Recipe | Salmon Protein Pizza

It's been awhile since I've shared a recipe, but this weekend I experiment with pizza and made a delicious high protein white pizza with salmon, so today I am going to share it with you.

I'm now deep into my third trimester, so eating protein and getting lots of omega 3 fats is more important than ever. I know I have not been eating enough salmon recently, so I was happy to discover some great sales this weekend on wild caught Alaskan Sockeye salmon and I stocked up. We should have plenty to get me through the next 6-8 weeks of #2 in utero (curious as to why I think I need protein, omega 3's and salmon during this time? Check out this blog).

Back to the recipe. Here's what you'll need:

Pizza Crust, precooked
4 oz Salmon
2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
1/2 Cup Cottage Cheese
1/8 Cup Sour Cream
1/2 Cup Cherry or Grape Tomatoes
1 Bunch of Spinach
1/2-1 Cup of a Hard or Sharp Cheese (I used a pecorino romano/formaggio blend)

Dill to taste

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 Lime

Here's what you do:

1.) Cook the Salmon

I used one 4 oz salmon filet. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and dill to taste. Heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a saute pan and cook the salmon for four minutes on each side. Remove from pan, sprinkle with lime juice, and allow it to cool.

2.) Prepare the Sauce

In a food processor, puree the cottage cheese, sour cream, and some more dill. We love dill at our house, so we used alot, but you can use as much or as little as you want. I used cottage cheese to add more protein to the pizza to help me reach my protein quota for the day. I was quite pleased with the results!

3.) Saute the Veggies

Slice tomatoes in half and tear spinach into a manageable eating size, if needed. Our spinach came from a local farm, so it was really large and needed tearing, but if you buy spinach from a grocery store you can probably saute it without needing to tear it, since it will probably be smaller sized leaves. Heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a saute pan and throw in tomatoes for two minutes. After two minutes, add spinach and some lemon juice and cook the mixture until the Spinach wilts. 

4.) Take cute pictures of the little cooks

This part is not required to make a yummy pizza, but it's entertaining to do! Lucy was busy trying to slice  a lime with her cloth play knife from Ikea. For obvious reasons she was not very successful, but watching her attempt it was great fun.

5.) Create Sauce

Remove veggies from heat and stir in the cottage cheese sauce mixture. I did take a picture of this, but it was very unflattering, so I'm not posting it! It shouldn't be too hard to figure out this step without a picture, though. Pour the whole mixture onto a prebaked pizza crust.

6.) Finish Off Pizza Toppings

Flake the salmon or cut it into bite-sized pieces and sprinkle on top of the sauce/veggie mixture. Top that with plenty of cheese. I recommend something sharp and hard. I used sheep's cheese, which was a mixture of pecorino romano and formaggio.

7.) Bake the pizza

Put the pizza in an over pre-heated to 425, and bake for 20 minutes or until the cheese on top begins to brown. 

8.) Eat the Pizza!

After the pizza has ideally cooled for 10 minutes (although I never do this because I'm too impatient!), slice it and plate it. I made this into a deep dish pizza, since my pizza dough was limited because I let Lucy have part of it to make her own mini pizzas, but you can also make this pizza on a round pizza stone with a thinner crust. If you use a deep crust the way I did, you will probably want to use a fork to eat it. I use a fork every time I eat pizza, but Kip doesn't; however, with this pizza he did and found it much more enjoyable and much less messy to use a utensil to eat it.

WFMW: How we [quite easily] survived potty training!

I'm going to do something I don't normally do, and link up with another blog for this post. That's just how pleased I am with our week of potty training. So, I'm linking up this post with Works for Me Wednesday over at We Are That Family.

Lucy has been potty trained for awhile now. Almost three whole months. And it has been delightful. I'm only just now blogging about it because, well, that's just been the nature of my life lately. Blog procrastination. But let's not dwell on that - back to the potty training.

I read this blog and was inspired. She recommends "pre-training" beginning at 18 months, which I had not done, but I figured all of the "halfway" (and unsuccessful, I might add) potty training I had done for the past six weeks on and off had to count for something, so I just dove right in.

Here's what we did:

1.) I collected my supplies
Underwear, Gerber waterproof training pants, extra bed sheets, stickers, a poster, a potette portable potty (the one kid item I cannot live without!), m&m's, a donut with pink icing

[training pants]

[rewards]

[Incentive poster]

2.) We had a potty party!
We started on a monday morning with a "potty party" where we packed up all of Lucy's gdiapers and told them "bye-bye." Then we dined on a special breakfast of donuts with pink icing and sprinkles. Lucy has not worn a diaper since the one she woke up wearing that day, which means the last day she wore a diaper was March 26th. Starting that Monday, she began wearing the Gerber waterproof pants for naptime and sleeptime. No pull-ups.

[Diapers ready to be packed away]

[Saying "bye-bye" to the diapers]

[Throwing them into the storage bin]

[Blowing them kisses]

[Enjoying her pink donut]

3.) We stayed home all week

This one was hard for me. I like being out. I need to be out. But I knew that being out and about while trying to potty train would not be helpful for Lucy. So we stayed home all day, with the exception of one midwife appointment I had forgotten was scheduled. And she did have two accidents while we were out.  I chose to invest in spending time with my daughter, which means I limited email, internet and phone calls that week so that I was as present with her as I could be. And I think we both had a great week with each other!

4.) Lucy sat on the potty at regular intervals and received positive reinforcements for doing so
Every 30 minutes Lucy sat on the potty for 2 minutes. And since she was not initially a fan of sitting on the potty, she was rewarded for doing so by getting a sticker to put on a poster we kept in the bathroom. It was incentive for her, and it also helped me keep track of how many times she was sitting on the potty each day. I also read her the same book every time she sat on the potty, so she began to anticipate that as well.

5.) I rewarded successes with candy
I know some people aren't comfortable with giving candy or food incentives. I personally don't have a problem with it for limited periods of time for something like potty training. So, Lucy got one m&m when she peed and two m&m's when she pooped or woke up from nap or sleep time dry.

6.) We made a BIG deal out of successes
We danced and clapped and called Daddy. We ate an m&m's. It was exciting.

7.) We were patient and diligent
My goal was to do this routine for seven days. I almost gave up on day three. But I had set out to do it for seven days, so that kept me going when I wanted to give up and run to the basement for the diapers.

8.) Our results
Here's what happened for us (and it's important to remember that the "successes" were mostly accidental, as they happened when I made Lucy sit on the potty longer than two minutes because I knew she needed to go potty and I didn't want to clean up another accident!) :

Day one: Four accidents, Two successes
Day two: Five accidents, Two successes
Day three: Three accidents, Two successes
Day four: ZERO accidents, SIX successes

After day four I stopped keeping track, because on day four, Lucy started going to the potty without reminders! In fact, at one point I realized she wasn't in the room with me and went to look for her. I found her on her little potty and she has just peed in it! All.by.herself. After that point, I can count on one hand the number of accidents she has had between that day (March 30, 2011) and today!

Lucy was 25 months old when I potty trained her. It was easy. With the next child, I will start even earlier. I highly recommend you check out this blog post for further instruction and explanation, and then give it a try!

It worked for me! and Lucy!