a nearby Wal-Mart. Remember, I rarely venture down the frozen food aisle, so when I saw the $1.98 price tag PER PIZZA, I honestly thought it was a misprint. That wasn't just for plain cheese; I also picked up pepperoni and a "meat lover's" version, too.
Next came the taste test on my family. I am pretty confident I could give my kids pizza that tasted like cardboard and they would like it. So, one of the goals here was to find out how they liked Tony's Pizza compared to others we normally have. The other was to add some healthful additions to the pizza and see if they would still enjoy the pizza.
For my taste test, I used both the plain cheese and pepperoni pizzas from Tony's Pizza. I decided to add some finely chopped fresh spinach, sliced olives, and some finely minced broccoli florets. I added these to the pepperoni pizza, but kept the other plain cheese. I removed the pepperoni pieces, added the spinach and broccoli, added back the pepperoni, and topped with the olives. Gotta keep up a little variety! The fresh ingredients cooked evenly on the pizza.
Once the pizza was cooked, I opted to use paper towels to soak up any excess grease that might be present on the pizza. Although not overly greasy, this is still a good step to cut down on the saturated fat.
The verdict? Tony's Pizza is a hit! The kids' loved the slightly crunchy crust and they did not flinch at the added veggies on the pepperoni pizza. It made for a perfect "family date night" in. Even with the added prep of the vegetables, it was still an easy, quick meal.
Ready to try Tony's Pizza? Take advantage of some great coupons here (while supplies last).
