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Wellness > Health

Lose the Freshman 15: Giving Cooking a Try

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Believe it or not, I actually cooked dinner last night. And it was delicious. And it was healthy.  And, it was a meal from a SELF magainze Jumpstart Diet recipe! 

I’ll admit that I am by no means ready to open my own restaurant or anything, but the meal I made last night showed to me how fun and easy cooking can be. And it really proved to me how worthwhile the results can be, if you put the effort into it. 

IMG 3705Because I am a novice in the kitchen, I enlisted the help of my wonderful roommate, Tori, to help me make my meal. I had researched Jumpstart Diet meals during the day, and I decided to give cooking Pizza Pronto a try, mainly because I’ve really been craving some low-fat pizza, and because Tori gave up meat for lent, so we wanted to cook something that was meatless for her.

The absolute best thing about cooking from a recipe is that you can use the recipe as an outline – you can tweak the meal to better suit your taste buds and cooking supplies, while still creating a yummy product. And that’s exactly what Tori and I did.

IMG 3703As I said, we used the Pizza Pronto recipe as our guide, but we changed some things here and there to make the pizza our own creation. And we decided to call our version of the meal Pita Pizza. See below for our recipe:

Ingredients:

  • 1 pizza pita (which can be purchased at your local grocery store)
  • 1 zucchini 
  • 1 tomato
  • 2 tbsp spaghetti sauce (whatever flavor you prefer)
  • mozzarella cheese (low-fat, Sargento’s)
  • more vegetables if you like veggies! (Tori put mushrooms and spinach on her pizza, but I did not) 

IMG 3706Preparation:

  • Cut pizza pita in half (They come as one thick pita, so you’ll need to separate the pita in order to make two pizzas)
  • Cut up all of vegetables you chose to include on top of your pizza. 
  • Lightly sautee or grill all of your vegetables (We lightly peppered our veggies while they were cooking, but you don’t have to)
  • Spread one thin layer of spaghetti sauce on your pita and sprinkle a very thin layer of mozzarella cheese over the sauce
  • Once the veggies are lightly sauteed or grilled, spread them evenly on top of your pita, which should already have a thin layer of sauce and cheese on it
  • Spread another thin layer of mozzarella cheese on top of the vegetables
  • IMG 3717Place pita pizza in a conventional oven or toaster oven and cook on 350 degrees. Cook pizza until the cheese melts and the edges of the pita crisp up. (Ours took about 10 minutes to cook, and we used a toaster oven)
  • Let pizza cool for 5 minutes or so
  • Eat and enjoy! 

IMG 3720We cooked our pita pizza to crisp perfection, and it sure was yummy!

IMG 3723I’m so proud of myself for the meal that I made, and so thankful to have a roommate like Tori who will spend her Friday night cooking with me. After last night, I’m so excited to continue cooking and giving different Jumpstart Diet recipes a try, because I’d really like to continue learning how to cook.

Have you tried any recipes on the Jumpstart Diet? Share your cooking stories with me! Let me a comment below or tweet me here. I’d love any ideas for yummy, healthy recipes that I can try out in the future!

Sara Kaner was born and raised in Santa Barbara, California and first fell in love with journalism as a freshman in high school thanks to her wonderful Intro to Journalism teacher. A family move brought her to Fort Myers, Florida the summer after her freshman year of high school, but she continued to pursue an interest in journalism. She is in her second year at the University of Florida and is pursuing a dual degree in Public Relations and Psychology. She is heavily involved on the UF campus and dedicates most of her time to her various organizations and to her friends. She loves people, magazines, sports and social media, and she hopes to combine all three in her job someday. For now, she aspires to attend Law School and specialize in Media Law. She secretly aspires to be Chelsea Handler, but she's happy being herself for the moment, just as long as she can lose the freshman 15 this semester.